"Here are the classified flight characteristics of what we believe to have been a Russian hypersonic weapon test but we don't know that for certain; we're pretty sure the Chinese weren't able to capture this data but we're going to hand it over to them now at the behest of domestic conspiracy theorists."

Yes, The Russians test their research missiles off the US coast, when they have huge, well controlled land and ocean areas where they need not fear any US snapshots and US jet chases...

Yep, and the 2004 incident happened during Navy training on a new radar system. The radar showed the "UFOs" coming from the area of San Clemente Island.

I'm sure that's just a coincidence though, because there's nothing on that island except for one of the Navy's UAV airstrips. They even warn that the UAVs are very small and hard for other pilots to see, so they have a safety perimeter around the island.

http://www.scisland.org/schedules/usageGoogle/safety_zone_in...

One would anticipate the Russians/Chinese would be very curious about any new radars, so if there are any Russian/Chinese stealth drones they may well be deployed to sniff the spectrum

Yes! Precisely! Somehow people started associating UFOs with flying saucers and aliens. How would they know it's aliens if the U stands for unidentified?

> Somehow people started associating UFOs with flying saucers and aliens.

I saw a video (that I can't currently find) of Feynman explaining this once.

The US government had a classified program that suspended 1940s saucer microphones from a balloon at a height in the atmosphere that would allow them to listen for Soviet atomic tests.

The balloon crashes and some reporters are out sniffing around. Someone with loose lips lets slip that it was a flying saucer. You can imagine what the artist's rendition based on that description looked like.

Then, since the program was classified, the official explanation becomes that it was a weather balloon or something, and a conspiracy theory is born.

Not sure where your source comes from, but the term came into popular use in the year 1947.

It was most likely first used after Kenneth Arnold's famous report where he described a "saucer-like" shape. That story blew up, and people started reporting "flying saucers" everywhere.

It even got into the heads of some government officials. For example, the initial press release given by the airforce for the Roswell incident was that they had captured a "flying disc". They later made a correction that it was a weather balloon, but you can see how the government making such statements would cause confusion and add to the mania.

On the Wikipedia page for the incident you can see the original news articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_UFO_incident

Arnold has suggested his original remarks to the press referred to the motion of a saucer skipping across water rather than the shape too; his original report showed a semicircular front and triangular tail

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/the-m...

Yep the shape was likely closer to a B2 as in a flying wing than an actually flying saucer.

It’s quite possible that what he saw was the YB-35 or a similar experimental aircraft.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-35

Except that according to his measurements, they were moving at twice the speed of sound.

His measurements could’ve been wrong, it’s nearly impossible to accurately measure distance and size in the air, using a tachometer to estimate speed is rather inaccurate under best conditions.

In 1947 your cockpit would likely not even have a true airspeed indicator, there would be no ground speed indicators, no radar nor any other electro optical ranging devices.

The YB-49 was already jet powered https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-49

Whilst not supersonic it’s quite possible that he could’ve encountered one of these too or another flying wing variant.

This quite frankly more plausible than aliens as an explanation, the time frame of the sighting matches the period during which the USAF was exploring a lot of flying wing designs and that it was also the first time that jet powered aircraft began to appear and when turboprops were reaching nearly transonic speeded.

So overall it’s very likely that what he saw was an experimental aircraft that was much faster than any aircraft that he encountered in the past and the slightest of errors in the estimation of size and range would have pushed any airspeed calculation into the supersonic range.

It's a fascinating theory because according to the official documentation, the YB-49 didn't fly until later in the same year. Between the XB-35 and YB-35 and YB-49, there weren't supposed to have been nine operational units that could simultaneously fly in formation. (Although this picture shows exactly nine aircraft bodies that are in various states of conversion [0].) So for this not-totally-outlandish theory to be true, the U.S. military would need to have been aggressively developing and flying these planes beyond the level that they've publicly reported, and they would have to keep those unreported operations secret for an additional 73 years. Which is quite a conspiracy, and maybe even a more interesting one than "aliens".

But if you're in the mood for conspiracy theories, Wikipedia's description of the end of the XB/YB series is pretty surprising as well: "Only two months later, all Flying Wing contracts were canceled abruptly without explanation by order of Stuart Symington, Secretary of the Air Force. Shortly thereafter, also without explanation, Symington turned down a request from the Smithsonian for the Air Force to donate one of these big wings to its collection of pioneering Northrop aircraft. All remaining Flying Wing bomber airframes, except for the sole YRB-49A reconnaissance version, were ordered chopped up by Symington, the materials smelted down using portable smelters brought to Northrop's facility, in plain sight of its employees."

(The motivation for this is supposed to have been contract favoritism, but it looks a lot more exciting if you accept the idea that there was of still-secret-to-this-day unreported flight testing happening in 1947 :)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-49#/media/File:YB4...

I dunno, the flying saucer / alien stuff is kind of fun to watch people go nuts over and pretty harmless. I think a Goodyear blimp was mistaken recently for aliens too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUjO03loz8M

I take the meaning to be "unidentified to the general public, perhaps identified or speculated about in classified reports that have not yet been shared with Congress".

You can see how the title says UFO's. If it's a confirmed alien from another planet, that's not a UFO anymore, it's an IFO (identified)

People are expecting the opening of the alien archive, including desiccated grey bodies, weapons that shoot blue blobs of light and wormhole generators.

>weapons that shoot blue blobs of light

Obviously they shoot purple blobs of light, amateur!

Jokes aside, yeah... this. Out of curiosity in late December I joined the MUFON group on Facebook. Oh my. Oh, oh my.

It's certainly worth joining simply to look at if one has a Facebook account. I certainly expected a little bit of suspension of disbelief but, wow. While some of the posts are serious "what was this" you'll find that very quickly someone will post either a horrible photoshop job, or an actual valid UFO (often what appears to be a plane with landing lights on) and quickly in the comments you get people talking about the races of aliens that have come and visited them/abducted them/communicated telepathically with them.

They've been going on about this 180 days bit since it was discovered and I honestly just can't with some of the comments/claims.

I would rather say they are hoping, as am I. Would be quite fun.