UAP FAQ — The Observation Paradox
Wherein I make things more complicated by attempting to answer a simple question.
In the aftermath of the recent 60 Minutes special on UAP a new batch of seekers has found their way to the subject. Many are finding out for the first time that it’s okay to believe… and to talk about it too. This is an exciting season for those of us who have devoted serious time to the subject. People have questions and they know just who to ask. In this piece I will focus on a frequently asked question and hopefully create a quick resource to help newcomers navigate the murky depths of the UFO mystery.
Question: “If these craft are so advanced, why can we observe them?”
It’s certainly understandable to wonder how vehicles with such advanced capabilities could be perceived by us or picked up by our sensors. Such a paradox is indeed problematic from our perspective. Within our time and place (and throughout much of human history) the most advanced technologies are almost always designed or co-opted for militaristic purposes. Even NASA technologies often start off as hand-me-downs from the military industrial complex. It is almost inconceivable to us that an intelligence would use its high-end technology for anything but battlefield dominance. Yet even within this context, there are many avenues available to us for explaining this apparent paradox.
Do They Really Need Low Observability?
In the case of the now well-known “Nimitz” incident of 2004, it is notable that the “Tic-Tac” was first observed moving erratically and unpredictably (“like a ping-pong ball”) over a portion of roiling white water. This erratic movement may have served to mitigate the risks of being “observable” (and perhaps vulnerable) while it performed it’s task. Once engaged by an F-18 super hornet, it mirrored it’s motion in the opposite direction and then sped off so quickly that witnesses described it as a disappearance. Even if this craft didn’t have the capability to actually disappear from advanced sensor systems, it was clearly in no danger from flight crews that day. They were on a training mission without weapons loadouts.
If a vehicle is capable of moving at speeds in excess of 15,000 mph and executing precise turns at impossible angles with no discernable flight surfaces… it stands to reason that being physically caught is not all that much of a concern. As with many of the questions surrounding this topic, “all or nothing” thinking won’t get us any closer to the truth. We can’t presume a non-human intelligence is solely or even primarily concerned with establishing battlefield dominance. Though there seems to be a high degree of interest in our battlefield capabilities (and especially our nuclear capabilities), we can’t presume this is the entire reason the technologies exist.
Just as a car isn’t only for picking up groceries, it’s very possible these technologies are designed for a variety of applications. It is difficult for us to imagine, but NHI may not require specialized or high-end (from their perspective) technologies to deal with terrestrial battlefields. Just as we don’t need military-vehicles to protect us from dangerous wildlife, they may not need cloaking to protect themselves from us. Why bring a tank when an SUV will do?
While low observability may be a preference, it is probably not necessary for evasion.
A Polylithic Problem
Even if we presume these technologies originate from a non-human source, it doesn’t make sense to presume there is only one group, doing one thing, in one way, with the exact same technology. Given the wide degree of diversity within the data, it isn’t a stretch to presume there are multiple groups, doing different things, in different ways, with different technologies. If humans were able to reach a resource-rich planet and found it to be inhabited with primitive species, it’s fair to say our objectives wouldn’t be monolithic.
After all, is this not the very scenario we find ourselves in right now?
To meaningfully analyze human technology you would first have to admit that it constitutes a wide spectrum. Then you would have to admit that different groups of people have varying levels of access to the technologies on the upper half of the spectrum. Then you would have to admit that even among those groups with similar access, the technologies (though similar) aren’t identical. Then you would have to admit that even groups utilizing technology at a single point on the spectrum have a variety of reasons for doing so, and thus utilize it in different ways.
To analyze exotic non-human technologies and capabilities without seriously considering the possibility of a similar spectrum seems fairly pointless.
They Almost Certainly Have It
On the list of Defense Intelligence Research Documents (DIRD’s) solicited by AATIP you’ll find a paper entitled “Invisibility Cloaking’’ by Dr. Ulf Leonhardt at the University of St. Andrews. You can view his 2011 paper entitled “Invisibility cloaking without superluminal propagation” here. Some outlets were fairly quick to dismiss the research solicited by AATIP as junk-science. But ultimately it doesn’t matter. Even if the AATIP DIRDs were aspirational — a “pie in the sky” wishlist dreamt up by someone who watches too much Star Trek at the Department of Defense — they were almost certainly inspired by cases within AATIP’s portfolio. It wasn’t necessarily a question of whether cloaking was possible. They knew it was possible because they observed the capabilities. It was a question of how feasible it might be to accomplish the same things within our current paradigms.
There are plenty of cases in which craft seem to employ capabilities which make observation difficult. It’s so pervasive that “low observability” is ironically included on the list of 5 observables AATIP used as a guide to aid in the designation of true Unidentifieds — cases for which there is ample data but no conventional explanation. All of this suggests the capability, even if it is not observed in every instance, exists in connection with these inexplicable technologies.
So Why Do We See Them Now?
Make no mistake about it, cases featuring four-way confirmation of craft with these capabilities are in no way a new phenomenon. These things have been around for a very long time. So why are we seeing so many new cases without any apparent cloaking abilities? There are many reasons why this may be true. For one thing, if we can’t observe an object then we wouldn’t be able to collect any data— except by examining the physical traces and signatures they leave behind. While such traces certainly exist, and are certainly being examined — they sort of lose their relevance to this topic if divorced from the context that observations provide.
On the other hand, if an object was filmed in the act of cloaking or decloaking — it is probably not the type of video DOD would declassify for public consumption. It’s not as if these can be released in a vacuum. When you release something like that everyone is going to see it, including near-peer adversaries who may be working to reverse engineer some of these capabilities as well.
It is also worth noting that by all accounts, observations of these craft by military personnel have increased in frequency and duration alongside advances in sensor capabilities. Radar technology in particular has improved by leaps and bounds. Fewer moving parts, increased range, and the ability to work in concert with other sensor systems has likely contributed to the increase. It is also possible these capabilities are utilized at low speeds but not at higher speeds because they aren’t needed. There may be a power cost associated with their use — or some other reason they can’t be used at the same time as other capabilities.
Lastly, we can’t assume the intelligences behind these technologies don’t want to be observed. Some of the behaviors of the aforementioned “Tic-Tac” almost seem like a tease… an intentional display for the observers. This sort of behavior isn’t all that uncommon in the body of data. It isn’t enough to simply evade detection, the intelligences behind some of these objects apparently want to show you what they can do. In almost all of the most compelling cases, the objects in question seem incredibly intelligent and in total control.
The Bottom Line
The point of this post is not to convince you that every craft is piloted by a non-human intelligence, or even that any craft is controlled by a non-human intelligence (even though I believe that some are). I want to highlight how the implicit presumptions undergirding the question are insufficient for dismissing NHI-based hypotheses as a whole. There is a well-documented trend of low-observability associated with these objects. But even if you’re not convinced…
there is still no reason to rule out the existence of observed capabilities on the basis that another capability hasn’t been observed.
This question is similar to others within the “why would or wouldn’t they” vein. We presume an advanced intelligence must certainly have or not have a given attribute or capability. When our expectations go unmet, we tend to jump to conclusions and slap a label on it rather than reexamining our own presumptions. I’m not suggesting that all such questions are posed in the wrong spirit. But we need to prepare for the possibility that this issue isn’t as cut and dry as we think it might be. Luckily in this instance, there turns out not to be much of a paradox at all.
