What are the Five Observables for UAPs?

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Defining the UAP Challenge

For decades, the topic of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, was largely confined to civilian discussions and pop culture. In recent years the subject has undergone a significant rebranding and gained serious attention from the highest levels of government and defense. The term has shifted from UFO to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), a broader designation that acknowledges the mystery isn’t just in the sky.

This shift was driven by a series of events, including the official release of three videos by the U.S. Navy and acknowledgments from the Department of Defense (DoD) that these encounters are real, frequent, and represent a potential safety and security concern. Military pilots, trained observers operating billions of dollars in advanced sensor equipment, were reporting objects that did not behave like any known aircraft.

These reports created a data problem. The vast majority of UAP sightings have mundane explanations: they are weather balloons, sensor glitches, atmospheric plasma, classified government programs, or commercial drones. To distinguish these from the truly anomalous, a framework was needed.

This framework emerged from investigations like the Pentagon’s former Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). Researchers, including its former director Luis Elizondo, began cataloging the common characteristics of the most perplexing encounters. These common performance attributes, reported time and again by pilots and captured on sophisticated sensors, became known as the “Five Observables.”

The Five Observables are not theories; they are a classification system for observed data. They represent a set of reported behaviors that are, at present, not explainable by known science or aerospace engineering. They serve as the filter to separate the “unknowns” from the “knowns.” This article explores each of these five observables in detail, examining what they are, why they are anomalous, and what their implications are.

The First Observable: Instantaneous Acceleration

Defining the Anomaly

Instantaneous acceleration refers to the reported ability of UAP to accelerate from a stationary position or a slow-moving state to incredible speeds almost instantaneously. This includes moving from a dead stop to hypersonic velocities in a fraction of a second, often with no visible means of propulsion.

In conventional aviation, acceleration is a process. A fighter jet on full afterburner takes time to build up speed. A rocket engine provides massive thrust, but it’s a sustained push. All known propulsion systems – propellers, jet engines, or rockets – are based on Newton’s Third Law. They work by pushing mass (air or exhaust) in one direction to move the vehicle in the other. This process creates visible signatures: exhaust plumes, intense heat, and powerful sound.

The reports associated with this observable describe acceleration without any of these signatures. There’s no exhaust, no engine noise, and no visible distortion of the air. The object simply changes its velocity vector from zero to thousands of miles per hour in the blink of an eye.

The G-Force Problem

The most significant challenge this observable presents to known physics is the problem of G-force, or gravitational-equivalent force. G-force is a measure of acceleration. Standing still, a person experiences 1 G. A high-performance rollercoaster might briefly pull 4 or 5 Gs, pushing a rider back into their seat.

A trained fighter pilot in a specialized G-suit can withstand perhaps 9 Gs for a few seconds before losing consciousness as the blood is forced from their brain. These forces are also extreme for the aircraft itself. A jet making a 9-G turn is at the very edge of its structural integrity; the wings are under immense stress and could be torn from the fuselage.

The accelerations reported in some UAP encounters are not 9 Gs or 20 Gs. Based on sensor data and pilot estimations, the accelerations are estimated to be in the hundreds or even thousands of Gs.

At several hundred Gs, the physics are absolute. A conventional aircraft would be instantly pulverized. The metal would shear, the electronics would be crushed, and the airframe would disintegrate into a cloud of shrapnel. Any biological pilot inside, regardless of their technology, would be reduced to a liquid paste against the back of the cockpit. The bonds holding molecules together would fail.

Reports and Sensor Data

The 2004 USS Nimitz encounter is the most-cited public example of this observable. Pilots reported intercepting a 40-foot, smooth, white object shaped like a “Tic Tac.” It was moving erratically over the water. When one of the F/A-18 fighter jets attempted to merge with the object, the pilots reported that the object “mirrored” their movements and then rapidly accelerated away.

According to the pilots, the object, which had been hovering or moving slowly, shot away at a speed they couldn’t even track, disappearing in less than two seconds. Later, the USS Princeton, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, reportedly tracked the same object on its advanced SPY-1 radar, detecting that it had traveled over 60 miles in that short time, indicating a speed of thousands of miles per hour. This acceleration, from a near-hover to that velocity, would generate G-forces far beyond any known capability.

This observable, perhaps more than any other, challenges our understanding of propulsion and inertia. It implies that the object is not just pushing against the air but is somehow manipulating its own mass or the spacetime around it. To achieve this without self-destruction, the object would need a propulsion system that also negates its own inertial mass, a concept currently confined to theoretical physics.

