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A comment on Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by ALittleLight on Friday June 25, 2021 @05:03PM (#27636256)
This seems awfully brief and doesn't have much detail. The tittle says it's a "preliminary" report. Is this the expected UAP report or just a preliminary document about it?

I would want to see summary statistics for each reported incident and descriptions of the most compelling phenomenon. This document raises a lot of questions and answers few.

The document says they have 21 reports of UAP that "appear to demonstrate advanced technology" including moving at "considerable speed" "without discernable means of propulsion." I need more detail! Are these reports among those confirmed by multiple trustworthy sensors and observers? What do we know about these UAP? What speed? Do we have video?

I'm also not really impressed by their idea to use "advanced algorithms" and "machine learning". Are UFO encounters so frequent we need to resort to big data? I do think it's an excellent idea to process recorded radar data looking for UAP signs though.

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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by tailspin2019 on Friday June 25, 2021 @05:06PM (#27636283)
> I'm also not really impressed by their idea to use "advanced algorithms" and "machine learning". Are UFO encounters so frequent we need to resort to big data?

I had that same thought - on first read this report seems to contain summary analysis of 144 UAP incidents. Not the sort of numbers that immediately make me think "I need ML to process those!"

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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by JohnBooty on Friday June 25, 2021 @05:15PM (#27636370)
Agreed; ML doesn't make sense to me in the context in which they present it. Seems like they just crammed in a buzzword there.

Later in the report, it says this:

    One proposal is to use advanced algorithms to 
    search historical data captured and stored by radars
They do not mention ML in that context, but it seems like a more promising way in which they might usefully employ it.
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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by trasz on Friday June 25, 2021 @05:18PM (#27636393)
144 _reported_ incidents. They also talk about how some of the cases going unreported. It would make sense to sieve through the radar data (I'd guess all the ATC radars are being recorded, because why not?) to look for those.
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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by nradov on Friday June 25, 2021 @05:24PM (#27636463)
Most ATC now uses secondary radars. Those generally only pick up aircraft carrying transponders.
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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by trasz on Friday June 25, 2021 @05:39PM (#27636602)
Good point. What about the radars used by Air Force to guard the airspace? Do they cover the interior, or only the borders?
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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by xxpor on Friday June 25, 2021 @05:43PM (#27636641)
Secondary radar == just an RX only antenna?
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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by nradov on Friday June 25, 2021 @06:07PM (#27636847)
Transmitter also, but not powerful enough to get a useful return from an aircraft without a transponder at any significant range.
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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by tailspin2019 on Friday June 25, 2021 @05:21PM (#27636424)
Yep that's fair enough. And satellite imagery too I guess.
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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by Sanzig on Friday June 25, 2021 @05:13PM (#27636353)
ML/AI/"algorithms" are the buzzwords of the day in the public and private sectors right now.
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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by jablongo on Friday June 25, 2021 @07:57PM (#27637684)
I think one proposal is to have advanced wide-field cameras placed in "locations of interest". This would be much like an optical observatory and would generate petabytes of data.
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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by tailspin2019 on Friday June 25, 2021 @10:48PM (#27638608)
Do you have more details on this or a source? I’m curious!
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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by jablongo on Saturday June 26, 2021 @02:38AM (#27639680)
This program (FRIPON) https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2020/12/aa38649-... was cited here https://www.3af.fr/global/gene/link.php?doc_id=3695&fg=1 as a candidate for repurposing for UAP detection. I'm not familiar with the legitimacy of the 3af french org, so perhaps should be taken w/ a grain of salt?
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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by tailspin2019 on Saturday June 26, 2021 @10:45AM (#27642310)
Interesting!
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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by stride on Friday June 25, 2021 @10:40PM (#27638584)
You might have misunderstood the point of the ML strategy. The idea is to train a model on explainable event data such as weather balloons or wildlife as collected via various existing sensors. Then take this model and use it on historical sensor data to identify events that do not match the traits of the known events. I feel like this is a pretty reasonable use for ML.
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Re:Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by joshuajill on Friday June 25, 2021 @05:24PM (#27636446)
If you're curious, this previously released footage is quite detailed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/pentagon-relea...

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