David Fravor: UFOs, Aliens, Fighter Jets, and Aerospace Engineering | Lex Fridman Podcast #122

Might be worth something to watch part of the Lex Fridman interview with one of the pilots, David Fravor. The entire podcast is four hours long and goes over his career and experiences, I'd argue establishes him as a competent naval officer and pilot. The timecode is when he describes the actual event- ▶ this video In the interview he also describes the record keeping process and basically some of the head scratchers you're bringing about. One other thing the pilot confirms in that interview is the validity (authenticity) of the leaked "Executive Summary" report, which, was leaked to media and (as far as I know) not really pursued for authenticity verification by others (PDF): [link]

in “US Navy – Tic Tac UFO – High frequency gravitational wave generator” · View on HN

I guess somebody had to cherry pick that line from the 3+ hour long interview, because it makes a good click-bait headline. But there's a lot more to the interview with Fravor than that. I still have over an hour of it left to watch, but I'd already say it's well worth watching. And don't get me wrong: I'm not some "UFO believer" or member of the "UFO community" or anything. I'm a skeptic by nature and I'm definitely a skeptic when it comes to some of the more radical claims made by ufologist types: the "extraterrestrial hypothesis" in particular. But Fravor does come off a very reasonable, intelligent, level-headed, sincere witness to something highly unusual. And he makes a point of distancing himself from claims of, as he puts it, "little green men". That said, he also allows that what he saw is not, as far as he knows, possible with any human technology. Net-net, if you enjoy this kind of thing, regardless of whether or not you have any pre-existing biases regarding what UFO's "really are", I'd recommend this podcast episode. At the very least, it's a chance to hear first-hand testimony by a very credible witness to something extraordinary. ▶ this video

in “Fighter pilot says UFO he chased in 2004 committed 'act of war'” · View on HN

We have video from the government that is matched with eye-witness testimony from David Fravor, a pilot who taught at the Navy's Top Gun school. I'm not suggesting this is iron-clad evidence of anything, but nothing about this incident (and others) has been "debunked". The first-hand account of one of the Navy's most accredited naval aviators along with matching video and sensor data more credible than some random person on Youtube who "debunks" it by saying it was the moon. If the evidence points to a phenomenon that doesn't operate inside the laws of physics as we understand them, then we have to adjust our understanding. Perhaps there are very good, mundane explanations for this and another incidents, but its foolish to simply ignore or downplay the significance of things we can't understand. [link] ▶ this video

in “Why is Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb working with ardent UFO believers?” · View on HN

For one thing, first-person accounts, which are notoriously inaccurate to begin with, don’t provide enough information for an empirical investigation. Scientists can’t accurately gauge distances or velocity from a pilot’s testimony: “It looked close” or “It was moving really fast” is too vague. What a scientist needs are precise measurements from multiple viewpoints provided by devices that register various wavelengths (visual, infrared, radar). That kind of data might tell us if an object’s motion required engines or materials that we Earthlings don’t possess. It's true that first-person accounts are sometimes inaccurate, but in the Nimitz case, we have, I believe, eight pilots in total who actually saw the object. The first incursion by David Fravor and his co-pilot Alex Dietrich and a second plane; and the second incursion - by other pilots which I don't know the names of - on which there's brief footage of the object[0]. Not only there's first-person accounts there's also devices which registered these objects. Nimitz caught these objects, in fact, they not only caught several of them, the incursions were made in order to check out what was going on. I wish these "devices can be faulty," (knowing that people actually looked at the object in loco ) "people can be bad first-person accounts" memes actually died once and for all in this particular case. It feels like people don't actually go out and do their due diligence. I feel people either aren't listening or paying atten

in “The UFO Sightings Don't Impress This Physicist” · View on HN

Those explanations are misguided and thunderfoot is just rehashing (badly) the points raised by Mike West. See commentary by David Fravor, one of the jet pilots in the incident ▶ this video

in “UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low” · View on HN

See David Fravor's commentary on the videos. He's one of the jet pilots from the Nimitz incident. ▶ this video Specifically in the Go fast video: ▶ this video The object is shown colder than the ocean; it can't be a bird.

in “UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low” · View on HN

The original observer of the tic tac defeats Mick West's ideas based on his expert knowledge of the equipment ▶ this video

in “US Navy – Tic Tac UFO – High frequency gravitational wave generator” · View on HN

Here's what one of our Navy pilots that was actually there has to say, in an interview with Lex Fridman at MIT: ▶ this video

in “Navy UFO Videos – FLIR/Gimbal/Gofast Analyses” · View on HN

Form whatever idea you will of all this chaff, one thing is indisputable. You yourself can file a FOIA request at the Pentagon requesting "cockpit videos cleared for release to Louis Elizondo in the Fall (September-October) of 2017" and you'll get a copy of those videos directly from the horse's mouth. As an ultra-skeptic who is drawn toward primary sources, I've been following the cluster of these stories closely for years with an eye to their provenance. More I thought about all this, I think the whole thing collapses to two life-changing possibilities, rationalizing my way down directly from the videos: 1) No new physics. Cockpit videos - faked by military for a psyop campaign, coordinated with patriot testimonies by credible individuals. Navy patents filed by the US Navy on behalf of Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais and document leaks added to effect more confusion. There's a precedent for this type and scale of operation going back to the Star Wars program days, where Reagan himself participated in attempting to drain the Soviet Union's R&D budget. If the videos were planted for personal gain by a soon-to-be-laid-off employee, Elizondo, and then engineered into credibility through the FOIA chain of custody - it explains why and how, but doesn't explain everyone else's participation, unless the military chose to exploit the incident and launch a psyop campaign in its wake. If the Navy patents were entirely unrelated to all this, perhaps an innocent case of fraud, incompetent boss

in “How UFO culture took over America” · View on HN

▶ this video How the fuck do you honestly utter a sentence like this and expect not to appear like a 15 year old stoner still in High School? I don't even dislike him as a person, I'm just concerned for his mental health at this point. He seems to be really struggling to out sentences together in a coherent fashion.

in “US Navy – Tic Tac UFO – High frequency gravitational wave generator” · View on HN