Notice the similarities? The halo and the matching of the recording planes movements which are explicitly mentioned in this.
Other remaining factors include that:
- Primary radars on both fighters in the initial pass were being jammed
- Passive radars on the Nimitz were what directed the planes to this spot initially
- It was approximately 9:30-10 PST, so any shadow from <40k feet would be coming from restricted airspace
- Multiple visual contacts from multiple angles, including from slightly below/ to the side
This one is pretty difficult to explain in conventional terms, unless you think it's all a hoax. Pretty fascinating stuff, huh?
"When the jet fighters arrived on site, the crew of four saw nothing in the air nor on their radar"
So there's some mysterious radar pickup on the boats but the pilots then chase their own shadow and record it.
The real kicker is this part
"As Fravor further descended, he reported that the object began ascending along a curved path, maintaining some distance from the F-18, mirroring its trajectory in opposite circles. Fravor then made a more aggressive maneuver, plunging his fighter to aim below the object, but at this point the UFO accelerated and went out of sight in less than two seconds, leaving the pilots "pretty weirded out"."
That's a literal shadow!
The pilot was saying that the ship had been picking up unknown objects on radar for a while before that experience.
One thing that does happen to shadows is they get blurred at the edges (an aircraft won't completely cover the sun at a distance). An aircraft will tend to cast a vaguely "T" shaped shadow at a distance that's roughly the size of the aircraft. I can see a "t" shaped object in these images.
Here's a video of a test flight of the Vahana aircraft. https://youtu.be/S-5JeapSsbE?t=188
See the mysterious "t" shaped shadow it's casting? It moves erratically and doesn't match intuition of a shadow since shadows from the sun don't work the same way as indoors due to the parallel rays. You get these same shadows projected onto clouds as well.
The real kicker is that in these videos they both show and report that the shadow rotates when the aircraft turns! Like guys what the fuck do you think it is? Haha oh dear.