FLIR Technician Discusses Navy videos and claims to refute Mick's claims

Additionaly, there is a Soundtrack belonging to the video. Obviously, when the glare/object is rotating, Pilot 1 says something like „look at that thing“; and pilot 2 says „It’s rotating“. How can that be, if the cause is just in the mechanics of one optical device? Furthermore, at the beginning somebody says: “Its a whole fleet of them“. And nobody contradicts.
I know, we are just looking to the “real“ data in form of photo/video and so on. But can we really ignore eyewitnesses in this way?
 
But can we really ignore eyewitnesses in this way?
The question remains what the voices were eyewitnesses of. "There's a whole fleet of them look on the ASA" is a description of an image on a screen. "It's rotating" and "look at that thing“ ("thing" possibly meaning oddly shaped due to glare and all on a screen) can also be just that.
 
in this recent video by Lehto, he states that Lue Elizondo spoke to gimbal pilots and that they eyeballed the object and that it rotated. I’ve not heard this anywhere else. It’s an important piece of information if accurate

UFO enthusiasts are fond of arguing that eye-witness evidence is acceptable in courts of law, therefore we should accept it too, but courts (in most jurisdictions, anyway) have rules about hearsay. In the case of Lehto it is double hearsay, and the second source is anonymous, so it is equivalent to

Lue told told me that someone told him that the object rotated.

Of course, Metabunk isn't a court of law, so there are no formal rules of evidence, but there are obvious reasons for distrusting hearsay. Notably, it is impossible to challenge the actual eye-witness, to probe exactly what they claim to have seen. When a pilot says (or is quoted as saying) they 'saw' an object, it is often unclear whether they literally saw it with the naked eye (as far as that is possible from the cockpit) or whether they 'saw' it on a FLIR or radar display. From previous discussions I thought that a pilot had explicitly denied having naked eye observation, but I may be confusing it with the FLIR1 case.

Added before posting: I've just seen Ulrich's comment at #242 about the 'soundtrack'. Again, this raises the issue whether the people heard speaking in the soundtrack had naked-eye observation or are just watching some kind of display screen.

Correction/addition: In my comment about a pilot denying that he had naked eye observation, I was almost certainly thinking of Chad Underwood and FLIR1. See #774 in this thread:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/2004-uss-nimitz-tic-tac-ufo-flir-footage-flir1.9190/page-20

Yet in his recent interview with Jeremy Corbell Underwood never makes this clear.
 
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The question remains what the voices were eyewitnesses of. "There's a whole fleet of them look on the ASA" is a description of an image on a screen. "It's rotating" and "look at that thing“ ("thing" possibly meaning oddly shaped due to glare and all on a screen) can also be just that.
So there are several people here who see obviously the same phenomena (“fleet“, “rotating thing“) in the same moment (the moment the glare/object seemingly rotates in the video). These people are sitting in different (kinds of) aircrafts observing the glare/objects from at least at different angles, and propaply with different kinds of technical/optical modes.

And all of them suffer the same illusions?

At least there are two persons here, sitting in two different aircrafts, seemingly agreeing on what they are seeing (with their eyes or on their own screen) in the same moment with different points of view.
 
To the unbiased observer the left-hand image at 1:45 resembles the GIMBAL signature well enough to keep the glare hypothesis squarely on the table as the likeliest one. Were the images magically switched and the GIMBAL video would feature the left-hand signature but behaving as the GIMBAL object does, we would still hear and read all the same arguments against glare.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr1cfpos6vo

It's a poor argument, they don't look the same, and you know it
 
Those who are satisfied with the "glare rotation as the gimbal ortates the camera" hypothesis aren't likely to do that, so let me toss the ball back int your court for that one.