The Second Observable: Hypersonic Velocity Without Signatures

Understanding Hypersonic Speed

The second observable is closely related to the first: the ability to travel at hypersonic speeds (defined as over Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound) without any of the expected physical signatures.

Traveling through an atmosphere – especially a dense atmosphere like Earth’s at lower altitudes – is a violent event. At speeds above the sound barrier (supersonic), an object creates a sonic boom, a shockwave of compressed air that is audible on the ground.

At hypersonic speeds, the physics become even more extreme. The friction of air molecules compressing against the leading edge of the object is so intense that it generates massive amounts of heat. The air itself can be superheated into a plasma, a glowing-hot sheath that surrounds the vehicle.

We have seen this effect with every spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere. The Space Shuttle, for example, was protected by special heat-resistant tiles to prevent it from burning up as it decelerated from orbital velocity (which is hypersonic). Hypersonic glide vehicles and missiles, a new class of weapon, glow bright red or white-hot and are unmistakable on infrared sensors.

The Reported Phenomenon

Military pilots and sensor operators report objects moving at speeds of Mach 5, Mach 10, or even faster, particularly at high altitudes. The anomaly is not the speed itself; humans can build things that go that fast. The anomaly is that these objects do so without the signatures.

They are reported to travel at 10,000 miles per hour with no sonic boom, no glowing plasma sheath, no massive heat trail, and no vapor trails.

In the USS Nimitz encounter, the “Tic Tac” object was observed on Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) systems. The FLIR footage, now public, is famous for what it doesn’t show. The object is a small, cool-looking shape against a slightly warmer background. It shows no evidence of a hot engine, no hot exhaust plume, and no heat on its leading edges. It appears to be at ambient temperature, even while performing maneuvers that would require an incredible expenditure of energy.

The Physics of Friction and Heat

This lack of thermal signature is a deep physical puzzle. To move through the air without causing friction, the object would have to not be interacting with the air at all. It’s as if the object is in its own “bubble,” pushing the air molecules aside without ever actually touching them.

This directly contradicts the principles of aerodynamics, which are all about how an object uses its interaction with the air to generate lift. These UAP appear to have no wings, no fins, and no visible control surfaces. Their movement seems independent of the medium they are in.

If the reports are accurate, the technology at play would have to be capable of creating some sort of field around the vehicle. This field would deflect the atmosphere, preventing the friction and compression that would otherwise incinerate the object at such high velocities. This hypothetical field would also explain the lack of a sonic boom, as the air is parted gently rather than being violently compressed by a shockwave.

The Third Observable: Sudden and Abrupt Maneuvering

The Limits of Inertia

The third observable, sudden and abrupt maneuvering, is a direct challenge to Newton’s First Law, often called the law of inertia. An object in motion tends to stay in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force.

To change an object’s direction, a force must be applied. The faster the object is moving or the sharper the turn, the more force is required. When a car takes a sharp turn, its inertia tries to keep it going straight, and the friction of the tires on the road provides the force to turn it. If it tries to turn too sharply, the tires lose their grip and the car skids.

For an airplane, the forces are even more pronounced. A fighter jet cannot make a 90-degree “L-shaped” turn. To change its heading, it must bank its wings and use its lift to pull it around in a long, sweeping arc. This turn takes time and covers a large amount of airspace. As mentioned before, this maneuver also subjects the pilot and the airframe to extreme G-forces.

The UAP Maneuvering Characteristics

The UAP reports that fall under this observable describe maneuvers that are physically impossible for any conventional object. These include:

• Right-angle turns: An object traveling at high speed suddenly stops, turns 90 degrees, and continues at high speed, all with no deceleration or arcing.
• Sudden reversals: An object moving in one direction instantly reverses and travels in the opposite direction.
• “Falling leaf” motion: An object floats or drifts in the air with no apparent lift, similar to how a leaf falls.
• Erratic “zipping” motion: The object moves in a chaotic, non-ballistic way, instantly “zipping” from one point in the sky to another.

In the USS Nimitz encounter, pilots described the “Tic Tac” as moving erratically, like a “ping pong ball” bouncing off invisible walls.

These maneuvers are not just an engineering problem; they are a physics problem. An object with mass cannot behave this way. The inertia of the object would resist the change in motion. The force required to produce such an instantaneous change in direction – especially at high speed – would be nearly infinite.

The “Gimbal” video, one of the three released by the U.S. Navy, shows an object that appears to rotate on its axis while maintaining its forward momentum. While some analysts have suggested the observed rotation was an artifact of the FLIR pod, the pilots tracking it reported it was one of a “fleet” of objects performing maneuvers that were far beyond the capabilities of their jets.

