Simulating the Nimitz UFO video as a blurry plane

Hi TheoryQED,

I don't really see a technical contradiction with what Chad said, to the contrary, Fravor explains exactly why you could call that jamming since jamming is not only limited to the few jamming cues Chad listed ("strobe, champagne bubbles, “any normal EA indications”).

Interesting, thanks Chris! Does this classify as passive or active jamming, and why would Fravor say that there was jamming but Underwood say that there wasn't? Can you please explain in simple terms how there isn't a contradiction? Unfortunately Fravor's statements weren't very clear about the existence of jamming cues.

ummm… @Christophe Isbert @TheoryQED
am I missing something? what does any of this have to do with "simulating a blurry plane" ?

If it's a low observability drone and/or using radar jamming that's important for "simulating a blurry plane" because passenger planes don't usually get classified as drones, balloons, and other UAS. It makes no sense that a passenger plane would use radar jamming and there's almost no chance that a large passenger plane would be unable to be detected on radar-
It “just appeared as if the radar couldn’t hack it.”
Content from External Source
https://archive.org/stream/TheNimit...REPORT_1526682843046_42960218_ver1.0_djvu.txt
 
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Hi guys,

ummm… @Christophe Isbert @TheoryQED

am I missing something? what does any of this have to do with "simulating a blurry plane" ?


We are half off topic imo because what we are saying is linked to the aircraft hypothesis as well.


Chad was the pilot.

My bad...

I might be wrong but I don't think the CEC can help the range finder find the distance to the target, so yes Chad's on-board radar.

I still don't think we know for sure who spotted the initial tracks (30-40 nmi south of Chad's aircraft). The cruiser or an Hawkeye could have vectored him there with a BRA (Bearing Range Alt). It's exactly what happened with Fravor's incident and the USS Princeton. I don't understand why you are talking about a range finder.

Cheers,
Chris
 
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We are half off topic imo because what we are saying is linked to the aircraft hypothesis as well.

I don't understand what this means. i'm talking about the "jamming" talk.

If it's a low observability drone and/or using radar jamming that's important for "simulating a blurry plane" because passenger planes don't usually get classified as drones, balloons, and other UAS. It makes no sense that a passenger plane would use radar jamming and there's almost no chance that a large passenger plane would be unable to be detected on radar-

this thread isn't about whether it could be a plane/drone or not. There is another thread for that. This thread is about simulating a blurry plane to see if the images match.
 
might be some kind on blimp with some propellers at bottom(if they were spinning, you wouldn't be able to see them), just some pics to demonstrate that blimps do look kinda similar



and sudden disappearance of tic-tac could easily be explained with Flight Termination Unit(could be just a needle inside) being used. In that case that blimp\balloon should probably be small like in pic#3.

This is a great theory. I wonder what Fravor would say about this. When I saw those pictures I really had a double take. It looks exactly like this reconstruction.

What if this was a submarine doing some kind of covert/secret mission with a balloon/drone. They got caught and blew up the ballon which accelerated fast towards the aircraft and fell in the water empty. behind the F-18. To them it would appear like the object had accelerated wildly.

 
Interesting, thanks Chris! Does this classify as passive or active jamming, and why would Fravor say that there was jamming but Underwood say that there wasn't? Can you please explain in simple terms how there isn't a contradiction? Unfortunately Fravor's statements weren't very clear about the existence of jamming cues.

Chad said there were no "classic" jamming clues. However the radar was jammed/inffective and "could not hack it" which at that range should not be the case.

If it's a low observability drone and/or using radar jamming that's important for "simulating a blurry plane" because passenger planes don't usually get classified as drones, balloons, and other UAS. It makes no sense that a passenger plane would use radar jamming and there's almost no chance that a large passenger plane would be unable to be detected on radar-
It “just appeared as if the radar couldn’t hack it.”
Content from External Source
https://archive.org/stream/TheNimit...REPORT_1526682843046_42960218_ver1.0_djvu.txt

No radar lock pretty much disqualifies anything outside advanced/military tech. Unless there was a radar glitch with the onboard radar (but many other radar systems were in the area. F-18s are supported by an entire carrier strike group.) or this was a high altitude balloon (no radar lock) or an atmospheric event of some sort. But definitely not a passenger plane.
 
