I've seen the phrase "moving at wind speeds" in a few of the word salads tossed by the press. That does strongly suggest, given our current knowledge, that the objects were kept aloft by buoyancy, being lighter than the air around them.<p>This feels like early days of COVID, when common sense evaporated like spit on a hot griddle and the Narrative became the goal of itself.
It must be fun being a General and messing with the media when they ask stupid questions.<p>General: "We don't know the origin of these objects."<p>Reporter: "So they are ships sent by aliens?"<p>General: "Well we don't know the origin of these objects, they could come from anywhere."<p>BREAKING NEWS: MILITARY SHOOTS DOWN SUSPECTED ALIEN SHIP.
Looks like the current news cycle is mostly pushing fanfare; everybody loves a good Alien story. It seems like the pentagon and US officials are also eager to hint that it's extra terrestrial activity - In reality it's most likely US-China relations going sour and each country shooting down the others super-secret not-so-secret-now spy drones. In a couple of decades when we have the declassified info available we'll be marvelling at how the second cold war was going on right under our noses and the pentagon convinced us it was aliens.
We should start by assuming that the military is even more evasive than Bill Belichick in press conferences.<p>If we understand that a football coach doesn’t always say exactly what he thinks, then certainly the military PR person will be at least as coy.<p>The guy said “I’m not ready to rule anything out.” They could have asked him if he thought these drones were manufactured by John F Kennnedy and he would’ve said the same thing.<p>Some articles don’t belong on HN.
Seems like the next step will be to figure out a way to bring these objects down with out destroying them.<p>My understanding is that very few winged aircraft are able to operate at 60k feet. The ones that do fly super fast and are not able to deploy a gun, missile, or other package. I suspect this is why the military is shooting them down with missiles which can be deployed by an aircraft flying at lower altitude or an aircraft on a high arc.<p>Perhaps a missile could be modified to deploy a weighted net like this <a href="https://netgun.com/netgun-info/ultranet-hd-large-animal-target-net-gun" rel="nofollow">https://netgun.com/netgun-info/ultranet-hd-large-animal-targ...</a> to bring these balloons down to a more convenient altitude where a non-destructive forced landing can be organized?<p>Perhaps this is a project for #Steve Jurvetson?
"Another U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the military had seen no evidence suggesting any of the objects in question were of extraterrestrial origin."<p>Interesting that anonymity is required for such a banal issue. But lots of funding hinges on perpetuating the scare for as long as possible, so I guess that explains it.
Will we see any pictures of these crafts before or after being hit by the missiles?<p>I guess if they are previously unseen tech from China, thus a military secret, we would not likely get to see any pictures, which would be a shame...
Either:<p>- These objects are ours<p>- Or the military is lying<p>- Or our understanding of the world is about to change drastically<p>If these are not ours, and we truly do not understand how they are able to fly, and they’re made by a state actor/adversary, that implies a shift in technological dominance.<p>If they are not made by humans, worldviews shift for obvious reasons.<p>I tend to believe there’s a simpler explanation for all of this, but when I do indulge my imagination, my extremely unlikely-to-be-true theory goes something like:<p>An ancient human civilization figured out that the development of certain technologies was responsible for their downfall, and instituted measures to prevent such a downfall from recurring. And so these things have always been here, waiting for humanity to once again trigger the conditions of such a downfall, at which point they emerge. The sudden explosion of AI tech - both in the tech community and the public consciousness - seems like a trigger event as good as any.<p>I really hope we get the real story about these soon<p>Edit: I don't <i>really</i> believe we're dealing with aliens or ancient civilizations, but whether you like or dislike wacky theories about this, they're going to emerge one way or another when the military says they're stumped, and they're more fun to think about than the alternatives.