Ok so let’s just say that the author is correct, and this thing, among other sightings, are actually US secret projects. I can believe that, but I would be much angrier if the government has been covering up some sort of wild capabilities for at least the past 30 years than if they have been covering up aliens for the past 80 years. If we have the ability to fly silently at high speeds, we have the ability to generate much more power at much lower cost than we do currently…which means the technology is a secret because releasing that tech into the world liberates the peasants from their rulers.
That is almost certainly a mirage of the mountains in the background. Look at the "UFO" image and then look at the more recent image of the location down the page a bit. There is a particular peak that looks suspiciously similar to the UFO.<p>Have a look at this mirage image, taken in Namibia:
<a href="https://i.imgur.com/D21xgfy.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/D21xgfy.jpg</a><p>Mirages often feature a mirror image of the object, as if it's sitting in a body of water with a reflection. That is exactly how the UFO appears.<p>I would be much more inclined to believe this is something strange if the entire area weren't made up of mountains which have peaks that look exactly like the object in this photograph, but alas...I am a man of logic. I would be willing to bet this is nothing more than an illusion and the most interesting thing is the atmospheric conditions that made this photo possible.
My razor for filtering out any UFO/UAP photo is simply: unless I have physically seen the UFO in question, any attempt by others to persuade me they're real or operated by intelligences orders of magnitude higher than ours, is invalid. You can't audit these people's claims short of being physically with them when the photo was taken. For all I know, someone put a piece of cheese on the lens and then passed it off as a UFO.<p>That said, I did witness something strange about a year ago when I looked up at the sky randomly. This object was darting really fast at quite a height. I dismissed it as a drone, but I didn't know drones could operate at such a height, and it done acute turns without slowing down, something drones can't do, no matter how many videos of drones turning acutely at speed you show me, because an object <i>has</i> to slow down before it does that. It's basic physics.<p>Anyway, it was good to see, since I was physically present, so at least I can say these things could possibly fit the narrative of 'aliens' or 'watchers' who are doing recon on our planet.
There are so many security cameras and smartphone users that we are flooded with videos of everyday and not so everyday experiences: funny pets and kids, surprising weather events, accidents, crimes, etc. Why are there no better videos of UFOs. We have great videos of people, birds, cars, and tornados, but the videos of UFOs are always grainy, blurry, and out of focus.
The one thing that makes me think that there might be something there: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar</a>.<p>Not because it worked, more because it really didn't (and they thought it would); it makes me feel like it was (very) loosely based on something else (something only seen).<p>I'd be very interested to see what would happen if you incorporated some very fast very heavy gyros inside of a disc.
The thing that doesn't make much sense to me is the variety of shapes these things come in. Saucer, triangle, tic tac, pyramid, cube, etc. The triangles are probably just military, but where does that leave this other stuff? The military has had supersonic drones for a long time so that could explain many other sightings. The thing about aliens is it's exciting. The thing that makes me wary is that even if the military declassified hypersonic saucer drones people would just call it a psyop.
The Boeing Bird of Prey (first flight, 1996) has about that cross section in a bank. The Pegasus X-47A [1](first flight, 2003) looks almost exactly like that in a bank - diamond shaped with a dark engine bell at the rear. But it first flew a few years after that photo. I wonder if there was a UK prototype of that era which didn't get publicized.<p>The XB-47A led to the XB-47B, an armed semi-autonomous stealth attack aircraft demonstrator. Not quite as diamond-shaped, it was considered a success. It's not clear if a production version was built. One was definitely designed.<p>After the Have Blue "hopeless diamond", the original stealth-first aircraft, there was a lot of work in the diamond-shaped aircraft space. It's not too surprising to see a photo of one.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGDYwP--I4s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGDYwP--I4s</a>
I wonder if it's possible this was an optical illusion. Seeing optical illusions where oil tankers are hovering in mid-air has changed my perception of what people could see and how it could be misinterpreted. [1] I'm not a physicist but it almost looks like the photo could be a mountain and it's reflection somehow projected up into the sky similar to how the oil tanker is projected in the sky.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719</a>
Stargazing and watching satellites in a very dark skies place, I noticed that some satellites zigzaged about, moving at right angles. I explain this by saccades of my eyes and the brain trying to work out the pattern based on a black featureless background.<p>Would make sense for the brain to estimate it as "flying bug" with erratic flight than very smoothly straight flying mechanical thing.
