[NyxWulf]

So the anomaly that the carrier group tracked, then scrambled fighter jets for. The object that four different pilots saw visually, and was confirmed on multiple different sensors. That was camera glare?

The video is only one piece of the evidence. The pilots are trained, and other sensor systems confirmed what the camera was showing. This analysis is pretty flimsy.

[willidiots]

The "saucer" shape and its rotation were IR glare, that's the point of the video. He's very clear that he's NOT debunking the existence of an object. The exhaust of a jet engine, or another high-heat signature, could cause such glare.

AFAICT no pilots saw this shape with their naked eye. They were miles away from the target and relying on what they saw via their sensors.

[subsubzero]

So actually Commander Fravor saw the object with his own eyes, he is one of the pilots who was sent in to engage the craft after it appeared on radar from the carrier group, here is a detailed video of him talking about the incident with Lex Fridman(AI reasearcher - MIT) on his podcast - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E

[tptacek]

I'm literally learning about this "gimball video" from this video, so I don't have all the background, but the video we're looking at wasn't taken by David Fravor; it was taken by Chad Underwood? In the video we're looking at, we don't so much have to guess how far away the object was; the camera video itself indicates it. It's too far away to discern shape and rotation accurately with a naked eye. The video goes into detail about this, and the details aren't complicated.

[subsubzero]

yeah I made a mistake and can't edit my comment. You are right the gimball video(OP's link) was from 2014 and was not related to David Fravor. Its confusing as there were three videos released at the same time in 2017 and they all came from the Pentagon(and were all black and white). David Fravor's incident(2004) was an eyewitness of him seeing the unidentified craft and there was a video taken by Chad Underwood in FLIR of the object. This same object was also seen on radar multiple times by the carrier group he was a part of and was the reason he was sent to investigate it. A link to all three videos and their details:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos

[tptacek]

I can only speak to this one "Gimbal" video, which is clearly at least in part documenting a camera artifact.

[recuter]

Spoken like a true none believer. I shun thee. Even the pentagon said they can't explain the UFOs, clearly they are preparing society for a big reveal. ;)

Edit: I'm betting half the downvotes are from people not picking up on my sarcasm, and the other half is from people picking up on my sarcasm.

[wglb]

From the Guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

[recuter]

Yes, I know and agree with the guideline.

True believers rarely retaining their senses of humor was the point I was trying to make. I promise not to make fun of UFOs again.

[mxkopy]

I actually thought the comment about voting was kind of funny

[pgreenwood]

David Fravor was talking about the Tic-Tac video which was over ten years before the Gimbal video in the article.

[zmgsabst]

This analysis even admits that there’s an object required for the “glare” to exist.

This analysis doesn’t reject an actual object being tracked: it confirms it and describes it as one that causes IR glare!

[stouset]

Exactly. Zero of the GPs objections are inconsistent with this explanation. The carrier group tracked an unknown object and scrambled fighters to investigate. The pilots may have visually observed the object, but it would have been too far away to really ascertain any visual detail. Instead they relied on infrared sensors which… suffered from glare, and so rendered incorrect visuals for the object. Its strange shape and rotational behavior are now explained.

What remains is still an unidentified flying object, but one whose behavior is reasonably mundane and doesn't require advanced technology to explain.

[adriand]

We also need to be really honest about what we want this to be, and how that desire influences what we believe about it. I personally want this to be an alien spacecraft, because that's super interesting and exciting. I think the same is true of lots of other people. Unfortunately, there are much more mundane explanations which fit the evidence much better.

[birdyrooster]

Why do you want it to be alien spacecraft? Are you some sort of glutton for punishment?

[RobertMiller]

If we're not dead already, how bad could they be?

[bentobean]

I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords.

[astrange]

The investors in Tom DeLonge's aliens startup would probably like to make a profit.

[sterlind]

if the aliens don't annihilate us, maybe they'd be willing to teach us some physics?

[mark-r]

If there really are aliens out there, wouldn't you like to have some proof of it?

[JaimeThompson]

Given how horribly interactions between more technologically advanced and lesser technologically advanced societies seem to harm the lesser ones I'm not sure it would turn out well for humanity.

[blenderdt]

Indeed. It could be something simple as a gas bubble.

It is now understood that all those weird stories about the Bermuda Triangle are caused by gas. But still people want to believe in other, more exciting stories because that is what we want it to be.

Edit: even the gas theory of the Bermuda Triangle is just that: a theory. The best explanation is probably nothing much is going on there.

[shadowgovt]

And in the realm of mundane objects that may create very strange radar and visual patterns, we have our choice.

Space Data Corporation was operating as early as 1997. Their product is radio communications provided by balloon. IIUC, normally those balloons are tethered, but if a tether snapped and one got away and was caught in a high-altitude crosswind, you'd have a mostly-metal object catching sunlight and throwing it in weird ways as it tumbled.

[bostonsre]

This analysis is saying it's likely 10 miles away, that doesn't track with the other evidence, does it?

[stouset]

What other evidence is this inconsistent with?

[colordrops]

RADAR and visual confirmation.

[stouset]

I’d be floored if the radar data didn’t back this up. A carrier group would have scrambled fighters well before anything unidentified got within a hundred miles, much less ten.

Visual confirmation I don’t find remotely compelling. Besides the notorious general unreliability of human observers, humans simply cannot distinguish between small, nearby objects traveling slowly and large, far objects traveling quickly without additional contextual clues (e.g., a tiny plane-shaped object in the sky is probably the latter). Factor in that they were validating their observations against a sensor displaying a misleading image—in other words, providing incorrect contextual clues—and I think it’s not hard to call into question the accuracy of any visual claims.

[bostonsre]

It was picked up on radar over several different days and a training mission was scrubbed so that they could go investigate what they saw on radar.

You don't think humans could get better at judging distance of objects with practice? It seems like if any humans on earth could reliably do it, it would be seasoned fighter pilots that have thousands of hours of experience doing that exact thing.

[thereddaikon]

I didn't think the radar track was at the same time was it? I thought the Tico's tracked it with the SPY-1 and they sent F-18s to investigate who then tracked it with the FLIR and visually.

Without a reference point you are unlikely to be able to guess the distance of an aircraft, especially an unknown one.

[scoopertrooper]

Got a source on that?

I feel like people just want to believe. But this is a pretty satisfying explanation.

[cronix]

Here's a 60 Minutes piece discussing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtMbBPzqHY

Here's a 4 hour interview with the pilot, David Fravor, on Lex Fridman's show where he goes into much more detail than you'll probably read elsewhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E

This wasn't just a single radar. It was an AEGIS system compromised of multiple ships with state of the art radars, multiple plane radars, and visual confirmation by several pilots. They were tracking it for multiple days.

[nl]

I don't believe there was visual confirmation of this incident.

There was a separate incident where there was a visual sighting and people are conflating the two.

[NyxWulf]

So the claim is...these highly trained pilots and the other sensor systems didn't realize that objects cause IR glare, but this guy did. Case closed.

[stouset]

I'm quite confident that most people here are going to find a calm, measured, and thorough explanation of the observed phenomenon more credible than a snarky and instinctive dismissal that doesn't even bother to address a single one of the clearly demonstrated points in the analysis.

[thesuitonym]

It's not the pilots job to theorize on whether the object is glare or not, just to describe what he's seeing. This is one plausible explanation, not THE explanation. There is still a UFO there, the video is just saying it probably doesn't look like what we see on screen.

If you're unwilling to even entertain that this might be a possibility because you want to believe... I guess do what you want.

[sudosysgen]

Yes. This happened multiple times. There was an incident where the tree-blade bokeh of a NVD was mistaken for a UFO once, for example.

[tablespoon]

> So the claim is...these highly trained pilots and the other sensor systems didn't realize that objects cause IR glare, but this guy did. Case closed.

And frankly the "this guy" appears to be someone with no expertise and who is strongly biased towards particular investigatory outcomes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_West:

> Mick West is a British science writer, skeptical investigator, and retired video game programmer. He is the creator of the websites Contrail Science and Metabunk, and he investigates and debunks pseudoscientific claims and conspiracy theories such as chemtrails and UFOs.

Not to say he isn't right in this case, but I'm equality unenthusiastic about "skeptics" like that as I am about conspiracy theorists.

Edit: on second thought, I'm somewhat more unenthusiastic "skeptics" like that. Conspiracy theorists can at least be entertaining sometimes, while "skeptics" tend to just bore you with self-assured arrogance while they take pot shots at low-hanging fruit.

[glenstein]

>Not to say he isn't right in this case, but I'm equality unenthusiastic about "skeptics" like that as I am about conspiracy theorists.

My working theory for what creates the lowest common denominator of internet comments, is that you have to believe whatever is necessary to believe to keep the conversation going.

If a skeptic debunks something by appeals to mundane facts relating to camera angles and physics principles, that closes the conversation. And for internet comment sections that is a problem. But, if them being right means they are arrogant, then we can talk about how arrogant they are, the nothing gets turned back into a something and the conversation can keep going.

[tablespoon]

The problem with both conspiracy theorists and non-expert "skeptics" is they both approach a phenomenon with their results already decided. It's just the conspiracy theorist has decided it's must be a conspiracy, and the "skeptic" has decided it must be some mundane thing with camera angles, and they both produce explanations to confirm their biases. They (especially the "skeptic") are just performing their identities.

And note the quotes around "skeptic," I'm not talking about people with real expertise in some area who show some crazy theory to be implausible or impossible.

[d35007]

> Conspiracy theorists can at least be entertaining sometimes, while "skeptics" tend to just bore you with self-assured arrogance while they take pot shots at low-hanging fruit.

I don't know about skeptics in general, but I found Mr. West's video to be pretty entertaining. He built some pretty impressive-looking simulations to support his claims.

I think conspiracy theories can be interesting and entertaining, but a lot of their theorists are kinda pathetic.

[msla]

> Conspiracy theorists can at least be entertaining sometimes

Right up until they're sure that there's a child molestation ring in the basement of a pizza parlor that doesn't have a basement, and someone goes and shoots up the place because the conspiracy theory was so damn entertaining.

[tablespoon]

That's exactly why I said "sometimes." It might have been more precise to mean occasionally, but the clear intended meaning was that it was a minority of the time.

[Talanes]

> Not to say he isn't right in this case, but I'm equality unenthusiastic about "skeptics" like that as I am about conspiracy theorists.

Yeah, it can be interesting to hear a dubunking from someone with an actual background in the field, but someone who's whole schtick is debunking is just as motivated to prove things wrong as the conspiracy theorists are to prove things right.

[mkr-hn]

>> "Conspiracy theorists can at least be entertaining sometimes"

Very true. We got some of the best TV in history in the form of the Stargate franchise from goofy '90s conspiracies.

[rasz]

The object might of existed for a millisecond. Test of a new stealth tech - quick directional laser burst to temporarily damage/blind IR camera. After that Jet was flying in circles trying to track its own camera glitch.

[dcow]

That’s not how glare works.