I think it is an aircraft, which may not be within the definition of "craft" you intended. :) I don't think we are seeing the shape of the craft, which I think s hidden in the glare and edge-finding software that define the shape of the glare more sharply. My reasons for thinking that have been developed by folks in threads on this topic here on MetaBunk. If you have a better theory, I'd be interested to hear it. For me, the standard of "proof" will be pretty high if you want to argue that it is something along the lines of aliens, beings from anther dimension, or the like, and fairly high for an "advanced tech beyond what we know the government (or somebody) has got. And in any case, you'll have to make a better case than the one that has been made by Mr. West et al concerning glare and camera rotation. Simply attacking that hypothesis is not going to do it. (Hypotheses can be attacked, which of course is not attacking the people supportng it, I understand that.) And of course convincing me of anything need not be among your top priorities!:D


No, it is likely that one did! Again, not in the sense I think you mean! If you mean, as I ander the impression that you do, that the/a military maybe made something way beyond the tech we know about -- maybe, but I am not seeing evidence of that in the vid, nor in the other leaked Navy vids. The eyewitness accounts describe things that might support such a hypothesis, the videos, in my view, do not -- and I'm frankly getting a little "over" how the UAPs always are claimed to do all sorts of impossble stuff except when the cameras are rolling. It is a consistent enough pattern that I begin to assign significance to it.


Doesn't appear to me to be doing so, no. And since not, it does not show me evidence that it is unusual. Maybe it is -- as an example, a glowing hot spaceship from some distant star system would presumably show the same glare, and it would appear to rotate when the camera rotates as easily as would happen with a hot jet aircraft. But I am already sure that jet planes exist and fly through the skies of Earth.


Yeah, that's what was claimed as the unusual/impossible maneuver captured in the vid.


I don't know, but of course that is only an issue if the target is assumed to rotate rather than the glare/camera. I am reading with interest the arguemnt being made by those who believe the rotation is not caused by the simultaneous camera rotation. I dont find the arrguments compelling, but as I said, I understand that my finding them compelling is not top of the list of things to worry about for folks!
This is just a long and talkative way of saying 'i think it's a glare'. I think it's pretty clear that I understand the argument for it being a glare and don't agree so I'm not sure talking about the same point ad nauseam is going to develop the argument any further.
 
These people are sitting in different (kinds of) aircrafts observing the glare/objects from at least at different angles, and propaply with different kinds of technical/optical modes.
How do you know that the people on the soundtrack were 'sitting in aircraft'? It sounds to me more like they are sitting together somewhere, maybe in the operations room on the Nimitz (or was it the Princeton?) reviewing what is shown on display screens. They do seem to have evidence from radar not on the ATFLIR display in the Gimbal video.
 
Lehto says Elizondo says the pilots said...getting a bit nearer to an original quote would be nice.
:) exactly ! I knew as I was typing it how schoolyard whisper-like it was and how it’s not worthy of much debate here. I was more surprised, and therefore compelled to recount it here, by the fact I had never heard or read that component of the story at all. How ever many years since the gimbal release.
It’s value is nonetheless about 0.00001 on the Richter scale of earth shattering evidence.
Whether this is reliable is obviously open to serious scrutiny but it does pull at the rug beneath our feet whilst trying to attribute some kind of targeting pod glitch hypothesis to what I’m witnessing. wreaks of unfair play !
It would, in hindsight for the pilot and believers, be an easy get out of jail free card to pull at a later date once faced with credible glare hypothesis or similar.
“ oh well actually I saw it as well…”
 
How do you know that the people on the soundtrack were 'sitting in aircraft'? It sounds to me more like they are sitting together somewhere, maybe in the operations room on the Nimitz (or was it the Princeton?) reviewing what is shown on display screens. They do seem to have evidence from radar not on the ATFLIR display in the Gimbal video.

So there are several people here who see obviously the same phenomena (“fleet“, “rotating thing“) in the same moment (the moment the glare/object seemingly rotates in the video). These people are sitting in different (kinds of) aircrafts observing the glare/objects from at least at different angles, and propaply with different kinds of technical/optical modes.

And all of them suffer the same illusions?

At least there are two persons here, sitting in two different aircrafts, seemingly agreeing on what they are seeing (with their eyes or on their own screen) in the same moment with different points of view.

This is a dual seat F/18 both voices (pilot and WSO) are likely sat in the same aircraft looking at the same data on the same size screens.

In the cockpit there are "monitors" called MFDs (multi function display) generally one on the left and one on the right, in this config the left screen displays the ATFLIR camera view and the right config show's the situational awareness "SA" view an own ship centred top down view of the "situation" which has tracks from radar etc on it.

