UFODAP supposedly has about a hundred automatic cameras around the world, mostly in the US. You can buy the hardware. It's a pan-tilt-zoom camera under a plastic dome, with hardware that looks for moving objects in the sky, photographs, and tracks them. Analysis software recognizes birds and aircraft. If two sites connected to the same control program lock onto a target, they can triangulate. It's possible to use ADS-B data for filtering out known aircraft.
The hardware is good enough to detect and track the International Space Station.
But they don't see to be catching much.
Incidentally, hobbyists have been flying triangular jet-powered high speed drones since at least 2017.[2] Watch the video. That would look like a UFO if it wasn't a clear day and the pilot wasn't making low passes. Many of the "flying triangles" are probably something like that.
Russia, Ukraine, and Iran all use something similar, in various sizes.
This is great for skywatching but at 32GB it only takes brief photos, and rarely video.
A real setup needs multiple 4K cameras, some kind of LWIR, MWIR, etc. as well as SDR with proper antennae for each of their respective performance envelopes.
I think it's good, but it will not be good at picking up the "targets of opportunity".
It's not flying saucers, it's weird orbs / spheres. There is volume of footage, and sufficient quality. I think we're past the point of "is it real" and more at "okay so what is this really and what is it doing".
If we could take Tier 1 reports from NUFORC, have tons of metrics available with sensor data, we can make a better guess.
(Yes, there are almost certainly other intelligent lifeforms in the universe. No, they have not been here. In the 1950's my brother became very interested in UFO sightings and maintained files of 3x5 cards detailing them. Then he grew up.)
among many others. I think this comment from the marginalrevolution link is compelling:
"I write science fiction professionally, and I would cheerfully bet against these sightings being any alien technology. Why? Because zooming around in Earth's atmosphere and playing chicken with fighter planes doesn't fit any rational notion of why someone would go to the considerable trouble of sending a mission to the Solar System. (Jokes about alien teenagers aside.)
If the goal is to make contact, then there are much better ways of doing it than flitting around the atmosphere being coy.
If the goal is not to make contact, then contemporary human tech could already do a better job of observing while staying hidden. A big telescope on a near-Earth asteroid could watch us in considerable detail during close approaches. Small satellites could do the same. And small robotic probes disguised as -- say -- seagulls or cats could do all the sampling and exploring of the Earth's surface with nobody the wiser.
As it is, we have a phenomenon dating back at least 70 years and possibly thousands of years which never seems to DO anything.
My conclusion: it's probably a lot of different phenomena, mostly involving human perception. Maybe, if we're very lucky, there's some rare atmospheric phenomenon causing some of these sightings, and we might learn a little by studying it."
(It's also easy to make an argument that we have been visited by aliens, in the same way that it's easy to make an argument that the Earth is flat or that humans never landed on the moon ... easy if one doesn't adhere to basic principles of rational discourse.)
I'd love to believe you, but as a European who - for some reason - never get these sightings unlike Americans, I find it hard to do so. Either our mysterious alien friends really love USA or you guys have some condition that the entire Europe does not, e.g., permissions to test military equipment without having to announce it to the public, let alone the freedom to move around in a large area without it becoming a political drama.
Imagine if the German military started doing unannounced missions in neighboring countries... now imagine if a military base in the US send a couple of fighter jets from one state to another state and back. Only one of those situations would give a cluster f** of international drama, thus "odd sightings" i.e. covert military operations could be more common in the US than the rest of the world.
I'd love to believe... but it always only happens in USA.
UFODAP supposedly has about a hundred automatic cameras around the world, mostly in the US. You can buy the hardware. It's a pan-tilt-zoom camera under a plastic dome, with hardware that looks for moving objects in the sky, photographs, and tracks them. Analysis software recognizes birds and aircraft. If two sites connected to the same control program lock onto a target, they can triangulate. It's possible to use ADS-B data for filtering out known aircraft. The hardware is good enough to detect and track the International Space Station.
But they don't see to be catching much.
Incidentally, hobbyists have been flying triangular jet-powered high speed drones since at least 2017.[2] Watch the video. That would look like a UFO if it wasn't a clear day and the pilot wasn't making low passes. Many of the "flying triangles" are probably something like that.
Russia, Ukraine, and Iran all use something similar, in various sizes.
[1] https://ufodap.com/technology
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPGDAZyQ44k
A real setup needs multiple 4K cameras, some kind of LWIR, MWIR, etc. as well as SDR with proper antennae for each of their respective performance envelopes.
I think it's good, but it will not be good at picking up the "targets of opportunity".
It's not flying saucers, it's weird orbs / spheres. There is volume of footage, and sufficient quality. I think we're past the point of "is it real" and more at "okay so what is this really and what is it doing".
If we could take Tier 1 reports from NUFORC, have tons of metrics available with sensor data, we can make a better guess.
Indeed, rational people know it's not real.
(Yes, there are almost certainly other intelligent lifeforms in the universe. No, they have not been here. In the 1950's my brother became very interested in UFO sightings and maintained files of 3x5 cards detailing them. Then he grew up.)
I think it is difficult to make an argument in either direction. But almost certainly they’ve not been flying weirdly shaped disks
https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1468rqs/cmv_e...
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/05/th...
among many others. I think this comment from the marginalrevolution link is compelling:
"I write science fiction professionally, and I would cheerfully bet against these sightings being any alien technology. Why? Because zooming around in Earth's atmosphere and playing chicken with fighter planes doesn't fit any rational notion of why someone would go to the considerable trouble of sending a mission to the Solar System. (Jokes about alien teenagers aside.)
If the goal is to make contact, then there are much better ways of doing it than flitting around the atmosphere being coy.
If the goal is not to make contact, then contemporary human tech could already do a better job of observing while staying hidden. A big telescope on a near-Earth asteroid could watch us in considerable detail during close approaches. Small satellites could do the same. And small robotic probes disguised as -- say -- seagulls or cats could do all the sampling and exploring of the Earth's surface with nobody the wiser.
As it is, we have a phenomenon dating back at least 70 years and possibly thousands of years which never seems to DO anything.
My conclusion: it's probably a lot of different phenomena, mostly involving human perception. Maybe, if we're very lucky, there's some rare atmospheric phenomenon causing some of these sightings, and we might learn a little by studying it."
(It's also easy to make an argument that we have been visited by aliens, in the same way that it's easy to make an argument that the Earth is flat or that humans never landed on the moon ... easy if one doesn't adhere to basic principles of rational discourse.)
Imagine if the German military started doing unannounced missions in neighboring countries... now imagine if a military base in the US send a couple of fighter jets from one state to another state and back. Only one of those situations would give a cluster f** of international drama, thus "odd sightings" i.e. covert military operations could be more common in the US than the rest of the world.
I'd love to believe... but it always only happens in USA.