[tptacek]

I don't know much about this whole story (I'm not a UFO person) and am learning most of what I know about it from this video and this thread, but: the people saying that this video depicts an actual object rotating in the sky appear to be making the extraordinary claim here: the connection between the rotation and the camera system seems compelling. The horizon is moving as the camera/plane moves; the object is not moving. You can't refute that with "these are highly trained fighter pilots": the horizon is moving with the camera, the object isn't. Training's got nothing to do with it. The shape we're looking at is, in part, an artifact of the camera, unless the aliens are somehow reprogramming the camera to fuck with us.

[bonestamp2]

> The shape we're looking at is, in part, an artifact of the camera, unless the aliens are somehow reprogramming the camera to fuck with us.

It's possible the IR glare is an intentional countermeasure produced by the craft. It might sound far-fetched, but the military can already jam some cameras already, and they apparently license this technology too:

https://techlinkcenter.org/technologies/selective-camera-jam...

The US Navy has (admittedly controversial) patents for technologies that could produce a craft with these flight characteristics:

https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Salvatore+Cezar+Pais

The first time these craft were spotted on radar was during a Navy exercise where they were testing new radar equipment, and the craft were coming from the direction of San Clemente island (an island that is a Navy base). Here's a short video that talks about the radar sighting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKyP79v9e84

In the Nimitz case, the "UFO" disappeared, and then met the pilots at their rendezvous point. How did it know where the rendezvous point was?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBpcfeHI0Kk

Sightings of these UFOs have only ever been mentioned by US forces.

Who knows what is going on, but if I had to make a guess and I considered all of this information, it seems likely that the "UFOs" are experimental US aircraft.

[tptacek]

It would have to be a countermeasure that not only produces glare, but does so in a way that precisely tracks the orientation of the rotating camera on the F18. Again: an extraordinary claim; it's not impossible, but you'd need evidence to make it persuasive.

[bonestamp2]

Just to be clear, I'm saying the object may be producing the IR as a countermeasure, I'm not suggesting that the countermeasure produces the rotation captured in the video -- the linked article suggests the rotation is an artifact of the tracking system. From the submitted article:

> what is being seen in the video is actually infrared glare that hides a hot object behind it and only rotates in the way it does because the camera rotates when tracking the target from left to right

[tptacek]

Gotcha, sorry to be knee-jerk.

[bonestamp2]

No worries, I could have been more clear.

[pyinstallwoes]

Thanks for the links. I am not really sure why you are being down-voted. All good points!

[tshaddox]

> the gimbal UFO video almost certainly shows a glare that hides the actual object

This is in the first 15 seconds of the YouTube video.

[cma]

> The pilots are trained

Fraver (not sure he was one of the ones in this incident) has a history of UFO pranks, shutting down engines and gliding over campfires then lighting up after burners when right over them, explicitly to give a UFO experience, and someone found a contemporaneous report of him doing it, so it wasn't just a story.

[MarkMarine]

As a former member of USMC Aviation, it's valid to point out that skilled navy pilots can have some of the same range of differences in belief, action and motivation that the general populace does. I flew with a pilot on a transport helicopter that was blasting Eye of the Tiger and taking every turn at maximum bank, constantly looking for AA to get to fire at us so he could call in F-18s and watch the fireworks. Some of them are cranks.

BUT... I don't think any US military pilot expects their cockpit recordings or FLIR video to be public at some later time, I'm not sure what the motivation would be to lie about this stuff. The harm to you as a respected pilot would be fairly severe, and you'd have to get your co-pilot to go along with it.

"Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead." - Benjamin Franklin

[graderjs]

What's "AA to get to fire at us" mean?

BTW that like sounds like the crazy pilot guy from A-team

[PlanckMeasure80]

He was trying to get anti-aircraft weapons to fire at his helicopter and reveal their locations, so that he could then watch jets destroy them

[graderjs]

Cool :)

[MarkMarine]

That is the correct clarification, we were essentially the unarmed bait being flown around, and that’s not the explicit mission.

[outworlder]

> shutting down engines and gliding over campfires then lighting up after burners when right over them

I find it very, very, very hard to believe that a fighter pilot would _shut down_ his engines in flight, at night, even more so if it's for a stunt.

Slightly more believable if he went to idle, and then full military power. Slightly.

[cma]

I'm sure it was idle or just heavily lowered, but people dug around and found reports on old internet boards about time frame seeing him do it from the same timeframe and location.

If he never did it he pranked/lied about doing the prank and that is no better for credibility.

[justsomehnguy]

There is enough videos of F-18s doing 'push the throttle and bank' in a level flight on YouTube. It's fast, but it's not instantenious. And as an arm-chair pilot I can say what a multiton plane doesn't stay at the altitude with the engines at idle.

Also the last weekend I caught a 40" bass.

[bostonsre]

So your are saying the one with evidence was a prank because he screwed around on a training mission?

[stouset]

The entire point of this a analysis is that the video isn’t evidence of anything extraordinary.

Given other potentially questionable behavior around this subject matter, yes, that absolutely calls their credibility into question.

[RobertMiller]

"Known prankster pulls another prank" vs "Known prankster says aliens are here and you should believe him because he's a professional."

Hmm.

[bostonsre]

Have you listened to the joe rogan episode where he talks about it?

It seems a little ridiculous to compare the one where he turned his engine off and on one time at night over a couple campers to the episode where multiple pilots see it, with multiple sensors seeing it from planes and from ships. He engaged in horseplay once, therefor anything he ever says should not be believed seems lame.

[cma]

>to compare the one where he turned his engine off and on one time at night over a couple campers

The camper incident caused a UFO report.

[cma]

He explicitly said he did those as UFO pranks.

[Teever]

Source?

[tunap]

Jets do this regularly over the Colorado River and various, otherwise desolate gathering places around AZ. I've witnessed such shenanigans a dozen or so times over the last 3 decades. One jet distracts onlookers while another sneaks up to buzz low over the deck(or, perhaps it's just incidental to their training Ops, IDK). These maneuvers are tests of skill, technology & amusement.

