I saw a cube in a sphere

As the title says, I, same as Ryan Graves, saw a cube in a sphere. Unfortunately, I only saw it here in the patent office.

As you can see, it is a patent from almost 80 years ago for a ballon that contains a cube radar reflector. Now, why would anyone do this? There are a several reasons.

First one is scientific research – you launch balloons to gather atmospheric data, but you need a way to track balloons, since they are not visible on a radar, so you either hang a reflector at the bottom of the balloon, or you put it inside the ballon itself, which, I’m guessing, is better for the ballon to remain as stable as possible. Launching ballons into space is not even that hard, if you have some free time on your hands.

Another reason is target practice for pilot training. This one is fairly obvious.

A third reason is when you want to check your adversary capabilities. You launch a bunch of these balloons at different configurations (sizes) and track where your enemy sends their fighter jets to investigate. The smaller the reflector they target with the jets, the more precise their targetting system on the ground. That way you know how large a drone or a spy plane you can send (and where) without getting detected. This isn’t science fiction, it happened before and probably still happens. Fun fact, these balloons will be launched in containers from submarines, when the weather is right (to hide the submarine itself). Here is a good quote:

“At a predetermined time with a P-14 radar tracking the Palladium ghost target, a US Navy submarine surfaced just offshore of Havana and released a series of balloons, each carrying a radar reflector corresponding to a specific RCS value. The sudden appearance of multiple targets offshore then triggered the SA-2 operators to activate their fire control radars as well. With the NSA listening to Cuban and Soviet communications, it was possible to determine the smallest size RCS reflector that could be detected by both the P-14 search radar and the SA-2 batteries’ fire control radars.”

A fourth reason is when you have a new radar type installed in your fleet, and you want to see how well it performs. You’ll launch a bunch of radar-spoofing devices at it and then take the readings to analyze them. These will also affect radars in aircrafts, so to an untrained pilot, the signal jumping from one spot to the next will look as if it is one aircraft flying from ocean level to stratosphere in a matter of seconds. It will do this because it is designed to do this, to see how precise and reliable the new radars in the ships are. There will be a whole swarm of them, all over the place.

However, not all pilots will be confused, some of them will think it’s a fucking drone instead of an alien visitor.

Ryan Graves said he wasn’t sure how the thing was just stationary in the air, and frankly, it’s a bit alarming he, as a fighter pilot, doesn’t know what a tethered radar reflector looks like.

David Fravor said he saw the tic-tac above the ocean that then accelerated and left, and came back. I am not sure if he saw it leave with his eyes, or only on radar, but he did say that he saw a lot of foam in the water below the object (“as if it was boiling”), and another aircraft crew also said they saw the foam (but no tic-tac). I would say there was a submarine below the surface, but the official story is that the submarines in the area didn’t detect anything under water.

The items that descended 80,000 feet in seconds he/they only saw on radar. I would argue that what was seen, in fact, were radar reflections of a bunch of different objects, appearing and disappearing on the radar (as radar spoofing does), but a conclusion was it’s one object going up and down at insane speeds. Technology that can confuse radars exists.

So, what am I getting at here? The tic-tac remains somewhat of a mystery, if it really behaved the way Fravor says, although the fact that all (radar) data was taken away, to me, at least, says it was all part of the excercise.

The craft that supposedly went from ocean level to outer space in seconds (and back) was not seen visually by anyone, and I think it was their radars seeing different things and losing contact all the time, which they attributed to one same object buzzing around like mad.

Whether this was US technology, adversary technology, or both, I obviously have no idea. But look at what the CIA was doing decades ago.

Graves saw a radar reflector in a balloon, not maybe this one from Alibaba, but a similar one. Whose was it? The US’ or some mysterious adversary? I have no idea, but I doubt aliens use radar reflectors.

Of course, none of this has any effect on David Grusch and his claims of crash retrievals and biologics. Those could all still be true.

And obviously it is possible that the Nimitz incident was some sort of alien incursion, but having read all this, honestly, how likely is it?

TL;DR: Graves saw a radar reflector inside a balloon, Fravor got confused by radar spoofing and possible some new, advanced tech.