If you ever find yourself tempted to look down on or judge someone for getting roped up in a cult or simply spewing some dogma that you find ridiculous, please consider that UFOs (and a bunch of other conspiracy theories) are just religion for atheists.<p>Humans have a deep need, a very egotistical need in some ways, to feel like there's a bigger plan, that they're part of something and even that they're in possession with some secret knowledge the masses aren't.<p>It's not too dissimilar to those who jump on the trend of the latest fringe FTL technology idea. Warp drives, wormholes, space folding, whatever. Part of this comes from a genuine desire for some Star Trek or Star Wars future of visiting other stars without taking a lifetime to get there. But part of it is also some people realize that if the speed of light is a cosmic speed limit (my personal belief) then the idea of alien visitors and UFOs becomes truly ridiculous.
Seems like the early 90s were interesting times for the MoD. [<a href="https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37371/the-boscombe-down-incident-remains-one-of-military-aviations-most-intriguing-mysteries" rel="nofollow">https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37371/the-boscombe-dow...</a>]<p>For some reason Calvine isn't notable for WPedia - but it does have a <i>little</i> on this story. [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_sightings_in_the_United_Kingdom#1990s%E2%80%932000" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_sightings_in_the_United_Ki...</a>] and links to this article in <i>Scotsman</i>: [<a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/close-encounters-pitlochry-kind-2465945" rel="nofollow">https://www.scotsman.com/news/close-encounters-pitlochry-kin...</a>]
I only see an small island with reflection on a Scottish lake or a large river a foggy day... And the "plane" is just a floating tree branch for me...
Now that there are a billion cel phones out there with high resolution video capability, I guess we ought to see some pretty amazing new UFO videos. Or not?
If I was to break down what it was, kind of decision tree style, I'd guess it's<p>- Hoax 50%<p>- Non-Hoax 50%<p><pre><code> - Optical Illusion 80%
- Unidentified/Secret Military Tech 19%
- Other 1% (a generous 1%, probably fairer to be 0.000000001%)
- ET 33%
- Future human 33%
- Interdimensional 33%
- Other (though manifestation, spiritual/religious, trickster) 1%</code></pre>
That’s totally an aircraft banked towards the camera. Turn the image 90deg and it looks like a testbed a/c that Boeing had that looked like something out of Batman. Brown from above makes sense as it would help to hide it from foreign satellites.
Isn’t this just a photo of something similar to the Boeing “Bird of Prey”<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Bird_of_Prey" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Bird_of_Prey</a>
Hmm. Could this actually be the peak of one of those distant mountains or hills peaking through low blankets of fog and clouds? The jet could be flying closer to the ground than it appears. Or it could be a bird.
Context -- You can build a "ufo" (ion wind lifter) yourself, many have[1]. The power to weight ratio is roughly equal to that of a helicopter, so it's not trivial, but it could in theory be scaled up to large enough to move battle tanks around on. You'd end up with a large dark craft that glows a bit around the edges.<p>That's old physics, who knows what's been done since then.<p><pre><code> 1 - http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/liftbldr.htm</code></pre>
> The Calvine UFO photograph is in my opinion the best image of an unidentified flying object ever taken.<p>And yet the no evidence for this is presented in the entire article. Government cover-up/friction is not evidence of authenticity.<p>The person making the extraordinary claim is obligated to bring the extraordinary evidence. There is none, so the author is resorting to spinning conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, quite typical of UFO "research."