the game of jet and ufo

[kymho...@gmail.com]

It's time to dig out some elementary game theory to see whether we can
determine what is going on with ufos and esp military aircraft. For
decades people around the world have reported times when bright lights
or other odd objects in the sky have been chased or even "escorted" by
military or other aircraft. There is some superficially interesting
film of both of these types of thing occurring in both the US and
Europe. There is also film of similar things happening in Russia
but ... you know. :)

This will be the first of these posts and we'll start of simple and
work our way up to complicated.

The first thing to do is setup the players. Let's divide the world
into 3 camps -- the ufos, the jets, and the witnesses. Witnesses live
(almost exclusively) on the ground. If something is happening above
the clouds they may hear it but they probably wont see it. One
particular witness we'll also add are "satellites". Presumably we are
talking about military sats because if any other sats are seeing odd
objects flying around the records have been confiscated and no-one gets
to hear about it. Sats are always looking but if something happens
below the clouds then they probably wont get much of a view of it.

Now each of the major players -- jets and ufos -- has access to high
tech. We will assume each can -- to some extent -- control the
weather. The US military has publications predicting around now they
would "own the weather" and be able to prevent "adversary fliers" from
operating if and when the top brass wanted.

To make things interesting but simple we'll divide the sky into 3
layers -- high, middle, and low. Either side can call in clouds to any
single layer. This happens (let us say here) before either side
starts flying around. Each side rolls a dice, decides whether or not
and where the clouds are to come in, then they may or may not decide
to fly at some level to take advantage of where they think the clouds
will be (their own and their adversary's).

So this is simple but already looking complicated. Sorry. :) But we
can at least for this post run a few simulations assuming slightly
different things and compare that with actual observations. (It's no
fun unless you have real-world numbers to post).

First up. The first sim will deal with the situation with only ground
observers. We will assume some ground station has to *see* a ufo
before a intercept can be called up. We will have to area patrols out
looking for them. We also will allow ground observers to roll over and
go back to sleep (or whatever) and not go out at 4am in the morning to
watch things zipping around the sky.

So. If every combination of things happens equally often (clouds
called in by each side at a random level, both sides flying at a
random level, and the ground observer awake at a random level) what
percentage of times should be expect witnesses to see ufos or see a
jet chasing a ufo.

The program says this:
ufosight jetsight jetchase chasesight
10.163 10.168 15.19 2.3315

These are all% of calendar days. Not% of times someone
was out looking.

We see with these "everything equally likely" about 10% of days will
see someone sighting what they interpret as a ufo. About 10% of days
they will see what they interpret as an aircraft or jet. Because the
jets need SOME ground observer to see the UFO (in this program) before
jets can be scrambled to chase it, only about 15% of days will see a
jet know there is a ufo out there and decide to fly after it.
Finally, only about 2% of the time will all that be visible from the ground.

Now for the interesting bit. What does the sightings databases say?
The NUFORC database available to Joe Schmo has a simple comment field.
I will assume if this short comment contains anything like "plane" or
"helicopter" or mentions the "military" then the witness also saw in
addition to something strange some kind of interaction between the
military and a ufo.

The search of all the comments then gets this:

0.0374
1 row in set (0.84 sec)

I.e. about 3.7% of reported sightings seems to see an interaction.

Seemingly reasonably close to our simple simulation.

But the whole idea is to come up with a reasonable simulation that
probably nails the real-world data. What set of assumptions is needed
to get very close to 3.7% instead of the version 1 sim that got 2.3%?

As the next step up in the development we'll add in the satellites.
Now, if either the ground or sats see a ufo either above all the
clouds or below all the clouds then it can be spotted and a plane
dispatched to chase it. We'll also adjust the "accounting" to get a
percent of sightings rather than a% of simulated days. If the
witness goes back to sleep it doesn't matter if anything is visible
from the ground -- it wont count.

And that program gets:

ufosight jetsight jetchase chasesight ufosat
20.6186 20.4 80.2978 5.01153 69.1979
jetabove jetbelow ufoabove ufobelow
43.8801 15.9294 43.9703 15.9274

Again everything is "equally likely". But in that case the satellites
get to see something 69% of the time someone saw something. (Remember
we are counting things by sightings this time, not number of days
where someone may or may not have had a sighting). The 2nd line shows
that about 43% of the time jets were flying above all clouds, about
16% below all clouds. UFO's are doing the same. But all this leads to
5% of sightings that report planes and ufos together. This seems
superficially closer to the real-world 3.7%. But maybe it is not as
close as we can get.

If we flip a bit and disable the satellites in the above sim then we
get:

ufosight jetsight jetchase chasesight ufosat
20.3087 20.0628 30.574 4.5876 0
jetabove jetbelow ufoabove ufobelow
44.0242 15.4464 43.7163 15.7643

So now sightings are expected to around 4.6% of the time see some kind
of interaction. Closer than with sats enabled.

So we have some thinking to do.

Even a simple sim seems to be able to very roughly predict what a
sightings database shows. More or less it seems to be consistent with
aircraft being called in when a ufo is noticed by someone with access
to both from-ground and from-sat images. It seems possible that one
or both sides can control the height of cloud a bit. They can
certainly control which level they fly at to take advantage of that
to avoid being seen from either/or the ground or the sky. Or that can
choose to ignore that altogether.

Well come back to this again and add in some punishment and reward to
see how that changes behaviour and sightings data. At present all
strategies are equally likely. But that will change if some
combinations carry a punishment (e.g. being chased by a jet maybe
"bad" from the ufo's point of view; "good" for the jet's point of
view) and/or a reward (e.g. a ufo being able to see the ground may be
"good" for them; being seen from the ground maybe "bad" in itself; or
it maybe "bad" only when that sighting is used to real-time to launch
an interception).

By running through the possibilities and trying to match up against
real-world data as close as possible we may be able to narrow down --
or at least get a rough "mental model" -- of what is going on. If you
don't pretty much know already. :)

--
[Secret UFO recovery program blown open:]
I hope this revelation serves as an ontological shock sociologically
and provides a generally uniting issue for nations of the world to
re-assess their priorities.
-- David Grusch, 05 Jun 2023
[Talking to Les Kean et al for The Debrief, Grusch called for an end to
nearly a century of global UFO secrecy and warned that humanity needed to
prepare itself for "an unexpected, non-human intelligence contact scenario"].

The US govt portrays itself as the world's preeminent
superpower, so to acknowledge that there are things in their
airspace, whatever they are, that are faster and more manoeuvrable
and run rings around fast jets doesn't play very well.
So there's the embarrassment factor, and maybe a little bit of
fear that either an adversary has made a quantum leap in
development, which has left the US in a poor second place, or, as
some believe, this really is extra terrestrial, in which case we're
not at the top of the food chain anymore.
-- Nick Pope, 02 May 2023

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts,
foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that
is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market
is a nation that is afraid of its people.
-- JFK

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