[ceejayoz]

He told the story to Joe Rogan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRM8AMrqqsc (at 3:57)

[cma]

What ceejayoz linked below

[nabla9]

That "four different pilots" stuff has not been confirmed as far as I know. All people involved in these stories are hustlers, including that one ex-pilot who peddles the story.

You must look at every statement they make separately. They give one fact that can be verified and then they tie lies or unverified stuff on that.

btw. Luis Elizondo is has not been charge of any UFO stuff. https://theintercept.com/2019/06/01/ufo-unidentified-history...

[TechBro8615]

> btw. Luis Elizondo is has not been charge of any UFO stuff

I have no conviction on the UFO phenomenon other than it would be cool if aliens exist, and even cooler if they were already on Earth. Still, I can't get enough of it – I especially love thinking about the most epistemically offensive conspiracy theories, like "the moon is a spaceship" or "Antarctica is an alien base." I sometimes fall asleep to Ancient Aliens.

But, fact is, the only government agents with any "authority" in this "movement" – which became especially fervent around the dissolution of Q-Anon, btw – are people who worked for DIA in Information Operations. That is, their specialty is in manipulating the public, not alien technology.

The "Lue anon" moniker about sums it up. My theory is the recent reinvigoration of the UFO movement is an attempt by US intel agencies to pre-emptively herd the most impressionable people with their own controlled conspiracy, rather than allow a hostile actor to manipulate them during the next election.

Also, I predicted this 10 months ago, the last time "disclosure" was imminent, in a comment [0] that I think has aged well so far.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27339120

[bvbrandon]

Curious to hear your thoughts on this https://twitter.com/gadinbc/status/1386872125835812864?s=21

[TMWNN]

>Luis Elizondo is has not been charge of any UFO stuff.

The late Senator Harry Reid of Nevada disagreed with you. <https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/article/luis-elizondo...>

[astrange]

I did think it was amusing that everyone said the government is covering up UFOs, but it turns out you can just ask Harry Reid about them and he didn't even put it in the classified budget.

[bostonsre]

Have any of them made any money from this? What is the hustle?

[nabla9]

Oh yes.

To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences (media & entertainment company) makes this stuff up and sells it.

https://tothestars.media/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Stars_(company)

[astrange]

> According to SEC filings, as of October 2018 only $1 million of those shares had been sold and the company had a $37.4 million deficit, largely from a stock incentive plan for its employees, prompting Ars Technica and Vice to question its financial sustainability.[4][5]

I happened to read the SEC filings when they were doing this and am certain it's fine and Vice reporters just don't know how startup finances work.

What I did notice is that the perfectly normal looking and very detailed Form C didn't say the company owned any IP from alien spaceships or was going to acquire it. Their website definitely suggested it though, so if you're lying you could sue for securities fraud.

[bostonsre]

The navy pilots are members of that organization?

[Reubachi]

I'm quite surprised to see this community be so on board with the "Oh really, the obvious saucer was lens glare and not aliens?" train.

USAF and reitred officals have gone on record to say that they actively release doctored footage and/or false narratives, sometimes via pop culture figures, to muddy waters on current technology or to sow discourse among enemies. This reeks of n example of that, and not aliens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage_Men

[gfodor]

The gimbal video is not a video of the object from the Nimitz incident. There is a video of that but it’s less compelling in terms of evidence, but also afaik not cleanly debunked. (I think it’s called FLIR?)

[native_samples]

Yes, Flir1:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/military/story/202...

They're all ATFLIR videos. It's basically the same thing - a far away hot object, likely another aircraft, turns into an IR cylinder-shaped blog on screen which is then incorrectly interpreted as being an actual cylinder. The apparent movement at the end is just the ATFLIR losing lock as the guy constantly zooms in and out.

[a9h74j]

> the carrier group tracked

Naive question: If a carrier group cannot, in essentially real-time, document three dimensional trajectories at this point (four if you include speed), what possible defense can they claim to have against evasive incoming missiles, etc.

[rapjr9]

To actually answer your question, they probably can sometimes track four dimensional trajectories, however not always, and they are not going to give you that data because that would reveal how good their tracking algorithms and sensors are. Sensor fusion is a thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensor_fusion

Even with fusion, the fewer the sensors the less accurate the tracking will be. In these videos there may only be one or two sensors actually tracking the object.

Hitting a target with a missile is a somewhat different problem, you just have to get the missile there based on whatever data you have (which might be from the carriers sensor data, the missiles own sensors, or both). For example an IR missile doesn't know the location of its target, it just knows how far off center the IR light from the target is from the missiles current flight path and it can correct course based on that simple angular offset to eventually hit the target (with some additional math since the missile has to go to where the target will be when it gets there.) Similarly stopping an evasive incoming missile does not require that you know its exact location. Also as a defensive missile gets closer to the incoming missile it may be able to get better data on where its target actually is and how it is moving. Missiles move very fast so on the final approach there is not much ability to change direction at all, it would require too many g's to turn the missile, so you can model the final approach as a straight line. When it's close your own tracking systems probably work better as well because the targets cross section takes up more of the sky.

[chrisco255]

Carriers are most likely partly obsoleted by hypersonic missiles that travel and maneuver at mach 20 (which Russia and China have), in addition to 100 megaton nuclear torpedoes that travel at 120mph (which Russia has).

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/03/russias-new-pos...

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/10/14/will-ground-bas...

[thereddaikon]

Its a common assumption made by layman that the existence of a weapon that can kill a system means its now obsolete. That is incorrect.

Systems do not become obsolete because they can be killed. They become obsolete when they no longer serve utility. Either something else does the job better, more efficiently or effectively or the nature of war has changed to the degree that its now irrelevant.

This mistake is most often made with Tanks and Carriers for some reason. The existence of Javelin ATGMs does not mean tanks are obsolete. And the existence of hypersonic AshMs does not make carriers obsolete. Those weapons do not replace the functionality of tanks and carriers.

Its like the common pop history myth that machineguns made horse cavalry obsolete in the first world war. It did not. Cavalry lasted through the war. Their tactics definitely had to change and adapt. And they were certainly used far more sparingly due to their low survivability but offensive cavalry weren't rendered obsolete until tanks came around. And horses in general weren't obsolete until armies became fully mechanized and replaced them with trucks. Some armies didn't manage that until after WW2.

Likewise the Battleship was not obsoleted because carrier aircraft could kill it easily. It was obsoleted because carrier aircraft and later smart weapons meant combat now happened over the horizon and those big guns weren't contributing to fleet actions anymore

Its been possible to kill a tank since literally the first battle they were employed. Ballsy German artillerymen learned that British tanks were not immune to a direct hit from a field gun fired over open sights. And Carriers have always been vulnerable to antiship weapons. Be it torpedoes from a sub, dumb bombs from an aircraft or fancy high tech missiles today.

[marcusverus]

I hope you'll excuse some pushback from another layperson--isn't the situation with Aircraft Carriers categorically different? In the examples you provided above (Cavalry, Tanks, and Battleships), there has never been a push-button solution to eliminating every single unit in the service of the enemy. Given the technology mentioned by GP, the small number of Carriers in service and the utter impossibility of hiding them, it would appear that such a solution does exist for Carriers.

So while it seems to be true that Aircraft Carriers are not obsolete in peacetime or in a conflict with minor powers, aren't they obsolete in the context for which they were created--namely, war with another great power?

[greedo]

Weapons on their own are dumb, stupid devices. Weapons in a system can be dangerous when deployed appropriately. For ASBM or hypersonic missiles, there are several steps in a successful engagement:

1. Detect the carrier. Sounds easy but they can move at 30+ knots, and can be quite difficult to detect when they want to hide.

2. Provide targeting data. This is needs to be much more accurate than just detecting that a carrier is operating "near" this point. Most weapons will require relatively precise data for this.

3. Transmit this data rapidly to the launch systems. Every minute counts as old targeting data is relatively useless.

4. Launch the weapon. This means keeping aircraft or missile batteries safe from attack, and getting the weapons in range of the carrier.

5. Have the weapon reach the target area. This means a reliable weapon with a low failure rate.

6. Have the weapon avoid any ECM or other countermeasures that might affect its targeting.

7. Have the weapon avoid any defenses, either the layered defenses (SAMS, point defence guns), fighters, etc.

8. Have the weapon detonate properly, in the best spot.

Lots of things to go wrong in this "kill-chain." Lots of places to interrupt, disrupt or out-right kill the weapon.

And sure we hear a lot about Russian super weapons like Zircon and the silly torpedoes. But as the Ukraine war is showing, a lot of Russian stuff sounds great until you see it in action. Or it's a Potemkin weapon, or too expensive.

Look at all the burning Russian tanks. These aren't monkey models sent to client states like Iraq. These are top of the line, with ERA etc. Yet most don't have Arena/Trophy, and are getting killed by a weapon designed 30 years ago.

Now perhaps the DF-21 deployed by the PLAN is more reliable than the Russian crap. But unless things get hot in the South China Sea we'll never know.

[chrisco255]

Russia has been rather subdued in the Ukraine invasion, but they have won 95%+ of every military engagement in Ukraine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_engagements...

They have taken nearly the entire Black Sea coastline and most major cities east of the Dnieper River. That entire eastern part of Ukraine will collapse imminently under Russian advances.

And meanwhile none of the aforementioned weapons systems have been engaged.

Detecting a carrier is trivial. They are large above surface vessels that leave a huge wake. 30 knots is nothing. And once locked its trivial for satellites or spy planes to track. We even publish the location of our carriers: https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/vessels/USS-Enterprise-(...

Russia is a spacefaring, highly advanced military. They have all of the targeting capabilities you describe.

100 megaton nuclear torpedoes aren't silly. They're extremely dangerous. They can trigger tsunamis, and destroy anything within tens of miles and cause third degree burns out to hundreds of miles.

I'm not sure you understand the scale of what you're dismissing.

[thereddaikon]

As long as its useful to have a self propelled airbase that can launch strike aircraft from anywhere it goes air craft carriers will be relevant.

Emerging threats may change tactics, operations and spur development of countermeasures but they wont make an entire weapons system obsolete unless the change the nature of war.

>Given the technology mentioned by GP, the small number of Carriers in service and the utter impossibility of hiding them, it would appear that such a solution does exist for Carriers.

Carriers are not impossible to hide. A CSG that doesn't want to be found can do so. The ocean is a very big place. There are also grades to knowing "where" something is. Just knowing there is a carrier in the South China sea is valid for strategic planning but not much else. Knowing its somewhere to the south west of Taiwan can help plan operations but wont put warheads on foreheads.

A complete kill chain involves getting very precise and timely targeting information. This is something that needs to be done with some kind of sensor, RADAR, Thermal, Sonar etc. It must be timely because carriers are moving targets. A mere set of GPS coordinates is not good enough. By the time your missile gets there they will be wrong. So that means you need something nearby with a datalink and proper sensors to give targeting data. This could be a sub listening with sonar, a strike aircraft painting the carrier with radar or using an IRST to pick up its heat signature. It could be a warship of your own.