We only see the view from the ATFLIR in the video, but they seem to be referring to what is on the other screen. The "fleet of them comment" probably refers to a group of tracks on that monitor.

Doesn't mean the audio isn't from later but there's no reason to doubt it was recorded from the cockpit.

As to whether they can see the object with their eyes, the camera is at NAR Z2.0 - 0.35 FOV if the object is not glare i.e. the size of the IR signature is the size of the object (in line with the "not a glare" theory) then it must be tiny and close or small and distant, or large and very distant. If it's a glare obscuring the object then the object must be smaller or further away. Either way it's very unlikely they could see it other than on the ATFLIR display.
 
Just a small point about the 'glare' hypothesis. A common argument against it is that other FLIR videos of jets don't show such large or messy 'glare'. But these comparisons are heavily reliant on the FLIR videos from Dave Falch's YouTube channel, which I believe are filmed by Dave Falch himself. It is dangerous to rely on any single source for comparison, and Falch is clearly a skilled and careful operator, who maintains his equipment well. (And of course he can select what he shows.) I was struck by this in watching a video where he claims to debunk the idea that the 'UAPs' in the recent DHS video leak/release are merely birds. His argument is essentially to show some excellent and clear IR footage of birds taken by himself, and then to assert that birds would always be easily identifiable. But by comparison the DHS video is grainy and streaky. For whatever reasons, it just isn't as clear, so the argument that birds would be easily identifiable is unproven. The same point could apply to comparisons with the FLIR1 and Gimbal videos, which look blurry and grainy compared to most of his. This may be largely due to the extreme zoom of the videos, and in fact Falch himself has a video of a distant Mylar balloon which has a similar grainy look in places.
 
This is just a long and talkative way of saying 'i think it's a glare'. I think it's pretty clear that I understand the argument for it being a glare and don't agree so I'm not sure talking about the same point ad nauseam is going to develop the argument any further.
Fair enough: I tend to be too wordy. I'll condense it -- A strong case has been made that it is glare that appears to rotate as the ATFLIR rotates. If somebody can develop an alternate theory that fits the facts better, I'm interested. Absent a better theory, I'll stick with the best one I've seen.
 
That's right, the left-hand glare looks even more extraterrestrial than the GIMBAL. I know it does
Do you think you guys could maybe back off the constant strawmaning of the extraterrestrial hypothesis? I don't believe I've mentioned ET once and yet many of the responses I receive I have to deal with petty jokes about the likelyhood of extraterrestial visitation. It's poor form for debate.
 
Do you think you guys could maybe back off the constant strawmaning of the extraterrestrial hypothesis? I don't believe I've mentioned ET once and yet many of the responses I receive I have to deal with petty jokes about the likelyhood of extraterrestial visitation. It's poor form for debate.

Your glib dismissal of the similarity between the two glares I (in fact originally Mick) shared was a poor form of debate that I responded to. Maybe with some snarkitude.

If one kind of plane can produce the one on the left, it is not difficult for a fair-minded observer to sensibly conclude the one on the right could be produced by another type.
 
Your image isn't loading for me but from your description it sounds like something went wrong in the transition to the spreadsheet. Here's what I get simply setting the elevation to -2 degrees:
rot2_el2.png
It's very similar. Definitely no divisions by zero or anything like that, which can't happen with an elevation angle of -2 degrees. A division by 0 only happens when elevation angle and azimuth are both 0 -- that is the gimbal singularity.
OK, used the atan2 function and now got similar results. The atan2 (or arctan2 in python) will resolve division by 0 errors by returning an angle of pi/2 or 1.5 pi (depending on the sign of the non-zero argument). It also selects the right quadrant.
You see the gimbal rotating very fast through its 90 degrees point now.

Still, I don't find the fit to be very strong. The object rotates in small intermittent `bursts' and its rotation rate decreases while the gimbal keeps rotating fast. It's rotation rate is also slower than that of the gimbal:
Screenshot 2021-08-15 174830.jpg

Look at it from a different angle: Suppose the object is a UAP that wants to evade the F18. In that case its evasive maneuvers would become more violent when the F18 points its nose at it.

But I'm basically done now discussing this topic. My mind is made up, given the evidence presented so far: Not a glare.
Others are of course entitled to their own opinion. It does not matter much for the `unidentified' status of the object.
 
