And it's quite easy to guess why these videos were released. They're technology demonstrators. The general public can think UFOs if they want, but what Chinese and Russian militaries saw was, "holy shit, US can auto-track a far-away bird from a jet fighter".
I'm no expert on naval technology but given my limited understanding of carrier strike group operations this was my intuitive belief from the first time I heard this theory. Since then a number of knowledgeable people have confirmed that this explanation makes practically no sense.
Take Go Fast for example, they're highly competent experienced aviators, but they still very clearly completely misidentified what, in hindsight, is obviously a bird. Clearly if trained operators can make a mistake like that, other mistakes are possible, so you can't just discount the possibility as absurd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le7Fqbsrrm8
I can easily see someone thinking an image is of a near object when it's actually a far object, and we know for a fact that highly trained operators can make terrible mistakes using complex tracking equipment.
We're not talking about optical artifacts. The aircraft had radar and it also had access to data from radars installed on the surface ships. The entire system is designed to make identifying friendly targets easy and to give pilots an overview of the tactical situation. IFF in aerial combat has been a solved problem almost since World War II.
IFF and radar aren’t going to help you if tye object isn’t actually where you think it is, so most of your sensors are looking in the wrong place.
In the Go Fast case we actually have all the instrument data we need. From the data on the recording and some basic trigonometry we can see the object was very small only a metre or so across, was approximately half way between the plane and the surface, and was actually only travelling at modest speed commensurate with that of a bird. I can’t _prove_ to you that it was a bird, but I leave it to you to come to your own conclusions.
You're the one who brought up Go Fast, I have made no comments about that here.
> The proposed explanation is that the object was a much bigger commercial plane than they thought, much further away.
I don't know which "proposed explanation" you're referring to but in a recent debate between Mick West and Robert Powell of the SCU hosted by John Greenewald of theblackvault.com, Mick said he thinks it was an F-18.
Neither explanation makes sense because the aircraft's radar has far greater range than the ATFLIR camera so if an aircraft showed up on the ATFLIR it also should have been seen on radar. In addition the Princeton's AEGIS radar system was monitoring the airspace within at least a 100 mile radius and would certainly also have detected any ordinary aircraft that could have been seen by the ATFLIR.
At any given time an AEGIS system is going to be tracking dozens of targets. All we can say about nothing showing on RADAR is they weren’t tracking anything where they thought the object was. If that’s not where it actually was, then the issue is moot.
My reference to Go Fast was a counter to your argument that experienced operators and aviators can’t make misidentifications. FLIR1 is a harder case because all we have is a blurry camera image, but in the case of Go Fast it’s perfectly clear the aviators were mistaken, therefore such mistakes are possible.
I will however point out that this statement:
> Cameras, like human eyes, have effectively infinite range.
is not true in any meaningful sense. Cameras have finite angular resolution. There is sufficient information to determine the angular size of the object in the video. I don't have the exact numbers at hand but I think it corresponds to an F-18 sized object at a range between 20 to 30 miles, well within the F-18's radar range, which exceeds 60 miles. If the object is much farther away then it is also much larger and that hypothesis leads to a different set of problems.
Er, I just checked Metabunk and his last post is from Wednesday, when he said, among other things:
"So we simultaneously have a radar that being jammed and giving all kinds of strange numbers, and you can't even get the airspeed, but is also able to hand over the exact position to the ATFLIR? It does not make sense."
So I'm not sure what you're talking about. His blog is just old posts about becoming a citizen.
Also, birds don't move like that on radar.
https://youtu.be/aB8zcAttP1E?t=9711
Specifically in the Go fast video: https://youtu.be/aB8zcAttP1E?t=9829
The object is shown colder than the ocean; it can't be a bird.
All I've seen are hypotheticals about how the videos could be anything but what the aviators reported, and yeah, so far have just dismissed or ignored their accounts altogether.
Interested to see otherwise!
There were many theories and counter theories. It would be misleading to say the matter is settled.
It's also doubtful to propose this is a technology demonstration. The ability to track objects is not a differentiator; there are plenty videos online showing similar HUDs. In any case the public release has been degraded specifically to withhold information on their optical capabilities.
I don't really buy that. I don't think some sort of fancy high resolution, possibly AI-driven bird (drone/jet/etc.) tracking is a particularly impressive capability that would have the Russian & Chinese militaries shaking in their shoes.
It's also not about "shaking in their shoes", but about making the other powers aware. This is the soft war that's been happening ever since first two human groups met each other - showing off your sticks and stones to deter others from trying to attack you in the first place.
No, you haven't. Every "debunking" has itself been thoroughly debunked.
They very much reminded me of the attempts to 'debunk' SpaceX rocket landing videos as fake, all of which died out when they landed multiple rockets in daylight in front of tens of thousands of people.
IIRC one of the air force videos couldn't be readily explained, but that was just because there wasn't enough information in the video to calculate scale or relative motion, so it could have been anything. The other two were definitively explained.
No you didn’t.
Yes I did.
No you didn’t...
Talk about low bar to discussion.
They have been debunked; even if you refuse to believe that, the overwhelming body of evidence, statistically, shows no consistent conclusive evidence.
So, what do you want to believe?
That there are one or two pieces of “evidence” to prove “it’s all true”, or that there are thousands of pieces of evidence which have shown no evidence of anything out of the ordinary.
This is how conspiracy theory stuff grows; people hang on to the few outliers.
...now when its true, the body of compelling evidence grows over time (see COVID vaccine -> blood clots) and eventually there is enough of a body of evidence that it starts to be compelling.
...but no matter how “smoking gun” your one example is, it does let make it convincing even if it’s true.
What we haven’t seen is a growing compelling body of evidence for ufos.
That’s fair reason to believe that...
> No, you haven’t
Yes. I have.
Fairies, ghosts and angels don't show up on radar or FLIR and the Inspector General of the DoD has never launched an investigation into how they have been handled by that department.