Point is, these kill chains are long and complicated and if you break it at any point your attack will fail or wont happen at all. Hypersonic missiles have very long kill chains, some of the longest. And they haven't been proven out in combat. "Finding" a CSG is much easier said than done.

[dragonwriter]

> Given the technology mentioned by GP, the small number of Carriers in service and the utter impossibility of hiding them, it would appear that such a solution does exist for Carriers.

Strategic nuclear weapons, which one of the items you are referencing is, have been the “make it all go away” button for lots of things since they were created, but…MAD.

As for conventional anti-shipping missiles, people have been arguing that about carriers since weapons like the Exocet were available, but today, as then, remain at best highly speculative.

> So while it seems to be true that Aircraft Carriers are not obsolete in peacetime or in a conflict with minor powers, aren't they obsolete in the context for which they were created--namely, war with another great power?

Maybe, but so what? MAD has made war between great powers even more the exception among wars involving great powers than it was in the past, and it's almost always been the exception.

[pavelrub]

No. Because you have to consider:

1. Current or future means of intercepting hypersonic missiles.

2. The ability to disable or reduce the enemy’s ability of launching hypersonic missiles, or of pinpointing and accurately tracking the exact location of aircraft carriers.

[chrisco255]

We don't have the capability currently to intercept Russia's hypersonic missiles.

We also have no defenses against 100 megaton underwater torpedo nukes that can be detonated miles from a carrier group and still wipe it out.

In an all out war with Russia, our carriers would be big, slow, sitting ducks against Mach 20 missiles with variable speed and high maneuverability as well.

https://www.military.com/equipment/weapons/why-russias-hyper...

"The missile flies with an advanced fuel that the Russians say gives it a range of up to 1,000 kilometers. And it's so fast that the air pressure in front of the weapon forms a plasma cloud as it moves, absorbing radio waves and making it practically invisible to active radar systems.

U.S. Aegis missile interceptor systems require 8-10 seconds of reaction time to intercept incoming attacks. In those 8-10 seconds, the Russian Zircon missiles will already have traveled 20 kilometers, and the interceptor missiles do not fly fast enough to catch up."

[smachiz]

I mean... assuming the Russians have anything that works is probably not a great assumption based on their performance in Ukraine.

But I think they provide overlapping, but different, roles. But missiles and torpedoes is why aircraft carriers travel in carrier groups that have defensive capabilities against torpedoes and missiles.

[mcast]

It wouldn’t make much sense for Russia to show their cards and use modern war tech on Ukraine, a country with a (relatively) primitive military. They’re barely even using fighter jets.

[smachiz]

If you think their strategy is to lull someone else into attacking them, I guess?

Occam’s razor is more likely - the west vastly overestimated their capability practically the entirety of the Cold War, and you’re doing it again now.

[RobertMiller]

> They’re barely even using fighter jets.

Maybe because they've barely been training those pilots and know the planes would likely be lost if used above Ukraine? Pilots in the Russian Air Force have supposedly been averaging less than 100 flight hours a year, which is next to nothing.

[justsomehnguy]

With all their operations in (and supporting) Syria I would doubt the number. It is not the amount of USAF pilots, but should be more than that.

[greedo]

They are using modern tech, and it's getting wiped out. Their tanks are modern, their artillery is modern, their fighters are modern. And they're all getting wiped out.

Tanks being used by Russia in Ukraine:

T-72A T-72B3 OBR.2016 T-80BV T-80U T-80BVM T-90A

IFVs:

BMP2 BMP3 BMD4M

SAMs:

Tor Buk Pantsir

Fighters and Helos:

SU-25 SU-30/35 Su-34

Mi-24/35 KA-52 Mi-28

None of this is "monkey model" stuff like the the USSR sent to client states. These are all top of the line. Same with the artillery and missiles used. All the best the Russians have in any decent numbers.

[water8]

Except for the fact that they are

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/us/r...

[chrisco255]

Yes, Russia has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world, they absolutely work and it's unwise to base your opinions on their nuclear and tactical capabilities based on their slow advance into Ukraine.

The Poseidon is a 100 megaton nuclear torpedo.

It doesn't need to get anywhere near a carrier group to knock out the entire group. It is twice as powerful as the largest nuke ever detonated (at 57megatons) and a Russian sub can carry four of these torpedoes:

“All buildings in the village of Severny (both wooden and brick), located 55 km (34 mi) from ground zero within the Sukhoy Nos test range, were destroyed. In districts hundreds of kilometers from ground zero wooden houses were destroyed, stone ones lost their roofs, windows, doors, and radio communications were interrupted for almost one hour. One participant in the test saw a bright flash through dark goggles and felt the effects of a thermal pulse even at a distance of 270 kilometres (170 mi). The heat from the explosion could have caused third degree burns 100 km (62 mi) away from ground zero. A shock wave was observed in the air at Dikson settlement 700 km (430 mi) away; windowpanes were partially broken to distances of 900 kilometres (560 mi)."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

[rootusrootus]

> Russia has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world

Not by much, not per capita (of the obvious target), and both sides are treaty-limited to the same number of 'ready' weapons.

> Poseidon is a 100 megaton nuclear torpedo

You're getting your information from Russian propaganda sources. Credible estimates put it at more like perhaps 2MT.

[VyperCard]

If it exists. If it works. If if it

[astrange]

Only one of them needs to work to be good enough.

[outworlder]

> Carriers are most likely partly obsoleted by hypersonic missiles that travel and maneuver at mach 20

That's assuming they can actually hit and inflict sufficient damage.

Also, you need to re-read your own sources.

> 100 megaton nuclear torpedoes that travel at 120mph (which Russia has).