How do you know that the people on the soundtrack were 'sitting in aircraft'? It sounds to me more like they are sitting together somewhere, maybe in the operations room on the Nimitz (or was it the Princeton?) reviewing what is shown on display screens. They do seem to have evidence from radar not on the ATFLIR display in the Gimbal video.
Possible. But that’s unlikely. Why should they record their review? Ín that bad plane-like quality. Without review-like language.
 
This is a dual seat F/18 both voices (pilot and WSO) are likely sat in the same aircraft looking at the same data on the same size screens.
Ok. Did not know that little but very important aspect. How do we know? Did I missed it in the threads or is it comfirmed elsewhere?
 
Ok. Did not know that little but very important aspect. How do we know? Did I missed it in the threads or is it comfirmed elsewhere?
As far as I’m aware, the fa18 is the only navy fighter with Atflir system. These are two seater jets. I’ve never actually seen written verification of this but that’s my understanding.
 
Ok. Did not know that little but very important aspect. How do we know? Did I missed it in the threads or is it comfirmed elsewhere?

There are 2 types F/A-18E: 1 person (pilot), F/A-18F: 2 people (pilot and WSO)

This is likely a F mostly because they are both talking about the L+S (Launch and Steer target) a reference that only makes sense from the perspective of the operators of the aircraft.

We also know this video is filmed from the same plane on the same flight as ther Go Fast video which also has two voices who appear to be operating the same aircraft

I believe also that Underwood has talked about the Gimbal WSO indicating that this was a two seater.
 
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Additionaly, there is a Soundtrack belonging to the video. Obviously, when the glare/object is rotating, Pilot 1 says something like „look at that thing“; and pilot 2 says „It’s rotating“. How can that be, if the cause is just in the mechanics of one optical device? Furthermore, at the beginning somebody says: “Its a whole fleet of them“. And nobody contradicts.
I know, we are just looking to the “real“ data in form of photo/video and so on. But can we really ignore eyewitnesses in this way?

Pilot 2 says it's rotating? The ATFLIR screen is in narrow field of view, on 2x zoom, so less than 0.7 degrees angular width. The object takes up less than 1/15th of the FOV in its longest dimension. Call it 0.05 degrees, generously. That's about 3 arc minutes. Approximately 8x the limit of resolution of the human eye, as measured under laboratory conditions. If the pilot is seeing it out the window, he's seeing it through a visor and canopy glass in a cabin pressurized to ~9000 ft (which degrades vision), while moving his head and turning the plane. And this against a background of clouds, which, if it is a white tic-tack he'd be having trouble resolving color-wise. But it's bright, you say? Well, maybe in the Infrared (unlike go-fast), but not to the unaided human eye.

It's more plausible that both pilots are seeing it on their ATFLIR displays.
 
We also know this video is filmed from the same plane on the same flight as ther Go Fast video which also has two voices who appear to be operating the same aircraft
The same plane and the same flight? So also the same Pilot & WSO in gimbal and gofast?

Wow. How do we know that? I ve searched for that on wiki already but can’t find anything detailed.
 
The same plane and the same flight? So also the same Pilot & WSO in gimbal and gofast?

Wow. How do we know that? I ve searched for that on wiki already but can’t find anything detailed.
"......Two of these videos, colloquially dubbed “Go Fast” and “Gimbal,” displayed one of the objects that had perplexed Graves and his fellow Red Rippers back in 2015. The DoD would later authenticate the clips and confirm the objects in the videos were indeed “unidentified aerial phenomena.....”
This interesting segment from an interview to thedebrief.org

https://thedebrief.org/devices-of-unknown-origin-part-ii-interlopers-over-the-atlantic-ryan-graves/
 
There is another curious analogy. Although the NYT has repeatedly stated that the gimbal video was taken on January 21, 2015 off the coast of Florida, while gofast subsequently off the coast of Virginia, the weather analysis shows no jet stream of 120 knots at fl250 in that area. On the other hand, this phenomenon was present on 24 January 2015 off the coast of Norfolk.
 
The same plane and the same flight? So also the same Pilot & WSO in gimbal and gofast?

