> Optical artefacts are particularly difficult to account for.

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.

I’m not sure which case you’re referring to, but in the FLIR1 incident they were tracking something optically while nothing appeared on radar. The proposed explanation is that the object was a much bigger commercial plane than they thought, much further away. Cameras are just as much, if not more susceptible to optical effects than human eyes. It’s quite plausible that a plane could be thought to be say 20km away, when actually it was 5x as far and outside radar range.

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.

If you read my comment that you initially replied to you would see that I was talking about the FLIR1/Nimitz video.

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.

Cameras, like human eyes, have effectively infinite range. All it takes is an image bright enough, and as I’m sure you are aware, atmospheric effects can induce huge amounts of magnification and even project images from beyond the horizon. Unless you know something special about the ATFLIR camera that makes it specially limited in some way?

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'm not interested in debating all of the technical points with you here. I've looked into it in the past and come to the conclusion that Mick West's theory is highly improbable (which he now appears to be admitting if you check the latest posts on his blog).

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.

>which he now appears to be admitting...

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.

Consider for a moment that it's not a bird. Have the epistemic humility to realize that such pedestrian explanations are likely to have been proposed and ruled out during internal analysis, before public release.

Also, birds don't move like that on radar.

Have you actually reviewed the analysis, using the instrument data in the video to calculate that it was a typical size and was actually moving at a typical speed and altitude for a bird? If so, what is your critique of the calculations?

See David Fravor's commentary on the videos. He's one of the jet pilots from the Nimitz incident.

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.