The article is estimating that it's at most 2 megatons (still a lot, but 50x smaller) and that it's NOT supercavitating, so it would not travel at 120mph.

The other article does not support the conclusion that carriers are obsolete, at all. It poses the question, but does not answer it.

[water8]

Why is china building carriers then? Hypersonic weapons still need to know where to go. Theres a reason an ICBM which flies upwards of mach 20 is ineffective against carriers

[chrisco255]

They are good at projecting power against lesser foes in a sub-nuclear confrontation. I think if we went to all out war against Russia and/or China our carriers would be some of the first casualties.

[ilove196884]

Hypersonic missiles apart from df-zf only exist in a lab. They are one of the biggest hype out there along with killer robots. When you hear about tests, it is mostly about work done at a university, which means the tech is still 5 to 10 years away.

[rootusrootus]

How long would an all-out war with Russia last? Couple hours?

[AnimalMuppet]

I have heard that, in case of all-out war, the life expectancy of a carrier in the middle of a battle group was 21 minutes. (This was decades ago - it may be less with hypersonic missiles.) But they could launch all the planes in 19 minutes, so it could launch its entire attack before being killed. That was considered to be good enough.

[s1artibartfast]

Obsolete is a binary term, not scalar.

Carrier effectiveness and utility is diminished by some weapon systems, but they are still effective for many roles and purposes.

[jdminhbg]

> in addition to 100 megaton nuclear torpedoes that travel at 120mph (which Russia has)

If you use nuclear weapons on another nuclear power, carriers are going to be the least of your concerns.

[chrisco255]

And thus the old quote about sticks and stones being used to fight world war 4.

I'm not sure about Russia's or China's anti ballistic technology. I know their hypersonic tech is superior to our own currently.

But what if a country could deploy nuclear weapons against another nation and defend themselves against incoming missiles, due to a temporary technological advantage? It changes the game. I'm not sure if that's where we're at currently, but I know that the hypersonic and nuclear tech is why we are so hesitant to enter the Ukrainian war outright.

[greedo]

You know this? You have intel (that's probably classified NOFORN) or you've just read about Zircon? The Russians can hype their wunderwaffen til the cows come home, but they haven't demonstrated reliable, deployable systems.

If you think hypersonic weapons are any deterrent to the US involvement in Ukraine, you're just being silly. The Russians don't even have enough Kalibr cruise missiles to take out a 3rd rate military. They don't have enough money (or perhaps just too much corruption) to install active defenses for their MBTs (no Arena/Trophy).

The only reason we don't have US troops in Ukraine is because of the SS-18 Satan and Bulava SLBM.

And no one has an effective defense against the number of ICBMs/SLBMs on each side. The ABM systems around Moscow are too few to counter the number of warheads assigned, and the US missile defense is too raw (and also out of position) to defend against Russian missiles.

[RobertMiller]

Extant American ballistic missile defenses don't seem sufficient to repel a committed ICBM/SLBM attack from Russia, or even China. THAAD and Patriot can only protect a relatively small area around each installation, not even remotely enough to protect the whole country in a war like that. GMD can intercept ballistic missiles mid course and has substantial range, but no more than a few dozen interceptors total for the entire country. Aegis is formidable and numerous, but the SM-3 interceptors used by those ships have substantially less range compared to GMD interceptors, and only some of the missiles carried by Aegis ships will be those SM-3s.

[Miner49er]

Do you have links to reading more about this? The video saying it was glare made it seem like the object was very far from the jet, much farther then the naked eye could see. Was it closer at some point?

[colordrops]

It was also tracked on radar.

[beebeepka]

Weather balloon launched by swamp gas burp

[bonestamp2]

Maybe. That would be 14 weather balloons in this case:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKyP79v9e84

[pengaru]

> So the anomaly that the carrier group tracked, then scrambled fighter jets for. The object that four different pilots saw visually, and was confirmed on multiple different sensors. That was camera glare?

I don't think we can trust the accounts of anyone in the employ of the government, past or present, when it comes to this kind of thing.

For all we know to misinform is the mission, propaganda if you will.

Consider how much of what you said above is practically verbatim regurgitation of their vernacular. Jargon is often abused to sound qualified, smart, and authoritative. AKA B.S. alert.

[mountainriver]

Camera glare my friend, case closed

[csa]

> Camera glare my friend, case closed

I came here to say this.

There will be no further discussion.

[csa]

I guess HN missed the attempt at a joke here.

This just seems to be a way that the government can point to an “expert” and say it was nothing, thereby alleviating the need for the government to comment on the “nothing”.

I’m guessing the classified file on this is very interesting.

[StanislavPetrov]

>This analysis is pretty flimsy.

Flimsy is an extremely generous and flattering word if you know anything about the details of this case or the testimony of the Navy's top pilots who witnessed and tracked this object from different vantage points both visually and with instruments.

[likeabbas]

^This is the key point. These objects have been tracked on radar, FLIR, and multiple pilot witness testimony off both coasts for decades now. Attempting to debunk a single one of these three leaked videos is pointless because they do not show the entire context of the events happening.

I implore everyone to watch these two interviews with Christopher Melon, the former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. And to read the DNI report on UAPs It will change your entire perception of these incidents and show you to view them as true national security issues.

1. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2V0uWX1C4m8xEL0HHYqbnE?si=e...

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdxcgS4spRM&t=1393s

3. https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelima...

There are unknown objects flying with impunity in our restricted military airspace, some that exhibit characteristics that nothing of human origin can accomplish. This should terrify you.

Edit: Why the downvotes? Please explain to me your logic. I'm just listing things that people with credibility in our government said, including the Department of National Intelligence.

