Holman wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2017 11:50 amI know I'm hitting the skepticism hard here. I'm still rather annoyed at the original NYT's presentation of just the pilots' account with no apparent follow-up reporting. Hopefully that will be rectified.
You *should* be hitting the skepticism hard.
I would keep in mind though that we have very little choice when dealing with UFOs but to compare them to our technology. They are flying objects. Necessarily we are going to compare/contrast them with our flying objects. The ones that will stand out will necessarily be the flying objects that are doing flying things that we can't do, or that we don't believe are possible to do.
Of course, the first thing to consider there is that we can do things that the observer doesn't know that we can do. If the F/A-18 pilots aren't aware of a test drone that has significantly superior flight characteristics to what they are flying, then the encounter will stand out to them, and we will all understand why.
If we were testing some new thing, obviously these pilots wouldn't know anything about it.
However - where it gets interesting is when the exhibited behaviors represent real violations of things we thought we knew. The ability to rotate orientation without any chance to your velocity (speed + direction)? Based on literally everything we know about powered flight, that is impossible. *All* of our flying objects move in a direction because of thrust in the opposite direction. To completely change orientation without changing the direction of thrust would require the ability to thrust in any direction, regardless of orientation. That would be like a car that can continue down the highway at 80 mph, while it's spinning in circles. We know that this can only happen to some degree when the method of thrust (friction between tire and ground) stops being applied (i.e. hydroplaning).
The two things that stand out to me from the video (regardless of the articles around it) is the lack of heat signature regarding thrust, and the fact that it seems to radically alter orientation without changing velocity (most notably direction). I don't see how that's possible. Which leaves two possibilities:
1) What I see in the video is not actually what's happening, despite what I see being seen/confirmed by the pilots.
2) What I believe is possible is wrong.
I would say that #1 is the most probably explanation.