Wow. How do we know that? I ve searched for that on wiki already but can’t find anything detailed.
We mostly know because the mission unique PRF code displayed on the ATFLIR overlay in the videos is the same on both videos.
 
So there are several people here who see obviously the same phenomena (“fleet“, “rotating thing“) in the same moment (the moment the glare/object seemingly rotates in the video). These people are sitting in different (kinds of) aircrafts observing the glare/objects from at least at different angles, and propaply with different kinds of technical/optical modes.

And all of them suffer the same illusions?

At least there are two persons here, sitting in two different aircrafts, seemingly agreeing on what they are seeing (with their eyes or on their own screen) in the same moment with different points of view.
I dont think we can tell that. How was the video captured exactly? Was it recorded live from the screen in which the audio is actually live, too... or was the video extracted from digital recording and audio added afterwards?
Are servicemen actually allowed to speak so colloquially over their communication channels?
 
There is another curious analogy. Although the NYT has repeatedly stated that the gimbal video was taken on January 21, 2015 off the coast of Florida, while gofast subsequently off the coast of Virginia, the weather analysis shows no jet stream of 120 knots at fl250 in that area. On the other hand, this phenomenon was present on 24 January 2015 off the coast of Norfolk.
Norfolk UK?
 
If they were both taken on the same day and subsequently both shot off the coast of UK then both videos could be featuring the "Futute Aircraft" RAF's Lanca, such is my current hypothesis.
It would suggest that they are testing the 'stealth' capabilities of the craft amongst other things. Only the US top brass would actually be in the know.
 
They were not taken in the UK according to sources they are in US waters, there are Norfolk's in the US, it's very unlikely a US carrier group would be conducting operations in the North Sea.

PRF codes are 4 digit codes the ATFLIR sim claims:

"A valid Laser Code is any 4-digit series where each digit is between 0 and 7. Examples of valid and invalid values are: 0900 (INVALID), 0700 (VALID), 1234 (VALID), 5678 (INVALID)."

so 0000 - 7777

I guess there could be some other factors we are not aware of that might limit the range of codes used by the Navy though.

I mean I guess they could have co-incidentally used the same code for these 2 missions by chance, possibly unlikely?

The videos have very similar ATFLIR overlay symbology and there are multiple was this can be configured, so either there are 2 missions that both just happened to see UAP and both used the same PRF code and both had the same settings for overlays or they are from the same aircraft/flight/crew.
 
The same plane and the same flight? So also the same Pilot & WSO in gimbal and gofast?

Wow. How do we know that? I ve searched for that on wiki already but can’t find anything detailed.
The voices sound similar, in addition to all the other reasons.
 
This line about the pilots saw it rotating throws a brand new spanner in the works for me though. Yes it’s wonky eye witness at distance , but it would push this kind of ir spoofing theory straight back into the long grass again !
The problem is that, at this point, the theory that the black shape is a rotating object has been pretty much experimentally refuted. I don't think anybody ever said the pilots saw the thing with their naked eye, but if they did, that statement must be viewed in the context of us having the video available which provides convincing evidence that the rotating black shape is not a physical object, since it matches the expected gimbal rotation rotation very closely. The 'glare' hypothesis explains this naturally, while the 'object' hypothesis demands it to be a coincidence (and you can estimate how likely that coincidence is). Maybe the object that causes the glare is also rotating, but we're not seeing any clear evidence of that on the video. If the witnesses saw it rotate, that could be it, or they might have imagined it. For context, the field of view NAR 2x mode is a little smaller than the full moon:

moon.png

The Grimaldi crater on the left-hand side is about the same size as the black shape. It's pretty much a speck; you might be able to tell that it's rotating if you have really good vision, but you also might easily convince yourself it's rotating even if it's not. Chances are though, Lehto just got confused with the various things that have been said.
 
The VFX guys at Corridor Crew just did a blind debunk of the Gimbal & Tic Tac video, seemingly unaware of the ongoing debate.
Their initial conclusions are similar to Mick's.
It should be interesting to see what unfolds as they learn about the existing arguments.
The proposal that this is a mylar balloon reflecting the sun is interesting, I'm not sure if it has been proposed before. This means that this object and the "cube within a sphere" could be the same thing.
 
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