2004 USS Nimitz Tic Tac UFO FLIR footage (FLIR1)

Mick West

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20171023-135141-k73co.jpg

Footage at: http://www.extraordinarybeliefs.com/tic-tac-aav (see also attachment)

First, make sure you are talking about the right footage:
gimbal-vs-nimitz-jpg.30737

This thread is about the Nimitz footage, the GIMBAL footage discussion is at:
https://www.metabunk.org/nyt-gimbal-video-of-u-s-navy-jet-encounter-with-unknown-object.t9333/

NOTE: While Fravor discusses his account and recollections of the Nimitiz incident, he did not take the video.

To me this Nimitz footage seems consistent with a distant (>50 miles away) plane flying away from the camera. It looks VERY similar to this proven example of the same thing:
20171023-135448-u5gpg.jpg

Discussed here: https://www.metabunk.org/explained-chilean-navy-ufo-video-aerodynamic-contrails-flight-ib6830.t8306/

At the end of the video it gently drifts off to the left, either making a turn or due to the camera lock drifting. A sudden jump between 1x and 2x zoom makes this look vastly more dramatic than it actually is. This is described in this short video:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIl4peYb59E


It could be a combination of the plane making a turn and the camera lock. If it's flying nearly directly away from the camera and it's really far away (like 50 to 100 miles), then it's still likely going to be moving relative to the camera direction, and indeed we see the camera heading at the top got from 4°R to 8° L, at which point the tracking seems to fail.

So I'd say the entire incident likely consisted of dodgy radar returns and a distant plane not on the radar.
 

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Hi Mick, two days ago a comment on my fb page linked this post by SCU (Scientific Coalition for Ufology):
https://www.facebook.com/explorescu/posts/1722614954714484

Edit:
video -->
Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B61eOLiwJH1SWVIzZnNVc0taRDg/view

document -->
Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By-yCcE3UvHcSlg0YlhyaGYyd3c/view

CVW-11 EVENT SUMMARY
14 NOVEMBER 04
EVENT SUMMARY
EVENT 3
Event
Side
Narrative
ADEX
3A1,3C1,
3D2
110/100, 303/305, 401
FAST EAGLES 110/100 UPON TAKE OFF WERE VECTORED BY PRINCETON AND BANGER (1410L) TO
INTERCEPT UNID CONTACT AT 160@40NM (N3050.8 W11746.9) (NIMITZ N3129.3 W11752.8).
PRINCETON INFORMED FAST EAGLES THAT THE CONTACT WAS MOVING AT 100 KTS @ 25KFT ASL.
FAST EAGLES (110/100) COULD NOT FIND UNID AIRBORNE CONTACT AT LOCATION GIVEN BY
PRINCETON. WHILE SEARCHING FOR UNID AIR CONTACT, FAST EAGLES SPOTTED LARGE UNID
OBJECT IN WATER AT 1430L. PILOTS SAW STEAM/ SMOKE/CHURNING AROUND OBJECT. PILOT
DESCRIBES OBJECT INITIALLY AS RESEMBLING A DOWNED AIRLINER, ALSO STATED THAT IT WAS
MUCH LARGER THAN A SUBMARINE.
WHILE DESCENDING FROM 24K FT TO GAIN A BETTER VIEW OF THE UNID CONTACT IN THE WATER,
FAST EAGLE 110 SIGHTED AN AIRBORNE CONTACT WHICH APPEARED TO BE CAPSULE SHAPED
(WINGLESS, MOBILE, WHITE, OBLONG PILL SHAPED, 25-30 FEET IN LENGTH, NO VISIBLE
MARKINGS AND NO GLASS) 5NM WEST FROM POSITION OF UNID OBJECT IN WATER.
CAPSULE (ALT 4K FT AT COURSE 300) PASSED UNDER FAST EAGLE 110 (ALT 16KFT). FAST EAGLE
110 BEGAN TURN TO ACQUIRE CAPSULE. WHILE 110 WAS DESCENDING AND TURNING, CAPSULE
BEGAN CLIMBING AND TURNED INSIDE OF FAST EAGLE'S TURN RADIUS. PILOT ESTIMATED THAT
CAPSULE ACHIEVED 600-700 KTS. FAST EAGLE 110 COULD NOT KEEP UP WITH THE RATE OF TURN
AND THE GAIN OF ALTITUDE BY THE CAPSULE. 110 LOST VISUAL ID OF CAPSULE IN HAZE.
LAST VISUAL CONTACT HAD CAPSULE AT 14KFT HEADING DUE EAST.
NEITHER FAST EAGLES 110 OR 100 COULD ACHIEVE RADAR LOCK OR ANY OTHER MEANS OF
POSITIVE ID. FAST EAGLE 100 WAS FLYING HIGH COVER AND SAW THE ENGAGEMENT BY FAST
EAGLE 110. FAST EAGLE 100 CONFIRMS 110 VISUAL ID; 100 LOST CONTACT IN HAZE AS WELL.
CPA OF ACFT 110 FROM CONTACT 4000-5000 FT.
FAST EAGLES, DEVILS AND HOBOS PERFORMED ADEX IN MULLET AFTER VECTOR FROM PRINCETON
TOWARD UNID CONTACT. EACH PERFORMED 1X RUN. FAST EAGLE VID 2X GROUPS:
1X SIM F8, WINGS CLEAN
1X SIM F8, WINGS CLEAN. RTB
BMB
3A2,3B1
105/106, 204/200
FAST EAGLES AND CAMELOTS PERFORMED BMB AT 2507. EACH DROPPED 4X MK-82. FAST EAGLES
PERFORMED 3X RUNS; CAMELOTS 2X RUNS
SSC
2E2
503
RAVEN PERFORMED SSC AT NM/OK. 2X CONTACTS; NO PHOTO'S:
1- CHARTER FISHING BOAT N3126 E11714 COURSE 030 @ 10-15 KTS AT 1415L.
2- COMMERCIAL FISHING BOAT, N3111 E11803 COURSE 300 @ 5 KTS AT 1430L.
LOG/PG
2H1
616
INDIAN PERFORMED LOG (3X PACKAGE RUNS TO PRINCETON), DLQ'S ON PRINCETON AND PLANE
GUARD IN VA.
TOTAL ORDNANCE EXPENDED: NONE
EVENT 4
Event
Side
Narrative
ADEX
4A1,4B1
4D1
111,212,
201,413
FAST EAGLES (BLUE), CAMELOTS (RED), AND HOBOS (BLUE) PERFORMED ADEX IN OPAREA MISR-
1E, 2V2. ALL EXECUTED 3X RUNS.
BMB
4C1
310,311
DEVILS CONDUCTED BMB IN OPAREA 2507. EACH EXECUTED 2X RUNS AND BOTH EXPENDED 2X
BLU-111 (TOTAL 4 X BLU-111).
TOTAL ORDNANCE EXPENDED: 4 X BLU-111
EVENT 5
Event
Side
Narrative
CSAR
5B1,5E1
5F1,5A1,
5H2
206,501,
106,613
CAMELOTS, BANGER, FAST EAGLES, INDIANS, AND RAVENS PERFORMED CSAR AT 090@17NM FROM
NIMITZ. RAVENS JAMMED WHILE CAMELOTS EXECUTED RESCORT AT 12,000FT. BANGER
CONTROLED EVENT 5 (CSAR). FAST EAGLE PERFORMED ROLE OF RMC. INDIANS REMAINED WITH
CAMELOTS IN RESCORT.
AIC
5C1,5D1
5A2
303,305,
410,401,
102,100
FAST EAGLES, DEVILS, AND HOBOS PERFORMED AIC IN OPAREA MISR-1E. 305 DROPED OUT OF AIC,
2V3. HOBO AND DEVIL PERFORMED RED AIR, FAST EAGLES AND HOBO PERFORMED BLUE AIR.
TOTAL ORDNANCE EXPENDED: NONE
EVENT 6
Event
Side
Narrative
RTNK
6A1,6B1
105,211
CAMELOTS AND FAST EAGLES PERFORMED ROLE AS RTNK FOR EVENT 6 (AIC).
AIC
6B2,6C2
307,310,
201
CAMELOTS (RED) AND DEVILS (BLUE) PERFORMED AIC IN OPAREA MISR-1E. EACH EXCUTED 3X
RUNS.
GANGPLANK
6C1
311
DEVIL PERFORMED GANGPLANK IN OPAREA PAPA-2. DEVIL SIMULATED 2 X MK-82.
NVG
6D1
402,403
HOBOS PERFORMED NVG OVHD. NSTR.
TOTAL ORDNANCE EXPENDED: NONE
 
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Hi Mick,

I will only comment one thing for now. The visual comparison you used between the EO/IR (black hot) screen capture from the Chilean Navy footage (Wescam MX-15) and the screen capture from the Super Hornet's ATFLIR targeting pod is not really reliable for the simple reason that the targeting pod is in TV mode (black and white). In other words, it is not an EO/IR mode unlike the Chilean Navy screen capture you posted.
22809791_146575646087295_1098008121_n.png

Nevertheless, the ATFLIR footage is in IR at times but in white hot, you can change it to black hot with Gimp or similar.

Cheers
 
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On Facebook Isaac Koi posted about this footage cropping up before:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/470983769757563/permalink/746073895581881/
Linking it to this AboveTopSecret thread:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread265835/pg1#pid2927030
External Quote:
The video you are about to see seems to be a FLIR-hud-vision captured by one of the jets, that were sent out to intercept the unknown object. The materials we (me and one other ATS member who wished to remain nameless) used for this analysis/post were this video, an event-log and a power-point-presentation, but the information included in there has not been worked out yet.The files we have can be released on demand.


RECALL OF AN EVENT LOG OF A SHIP OF THE US-NAVY FLEET
This is the video here and these are the events happened.