Chad said there were no "classic" jamming clues. However the radar was jammed/inffective and "could not hack it" which at that range should not be the case.


No radar lock pretty much disqualifies anything outside advanced/military tech. Unless there was a radar glitch with the onboard radar (but many other radar systems were in the area. F-18s are supported by an entire carrier strike group.) or this was a high altitude balloon (no radar lock) or an atmospheric event of some sort. But definitely not a passenger plane.

What's your source for the range of the on-board radar? The object was at a distance of 30-40nm according to the F-18's radar. Is this outside the range, and therefore possible that it just couldn't hack it? Also worth noting that during Fravor's encounter with the Tic Tac there was apparently no radar track even at a relatively close distance of 0.5-2 miles.

IMG_3267.jpg
 
We are discussing ranges in another thread. I don't want to go too off topic here.

That's the million dollar question. That data is not public. The Navy has it obviously. However some data points:
I believe radar should have a longer range in all conditions but I'm not an expert in this.

[...]

The whole point of a Navy Carrier Strike Group is to maintain total control over a specific airspace at extreme ranges (they must protect against incoming threats such as anti-ship missiles that may be hypersonic). Multiple detection systems overlap and are integrated. If they are filming balloons and airliners (!!!) by mistake that would be an extremely improbable scenario and would indicate complete incompetence/failure of several detection systems at the same time. The odds of this happening once are very low (not zero). The odds of this happening multiple times (the pilots reported this as a daily occurrence in the Roosevelt case) are infinitesimal. Unless this is all some kind of elaborate misinformation campaign by the Navy...... they have all the data to research this after all and they still say this is unexplained.

Also:
Also worth noting that during Fravor's encounter with the Tic Tac there was apparently no radar track even at a relatively close distance of 0.5-2 miles.

If this was a physical object. It shouldn't happen. Apparently more powerful radars were needed to clearly see this: SPY 1B could see them easily, E-2 could see faint returns and F-18 could only see very faint returns. Those are all very different systems so we could try to figure out what the difference could be causing those different radar returns. If this was a large physical object the only answer would be jamming/stealth tech.

A normal blimp or drone would have a huge radar return for those powerful radars.
 
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How do we know the range, and can we estimate the size from the video image? (Apologies if I've overlooked this.) If we don't have the range, then the flight crew could've estimated it based on the idea that they were seeing a fighter-sized object when it was in fact an An-225 much further away -- or a small private plane made of wood much closer.

I am also wondering about metereological factors: a fog layer can be almost "see-through" from above or below, but be an obstacle to vision when you and your target object are both in it. If there was some ionized layer like the one causing the false echoes in my Australian radar debunk, if that impedes radar returns, then the fighter would see it worse because it was at nearly the same altitude.
 
How do we know the range, and can we estimate the size from the video image? (Apologies if I've overlooked this.) If we don't have the range, then the flight crew could've estimated it based on the idea that they were seeing a fighter-sized object when it was in fact an An-225 much further away -- or a small private plane made of wood much closer.

We do not know range. We have data points from witness testimony and the maximum detection rage of atflir (which is less than radar) as a theoretical maximum.

If it's solid and you see it in infra-red you can track it on radar. IR relies on what the source is emitting. You can pump as much radiation as you want to illuminate the target. It's like a flashlight vs a light in the distance. You have control over the power of the flashlight. With the light all you can do is get more powerful binoculars and sensitive sensors. That's why the SPY 1B radar is so effective. It pumps out so much radiation you could cook a farm of turkeys on it (6 MW according to some sources). The target will get zapped and reflect at least something back no matter how small.


I will continue further discussion there in an attempt to unify discussion. I think the data points we have on range make it useless to try to fit this to any known blurry plane model.

Also, the data is insufficient to draw any conclusions even if you have a "positive" match. There could be no null hypothesis and you would probably match several types. The shape of a Cessna at this resolution is the same as an F-18.
 
I will continue further discussion there in an attempt to unify discussion
if you click this doodad in upper right of comments, it will give you a link to that comment... so you can post in other threads and direct readers to your new discussion location if you need to.
it does get confusing as there are so many Nimitz threads.

1589290661940.png
 
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