Soon they’ll be A/B testing stealth designs. “Model AST—12-7 flying over NYC generated 23 reports of UFO sightings, whereas model TYR-X3 generated 5 along the same route; moving forward, we should adopt TYR-X3 for all chemtrail operations...”

With everyone glued to smart phones it is getting easier and easier to be "stealthy"

There's actually schemes to detect stealth aircraft through the changes in signal strength they induce in cell phones below their flight path. Not precise enough for targeting, but good enough to put up a plane to confirm...

I suppose that's plausible, but is it realistic?

What's the range of a cell phone signal? The signals from the cell towers will be aimed parallel with the ground. There is going to be an inverse square relationship with the signal strength and distance. A stealth plane is also more likely to be up way high too. The more signals there, the more populous the area, the more likely that a plane would be even higher. How many signals are needed for a disturbance to be noticed/tracked?

Maybe if the stealth plane was 50,000ft or lower, but considering comercial traffic usually flies up to 39,000ft, and some private traffic at 45,000ft, you probably won't find stealth aircraft below 50,000ft.

> Maybe if the stealth plane was 50,000ft or lower, but considering comercial traffic usually flies up to 39,000ft, and some private traffic at 45,000ft, you probably won't find stealth aircraft below 50,000ft.

F-117 service ceiling was 45,000 ft according to Wikipedia - B-2's is 50,000ft. Ironically, the B-2 has some design compromises to allow it to operate at low altitudes for penetrating strikes, as stealth wasn't quite as trusted when it was being designed - and low altitudes allow operating below the horizon from radar installations. (The B-21 renderings look like they've dropped those compromises - high altitude penetration only)

I'll agree that using cell phones to detect the presence of stealth aircraft is more than a little dubious, though.

Passive Radar IIRC. Though I believe the 1999 F-117A shootdown in Yugoslavia was a result of the bomb-bay door detection.

Assume this only covers stealth planes flying below the height of the base stations?

Cell towers are too low to use them to detect a stealth plane passing in between their antennas and anything on the ground, but satellites could be used. We're surrounded by radio signals originating from the sky, so at least in theory the right equipment could detect a stealth plane not thanks to the radio waves it reflects but the ones it doesn't let pass through itself.

It was a joke :)

Not necessarily, but I still doubt this would be successful in detecting a stealth plane.

It's also a lot easier to get evidence.

Nick Cook wrote a book in 2001 entitled The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity. It's notable because Cook was an editor for Jane's Defense Weekly, a legendary and reputable defense publication of the utmost credibility.

A few years ago in a thread similar to this I discussed[0] and dissected[1] the book. My conclusion was that Cook is mistaken, but given incidents like this, and the fact he later uncovered a black UAV program, I always wonder.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10957586

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10971548

That was a fascinating Sunday morning diversion, thanks!

I can easily believe there was a programme researching that. There's been research into all sorts of crackpot ideas, especially in wartime. The film The Men Who Stare at Goats was based on a true story of US military research, and there was WW2 research into death rays after all.

Mistaken, or failed research that was well secreted? It took 30 years for Bletchley Park to leak, despite involving thousands.

Cook now seems to be a defence consultant specialising in climate change.

Another one to add to my impossibly long reading list though. :)

It never hurts to wonder. If we assume the Tic Tac is a man made craft, it doesn't seem a far stretch to also assume it may employ antigravitics. Perhaps it can be traced back to Die Glocke [1]. Your linked HN posts also mention Hutchison, an interesting character who appears repeatedly down the rabbit hole, where you'll also discover Schauberger and Leedskalnin. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors in these topics, which often delve into conspiracy and pseudoscience, making it hard to discuss them without sounding like a crazy person. In any case, it's fascinating to ponder, even if it's all just science fiction.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Glocke

Per your link:

>"Although no evidence of the veracity of Witkowski’s statements has been produced, they reached a wider audience when they were retold by British author Nick Cook, who added his own views to Witkowski’s statements in The Hunt for Zero Point.[4]"

The WW2 "Bell" experiment narrative was actually my largest complaint with Cook's book. While it makes for a fantastic story that's pretty much screenplay material, it's very unlikely to be true.

Yes, Die Glocke / the bell has been embellished beyond all recognition of whatever it really was. I bear some guilt with my comment above; it would have been more appropriate to suggest that the bell's mysticism may have inspired fringe research, e.g. Podkletnov, similar to how Rife may have inspired Hutchison, and Hutchison inspired Bushman, and so on.

A lot of the super cranky claims around the Bell come from Joseph Farrell and others. It could have been any number of things if it did exist. My money is on an enrichment device or something else related to a-bomb R&D. It could also have been a fringe physics experiment, and maybe it just didn't work. The Nazis pursued a lot of odd things.

It's entirely possible that there have been secret R&D programs looking into such things. It's also possible that these programs were fruitless since there may not be such a thing or the energies required to access it may be way past our Kardashev ranking.

There have been reports of UFO sightings for 50+ years. This is not a new phenomenon. There were reports of UFOs during WW2 (so called Foo Fighters).

If this existed during WW2 it means it started development way before that. The implications that such level of technological advancement was available at that time, and is still under active funding and development today doesn't add up.

UFOs aren't all the same. Each sighting could be something different. A UFO just means "unidentified" — what might be flying unidentified today is very different from 50 years ago, given the technological advancement since.

>If this existed during WW2 it means it started development way before that. The implications that such level of technological advancement was available at that time, and is still under active funding and development today doesn't add up.

I tend to agree it doesn't fit, but one way of looking at it is, even if highly improbable: the fundamental physics breakthroughs were made back then, and ever since the craft have been updated with modern avionics and electronics suites.

The problem here is defying the "laws" of physics. Of course, we're probably wrong about them and the universe could very well be a multidimensional place, but so far as we know no plane or drone can fly that way.