From Jeff Wise at New York Magazine:
The main article is decidedly short on specifics. There’s a brief reference to “footage from a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet showing an aircraft surrounded by some kind of glowing aura traveling at high speed and rotating as it moves.” A more detailed account is provided in an accompanying sidebar entitled “2 Navy Airmen and an Object That ‘Accelerated Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen.’” In it, former Navy F/A-18 pilot David Fravor relates his experience during a flight from the aircraft carrier Nimitz on November 14, 2004. While en route to a training mission he was vectored toward an unknown radar contact. Arriving on the scene, he witnessed a lozenge-shaped craft that moved over an agitated, churning patch of ocean, then moved so quickly that it appeared to defy physics.
…
It seems that To the Stars is trying to shroud Fravor’s account in a spooky fog of faux top-secrecy. This is a dicey strategy given Fravor’s prominence in online UFO circles, and gives the impression that Elizondo’s company is repackaging timeworn tales from the internet as freshly revealed government X-files. And, by extension, calls into question the Times’ wisdom in taking his claims about extraterrestrial encounters at face value. More.
The New York Times is undergoing a long, slow decline, punctuated by brief revivals while repositioning itself as less and less mainstream. This episode fits the picture. It’s not the paper’s “fault”; the internet and social media do that to traditional media. They adjust or not, in a variety of ways.
But we’ll see.
See also: Fossil micro-organisms that could not arise via Darwinism prove that life in the universe is common? Why? How?
But surely we can’t conjure an entire advanced civilization?
and
How do we grapple with the idea that ET might not be out there?
This sort of thing is big on YouTube now: