Spike in UFO sightings?

[DaveM]

According to the Huffington Post the spike in UFO sightings is due to government drones. I guess the governments on Earth are watching us more closely than you think. What is your take?

 

[ProphetofOccam]

Isn't a drone just a small airplane that flies without a pilot? I don't get how people are using them as possible explanation for UFO's.

I don't believe in spacecraft or Earth-visiting, sentient aliens, but I do believe in weird stuff in the sky. Unmanned planes are still planes, and they just aren't that weird. All the drones I've ever seen just look like remote control planes. They're not super fast, they don't have strange lights and they don't do any kind of maneuvering that a plane doesn't do.

Don't misunderstand me. I think it's entirely possible for someone to confuse a plane for a UFO; I'd wager it happens somewhat frequently. I just don't understand how making the plane smaller and removing the pilot could make it seem any more like a UFO than a standard plane.

 

[Randall]

Isn't a drone just a small airplane that flies without a pilot? I don't get how people are using them as possible explanation for UFO's.

I don't believe in spacecraft or Earth-visiting, sentient aliens, but I do believe in weird stuff in the sky. Unmanned planes are still planes, and they just aren't that weird. All the drones I've ever seen just look like remote control planes. They're not super fast, they don't have strange lights and they don't do any kind of maneuvering that a plane doesn't do.

Don't misunderstand me. I think it's entirely possible for someone to confuse a plane for a UFO; I'd wager it happens somewhat frequently. I just don't understand how making the plane smaller and removing the pilot could make it seem any more like a UFO than a standard plane.

Good answer ! And it's really nice to see someone ( even a nonbeliever ) properly differentiating between UFOs and all the other things that are misreported as UFOs .

 

[DaveM]

Do you perhaps think that the media is looking for any excuse to explain unknown phenomena being seen in the sky? Those groups that control the media would rather give a lame explanation than have a possible unexplained flying object on their hands.

 

[ProphetofOccam]

I think it's more innocent than that. Perhaps there have been some cases of drones being reported as UFO's, which makes an interesting story. The majority of people, being "nonbelievers," generally assume most UFO reports are misidentified mundane phenomena. To that same group of people, "drone" is still a weird, scary concept. Linking drones to UFO's makes emotional and psychological sense. Sometimes, when things make sense on those two levels, it no longer has to make too much logical sense to sound compelling -- to the reader or the writer.

In other words, the story reads, psychologically, "Weird new stuff confused for weirder old stuff." In that context, it sounds like it makes sense.

 

[Randall]

Do you perhaps think that the media is looking for any excuse to explain unknown phenomena being seen in the sky? Those groups that control the media would rather give a lame explanation than have a possible unexplained flying object on their hands.

I think they do it for the exposure because there's a proven benefit to using alien themed marketing strategies. Big companies like Sony, Maytag, Volkswagen and more have used UFO imagery in their marketing campaigns. It's a proven attention getter, so it's exploited to the hilt.