This observable, combined with instantaneous acceleration, strongly implies that the object is not subject to inertia and G-forces in the same way our technology is. It suggests a propulsion system that is not “pushing” the object, but rather moving a point in space that the object happens to occupy.

The Fourth Observable: Trans-Medium Travel

The Engineering Wall Between Mediums

The fourth observable is trans-medium travel: the ability of an object to move seamlessly and effectively through multiple, different physical mediums. This typically refers to travel between air, water, and perhaps even the vacuum of space.

From an engineering perspective, this may be the single most challenging observable. The physical properties of air and water are vastly different. Air is thin and compressible. Water is dense (about 800 times denser than air at sea level) and incompressible.

Because these mediums are so different, the technologies we’ve developed to move through them are mutually exclusive.

• Aerodynamics: An airplane is designed to be lightweight, with large wings to generate lift from the thin air. If a Boeing 747 tried to enter the ocean at speed, it would be instantly destroyed by the impact forces. It is not designed to withstand the immense pressure of the water.
• Hydrodynamics: A submarine is designed to be the exact opposite. It has a strong, heavy, reinforced hull to resist crushing pressure. It uses a propeller or pump-jet to move dense water. If you attached wings to a Los Angeles-class submarine and tried to make it fly, it would be a failure. It’s far too heavy and has no lift.

Even an object moving from air to space has challenges. A spacecraft needs a powerful rocket to escape gravity, a life-support system for the vacuum, and a heat shield to survive the hypersonic reentry into the atmosphere.

The Trans-Medium Anomaly

The UAP reports that define this observable describe objects that ignore these engineering boundaries completely. There are numerous accounts from Navy pilots of objects seen in the air that then proceed to enter the water and disappear.

When a conventional object hits the water from the air at high speed, it creates a massive splash and either breaks apart or decelerates violently. The reports describe these UAP entering the water with no splash and no deceleration. They simply slip from one medium to the next as if the water wasn’t there.

This has also led to the corresponding term “USO,” or Unidentified Submerged Object. There are many reports from sonar operators on submarines and surface ships tracking objects moving underwater at speeds that are impossible for any known submarine. The physics of hydrodynamics creates immense drag, which limits the speed of submarines. These USOs have been reportedly tracked moving at hundreds of knots (hundreds of miles per hour) underwater, a feat that would require more energy than a nuclear reactor could provide and would destroy any known vessel.

Implications of Seamless Transition

This observable strongly reinforces the “bubble” concept suggested by the lack of hypersonic signatures. If a UAP has a field around it that deflects air molecules, it stands to reason that the same field could deflect water molecules.

From the object’s perspective, the external medium might be irrelevant. Whether it is moving through the near-vacuum of upper space, the thin air of the stratosphere, the dense air at sea level, or the crushing pressure of the deep ocean, the object is interacting only with its own propulsion field. The field does the work of parting the medium, whatever it may be.

This represents a “holy grail” of engineering: a single, unified system for propulsion and travel that is equally effective in all environments. No human-made technology comes close to this capability.

The Fifth Observable: Low Observability (Stealth)

Beyond Conventional Stealth

The fifth observable is low observability, commonly known as stealth technology. This is the one observable where human technology has a foothold, which makes the UAP’s version of it even more distinct.

Conventional stealth, as seen in aircraft like the B-2 Spirit or F-35, is not true invisibility. It is a collection of tricks to reduce the range at which an enemy can detect the aircraft.

• Radar Stealth: This is achieved through specific shapes (faceting and smooth, blended curves) that deflect radar waves away from the emitter, rather than bouncing them back. This is supplemented by radar-absorbent materials that look like a dark, non-reflective paint.
• Thermal Stealth: This involves burying the hot engines deep inside the fuselage and cooling the exhaust to reduce the aircraft’s infrared signature.

Importantly, conventional stealth is a compromise. An aircraft that is stealthy to one type of radar (e.g., fire-control radar) might be visible to another (e.g., long-wave search radar). And no matter how stealthy it is, it’s still perfectly visible to the human eye in daylight.

The Nature of UAP Low Observability

The UAP reports describe a far more advanced and “active” form of low observability. It’s not just stealth; it’s apparent “cloaking” that can be engaged and disengaged at will.

This observable is characterized by its maddening inconsistency, which is what makes it so anomalous.

• Multi-Spectral Stealth: The objects are reported to be “stealthy” across multiple sensor platforms at once. Pilots will report making visual contact (seeing it with their eyes), but their advanced radar cannot get a lock.
• Radar Invisibility: Conversely, an operator on a ship (like the USS Princeton) might be tracking a target on the powerful Aegis Combat System, but the pilots sent to intercept it see nothing at all.
• Active Jamming: In many encounters, pilots report that when they attempt to “paint” the object with their targeting radar, their systems are “jammed” or shut down. This implies the UAP is aware of the attempt and is actively defeating it.
• Visual Cloaking: Most dramatically, there are reports of objects that are visible one moment and simply vanish the next. Or they are described as “fuzzy,” “hazy,” or translucent, as if the light around them is being bent.

This behavior is fundamentally different from passive stealth. It’s an active, dynamic control of the object’s signature across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from visible light to infrared and radar frequencies. This again points to the “field” concept. If an object can create a field to warp spacetime or negate inertia, it’s a small step to assume that same field could be manipulated to bend light and radar waves around it, rendering it perfectly invisible. This is theoretical physics in action, similar to concepts like metamaterial cloaking.

How the Observables Connect

These five observables are not five different technologies. They are likely five different symptoms of one single, unified technology. Each observable implies the others, and together they paint a picture of a technology that operates on principles of physics that are currently unknown to us.

The connection is the “field.”

• Instantaneous Acceleration (1) and Sudden Maneuvering (3) are the same phenomenon. They both describe a craft that is not subject to inertia or G-forces. This is the “propulsion” aspect of the field, allowing the craft to move without G-force limitations.
• Hypersonic Velocity (2) and Trans-Medium Travel (4) are also the same phenomenon. They both describe a craft that is isolated from its external environment. This is the “deflector” aspect of the field, creating a bubble that parts air or water, eliminating friction, heat, and pressure.
• Low Observability (5) is the third aspect of the same field. If the field can warp the medium it’s in, it can also be tuned to warp the electromagnetic spectrum, bending light and radar waves around the craft to make it invisible.

This hypothetical technology would be a “metric engineering” system – it doesn’t just push against the environment, it changes the environment’s properties (or the craft’s relationship to them) locally. This is why the UAP are described as having no wings, no engines, and no control surfaces. In this model, they wouldn’t need them.

Implications for National Security and Science

The Five Observables are the reason the UAP topic has moved from the fringe to the halls of Congress and the DoD. The “Five Observables” are the “what.” The question for security and science is the “who” and “how.”

National Security

The DoD’s primary concern is not aliens; it’s adversarial breakthroughs. The U.S. government is concerned about two main possibilities.

First, these encounters represent a flight safety risk. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Navy have both cited “near mid-air collisions” between UAP and military aircraft. These objects are operating in restricted military airspace without transponders and are not communicating with air traffic control.

Second, if these objects are not American and are human-made – for example, a secret “leap-ahead” technology from an adversary like China or Russia – the implications are staggering. A craft that can demonstrate even one of the Five Observables would render all current U.S. defenses obsolete. A drone that can out-accelerate a missile, move at hypersonic speeds with no heat signature, and “cloak” from radar could fly over an aircraft carrier or the White House with total impunity.

The Five Observables serve as the benchmark. If an object is exhibiting these behaviors, it is, by definition, a national security threat until it is identified, because it demonstrates a capability far beyond the U.S. arsenal.

Scientific Inquiry

For the scientific community, the mystery is an opportunity. In 2022, NASA commissioned its own independent study on UAP. The DoD has established the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to centralize and analyze all reports from across the military.

The problem, as NASA and AARO have both stated, is a lack of high-quality data. The sensor systems on fighter jets are optimized for combat, not for scientific research. They are designed to track and destroy known targets, not to patiently gather scientific data on an unknown.

The Five Observables, if validated, would point to new physics. They would mean our understanding of propulsion, inertia, and materials science is incomplete. The scientific method demands data, and the current goal of these new government bodies is to deploy sensors – calibrated, always-on, scientific-grade systems – to capture one of these objects demonstrating any of the Five Observables in a way that is unambiguous.

Summary

The Five Observables – instantaneous acceleration, hypersonic velocity without signatures, sudden and abrupt maneuvering, trans-medium travel, and low observability – are not an explanation for UAP. They are a classification system for the problem. They are the “known unknowns,” a set of common, reported characteristics that define the most baffling encounters.

These observables are what separate fleeting “lights in the sky” from the credible, multi-sensor events that have captured the attention of the U.S. military and scientific community. Each observable, on its own, would represent a revolutionary breakthrough in science and technology. All five together, present in a single object, describe something that challenges our fundamental understanding of technology and, perhaps, the laws of physics themselves.

The ongoing, official study of UAP is an attempt to move past speculation and apply rigorous analysis to this problem. The Five Observables provide the framework for that analysis, focusing efforts on the core question: what are these objects, and how are they able to do what they do?

Last update on 2026-01-10 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API