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The Pentagon recently released videos of UFOs taken by Navy pilots. According to this Guardian article,

The Pentagon on Monday [27 April 2020] released three declassified videos that show US Navy pilots encountering what appear to be unidentified flying objects.

(...)

The videos had been “circulating in the public domain after unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017”, the statement [from the Pentagon] said, adding that “the aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified’”.

The video has been circulating since a little bit more than 10 years, and there are active groups of people whose hobby or job is to analyze this kind of video and try to identify the object. For example, the GEIPAN is an organization depending on the French National Agency that collects and analyzes testimonies of UFOs.

After 10 years, is the object in the video still unidentified?

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    @WeatherVane: actually, when I saw the news on social medias, I thought some people would come to this conclusion (UFOs=aliens) so I decided to ask this question to be able to have something to answer to these people. I know a bit the work of GEIPAN in France, and number of UFOs they have been able to identify as a plane in the night or the laser of a night club is impressive.
    – Taladris
    Apr 29, 2020 at 9:47
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    @CGCampbell: I'm not sure language works that way.
    – Oddthinking
    Apr 30, 2020 at 9:14
  • @Taladris There's more to this story. Numerous witnesses have come forward. Both radar operators and jet fighter pilots regarding two separate incidents. They were clearly not airplanes nor lasers. Even the DOD has admitted they do not know what it is. Apr 30, 2020 at 17:57
  • @CGCampbell: The US military are free to control the word usage of its staff, but it doesn't control the English language. The term "Unidentified Flying Object" was first published in a book in 1953. (The Air Force then defined the term UFOB (sic) in 1954.) UFO has become an English word. If someone (who doesn't work for the US Navy) says "This is a UFO", the Navy doesn't get to tell them "No, you can't use that word." Language doesn't work that way.
    – Oddthinking
    May 1, 2020 at 14:07
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    @CGCampbell Pedantically means to do something with an over emphasis on rules/small details. If I were giving a general description of the Earth and called it a sphere and you were to point out it's actually an oblate spheroid - you would be being pedantic. In that situation you are technically more correct and I would, technically, be wrong. I think all OddThinking is trying to say is UFO vs UAP doesn't have one more correct than the other. The US military doesn't have control over which terms are 'correct'. May 4, 2020 at 7:25

2 Answers 2

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No, these objects and others like it have not been identified.

Joseph Gradisher, spokesman for office of the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare said

We want to get to the bottom of this. We need to determine who’s doing it, where it’s coming from and what their intent is. We need to try to find ways to prevent it from happening again.

...

Luis Elizondo, who ran the [Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a government operation launched in 2007 to collect and analyze “anomalous aerospace threats.”], said the newly drafted guidelines were a culmination of many things, most notably that the Navy had enough credible evidence — including eyewitness accounts and corroborating radar information — to “know this is occurring.”

Elizando, who has worked in counterintelligence and helped coordinate information sharing and partnership engagement being run by the Secretary of Defense’s Office was tasked with checking different parts of the US government to find out if the unidentified objects were the work of secret government programs.

Sources say this is key to understanding how Elizondo entered the picture.

“If they [BAASS] wanted access to info that I’m not saying does exist, but it might have been highly classified, you need someone who had the tickets to make sure the contractors weren’t actually looking at Special Access Program (SAP) stuff thinking it was UFOs,” says an intelligence official who is not authorized to speak on the record.

To that end,

Elizondo confirms his position allowed him access to the most highly secretive and reclusive programs being run by the U.S. “The stuff we were seeing was truly unidentified. It wasn’t related to anything we were doing,” he says.

More recently, former Senator and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who helped spearhead the government investigation said on April 27, 2020:

I’m glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available. The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications.

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    Not part of the answer so I'll leave it as a comment, the video footage is not much evidence. It's merely something that the Navy can release. Real evidence is in the form of radar, which the Navy is loath to release because it would reveal capabilities. It is suspected that recent advances in radar have made detections much more frequent. Pilots have been sent to where radar was detecting these objects, and they saw them visually and recorded these videos. May 1, 2020 at 9:25
  • Here is an interview with the pilot who recorded the oldest video youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ He describes being sent to the location on account of weeks-long radar sightings. May 1, 2020 at 9:25
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    @Nat There is no evidence of contact with non-human intelligence. There is only evidence of unidentified flying objects with advanced capabilities. There is no cover-up. The sources I linked explain that the investigations were not classified, which is why officials are able to talk about them. The best evidence is, however, classified because the systems used to gather it are classified. Instead of a cover-up there is a lot of self-censorship due to stigma. This is something that the Navy and others have officially taken a position on, saying that self-censorship should be done away with. May 1, 2020 at 10:15
  • @Nat The question was, specifically, whether the Navy/government considers these objects unidentified (and, as implied, mysterious and defying explanation). The answer is yes, despite actively trying to identify and/or explain them. It's a good question and I think I've written a good, supported answer. Let's not twist the question into whether aliens/space-Nazis/Atlanteans are plausible. May 1, 2020 at 10:26
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    @AleksandrDubinsky What kind of capabilities? Is there evidence to suggest an object can go from 0 to Mach-30 in under 5 seconds? You show me that, I would be convinced that its aliens or new top-secret energy-source were harnessed. The second one is more unlikely. May 2, 2020 at 0:43
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The difficulty with the question is "What does it mean to be identified?"

These video were declassified in 2017 (they were already public), and explanations for them were quickly identified.

The FLIR video is most likely a distant plane. [...]

The GIMBAL video is also probably of a plane. [...]

The GO-FAST video probably shows a balloon. [...]

But that doesn't mean that the Navy will publish an official finding on the objects.

These three videos are not as interesting as they seem and they have quite plausible explanations. The Navy probably arrived at similar conclusions - that these are simply unidentified aircraft, drones, or balloons - but because of the default operational secrecy regulations nobody can talk about it. And that opened the door to all this speculation.

That is, even if reasonable explanations are found doesn't mean that such explanations will be published by the Navy and/or that they will be accepted by the adherents to the belief that aliens visit the Earth in spaceships.

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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
    – Oddthinking
    May 2, 2020 at 11:05
  • The chat is not availble anymore. My comment was deleted nonetheless (why?). Adding this extensive 3h interview for anyone who needs more detailled information: youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E Tell me if you still think it was a balloon or plane after watching the interview ;) Also, you DO know that the pentagon itself has not identified these objects, right?
    – Adrenaxus
    Dec 15, 2020 at 8:31
  • @Adrenaxus: I unfroze the chat room for you, but I think your points are already covered extensively by the chat and don't add anything new.
    – Oddthinking
    Dec 15, 2020 at 13:18
  • Thank you for reopening the chat room. I understand that my points have been covered already. Yet apparently there hasn't been mutual consent on what's going on so it might still be interesting to have a conversation about the whole thing.
    – Adrenaxus
    Dec 16, 2020 at 8:46
  • None of these videos have been identified as such as you claim. Someone YouTuber has speculated what they may be, however.
    – user61427
    Dec 1, 2021 at 2:18

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