[willidiots]

I agree that there's something in these videos - at least in Gimbal. I don't think it's a saucer-shaped thing or necessarily of extraterrestrial origin. It could be a drone (either ours - another branch of DoD/govt - or another nation's) etc. Still an interesting mystery, but no proof of anything extraordinary IMHO.

In the case of relying on Christopher Mellon's credentials, I'd point out that he has a commercial interest of some kind with To The Stars Academy, the production company which seems to be behind all of these videos' presence on the History channel.

In their 2021 annual meeting notes [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b5a458fe749405f83225...], To the Stars Academy notes that "Christopher Mellon, a member of TTSA’s advisory board, [is] no longer with the company" implying he was employed by them in some fashion. Thus prior to 2021, he likely stood to benefit commercially from these films' distribution, particularly when he was quoted alongside them.

[likeabbas]

>It could be a drone (either ours - another branch of DoD/govt - or another nation's) etc

Pilot Chad Underwood gave private testimony to the senate congressional committee on this gimbal video stating the object did rotate without changing direction or altitude - a feat which is impossible by our current understanding of physics. So assuming the "drone" in gimbal belongs to something of terrestrial origin, either our government his hiding ground breaking physics capabilities or some other country on this planet has - both of which are terrifying.

>In the case of relying on Christopher Mellon's credentials, I'd point out that he has a commercial interest of some kind with To The Stars Academy, the production company which seems to be behind all of these videos' presence on the History channel.

I agree TTSA has sketchy origins, I've looked quite a bit into it. Chris Mellon comes from one of the wealthiest families in America, so I would have to assume that this venture could not have netted him enough money to make it worth while for him to lie to congress about this. He was the major architect to the Gillibrand amendment in last year's NDAA creating the new UAP office, and he and Lue Elizondo been regularly meeting with the Senate Intelligence committee to further pursue this topic. And to go on that, Lue Elizondo (former head of AATIP) made no money from his time at TTSA or the Unidentified TV show. If someone needed money, it would have been him imo.

[tptacek]

If Underwood is responsible for the video we're looking at here today, we don't need to be terrified: the physics-defying motion is pretty clearly a camera artifact. The horizon is moving, the object isn't; the "object" we're looking at is the camera, and whatever the pilot is following is occluded by it.

[argvargc]

Why should a peaceful demonstration of technical superiority terrify anyone?

It's clear whomever, or whatever, possesses this superior technology could fly circles around and/or obliterate us on a whim, but has expressly decided not to, and instead simply announced: "Hey, I have this."

If they/it perceived us as a threat, we'd surely be gone already. That leaves only our hopefully sane response, to influence what happens next.

Being terrified would be exactly wrong.

[likeabbas]

If you look into Lue Elizondo's, former head of AATIP, comments on this, you will come to find that he believes these things are testing are doing reconnaissance to test our military capabilities - which is scary to me.

The technology they are displaying is awesome, but it is something we should be very wary of.

[argvargc]

Assuming this is an advanced civilisation, this seems highly unlikely.

Our capabilities can be well enough assessed from the comfortable safety of billions of kilometres away simply from watching our relentless broadcasting of them in all directions for decades if not centuries now.

We even sent out devices at the limits of our sphere of physical influence, introducing ourselves and with instructions on how to understand what we say.

Certainly, by simple initial analysis of even our most basic technology they could then monitor our own satellite networks on a whim and see all of the same things about ourselves that we do, in realtime and in totality.

Ingesting our transmissions and emissions and assessing our capabilities would be something they could do far more thoroughly than we can ourselves. They'd likely also be able to project what we'll have ten or twenty years from now in detail.

Sending a craft in can only reasonably be interpreted as "hi" given a context of technological dominance, which by necessity is founded on informational dominance.

[hindsightbias]

“Christopher Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He is a private equity investor and an adviser to the To the Stars Academy for Arts and Science”

Equity investor. No conflicts there!

“in our restricted military airspace”

In fact, they’re actually the most heavily instrumented research, development, test and training areas on the planet. Let me repeat that: research, development and test.

https://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/cnrsw/installations/navbas...

What an incredible coincidence. Alien trolls or Occam’s razor?

And with all that, all we get are appeals to authority and fuzzy pics.

It’s akin to “Air Force pilots bewildered by objects over Area 51, must be aliens!”

[likeabbas]

> Let me repeat that: research, development and test. >What an incredible coincidence. Alien trolls or Occam’s razor?

The ODNI specifically stated in the 144 cases of UAP they were not able to identify that exactly none of them were from testing US Special Access Programs technology. This is in the official report http://dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-As...

>“Christopher Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He is a private equity investor and an adviser to the To the Stars Academy for Arts and Science” > Equity investor. No conflicts there!

He left TTSA in 2021 and he's still a national security advisor to the Senate Intelligence Committee. He's also from one of the wealthiest families in the world, being a direct line from Carnegie Mellon. Typically when you are born wealthy you are naturally an investor in things you believe in.

[hindsightbias]

“The ODNI specifically stated in the 144 cases of UAP they were not able to identify that exactly none of them were from testing US Special Access Programs technology. This is in the official report”

I’m going to be extremely generous and assume you have actually not read the report you state says exactly none of them were SAPs.

What your source actually says:

“USG or Industry Developmental Programs: Some UAP observations could be attributable to developments and classified programs by U.S. entities. We were unable to confirm, however, that these systems accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected”

[likeabbas]

Apologies. I couldn’t remember the wording. I did read the report but it was last June. With that said, I have watched more recent interviews with Lue Elizondo where he states that the UAPs being shown are not the result of SAPs, and that he would know as he had access to the SAPs since it was his job to investigate the occurrences.

His interview with Terry Virts, former astronaut, was pretty eye opening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YSrVhCS-rc