Date 14 November 2004
At the time Issac posted this on ATS:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread265835/pg1#pid2927030
External Quote:
Firstly, the video is similar to (though not the same one as) a video purportedly from an Australian jet fighter's HUD (Heads-Up Display) created last year by a film maker called Chris Kenworthy. He created that video as part of a series of "UFO" forming an "immersive artwork" project funded by the Australian Film Commission.
...
Secondly, members of ATS should be slightly suspicious of individuals posting "UFO" videos with a rather vague accompanying story one day after they registered. The lack of any track record on ATS makes it somewhat difficult to assess your credibility. It makes more possible (though of course does not prove) that you are merely a hoaxer that has published a link to a video that you have created.


Thirdly, and most significantly, the link you gave is part of the German website at the link below:
www.vision-unlimited.de...

As the photographs indicate, that website is related to film making
The link to f4.mpg is broken, but it still exists on archive.org, (along with some much more recent unrelated GCI video.)
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.vision-unlimited.de/extern/*

That is better quality video (same size, just less compression), so I'm attaching it here.

Here's a timecoded version with frame numbers, for easier discussion.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCvlW-HoHog
 

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I can't see if this has been posted anywhere, however, if it hasn't I've attached a source link to the Nimitz pilot report that is on the 'To the Stars Academy' website. According to the site the "Source" of this report is a highly decorated and recognized expert in aviation and Navy combat flight operations with Top Secret clearance. Although all personally identifiable information has been removed to protect sources and methods. The report describes in detail what happened during the incident and as such I feel it provides some good first hand information about the case.
https://coi.tothestarsacademy.com/nimitz-report/
 
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Something about this incident keeps bugging me. I'd like to refer you to an article posted by another ex Navy pilot and apparent personal friend of Cmdr. Dave Fravor...Paco Chierici from fightersweep.com (a military aviation blog, not a UFO site as far as I can see). Keep it mind this was posted in 2015, years before this recent disclosure by the Pentagon.
https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/

My summary of the story as supposedly relayed to him by Fravor:

-The Missile Crusier USS Princeton was tracking activity by "Anomalous Aerial Vehicles (AAVs)" focusing around a point about 30 nautical miles off the Baja peninsula for 'several days'

-'Radar contacts would drop from above 80K to hover roughly 50 feet off the water in a matter of seconds' along with the flight patterns inconsistent with any known aircraft that we always hear in UFO stories

-Princeton takes advantage of the presence of nearby aircraft doing exercises out of the carrier USS Nimitz on 14 Nov 2004 and vectors several towards the position to confirm

-An E-2C gets a faint radar signature but it's apparently not good enough to pass the target on to interceptors so it gets called off

-A Marine Hornet piloted by a Lt. Col. Kurth was also vectored to the area, got nothing on radar, heads back to the Nimitz, but not before he got a visual of a 'round section of turbulent water about 50-100 meters in diameter'

-At this point the two 2-seater F-18 Navy Super Hornets (FASTEAGLE 1 and FASTEAGLE 2, the former piloted by the now famous Cmdr. Favor with his weapons officer Lt. Cmdr. Slaight sitting behind him) arrive.

-Fravor (and all of this is presumably confirmed by the other 3 airmen in the area) also sees the "whitewater" disturbance in the water and initially thinks it might have been an airliner that had crashed (thus the reason for Princeton's vectoring and asking if he was armed - he wasn't as we know)

-Then they see a white, capsule-shaped, "fighter sized" object hovering ABOVE the disturbance in the water, BELOW the FASTEAGLE flight.

-Fravor tries intercept the AAV but is unable to lock on and it suddenly accelerates away, behind his F-18 and he loses visual contact. The Princeton then informs him that it has now reappearred at FASTEAGLE's previously assigned Combat Air Patrol waypoint, some 60 miles away

-FASTEAGLE turns around and heads back towards the CAP, loses contact with the AAV and doesn't see the water disturbance any more. Back on the Nimitz they pass on what they saw to the next 4 airmen getting ready to head out, who launch several hours later (this time their F-18s were equipped with FLIR)

-As we know they spotted the AAV 'hovering' below them at the same CAP, filmed it on the FLIR (helped by a radar lock), before it takes off again. The video that "appeared" on YT and is referenced by Chierici in his 2015 article is the "tick-tack" video mentioned by West ITT - they appear to be from the same incident. It has no dialogue unlike the 2017 one. The older video shows the AAV appear to rapidly accelerate away to the left of the camera.

Source: https://youtu.be/z7xnLZ9FAvU


Tldr:
Multiple airmen (including both flights of F-18s) reported (according to Cmdr. Fravor) seeing a white, capsular or cylindrical shaped unidentified aircraft, with no wings or visible propulsion system, easily outperforming the F-18s. All of this was at coordinates where the Princeton tracked these bogies with it's more advanced radar systems. These reports aren't consistent with a distant planes simply being coincidentally picked up by the FLIR by the second flight of F-18s. The rapid lateral (in relation to the viewfinder) movement of the object also doesn't fit a distant plane unless this was also another camera artifact.

The way I see it theres 2 options:

1) The videos and Fravor's (and presumably the other airmen's) statements are completely unrelated. And if the implication is that he's lying, and since he's been involved in this since the beginning, and it's clear he's been given permission to talk to the media, it would have to be some kind of government psy-op, many years in the making, with a lot of confounding stuff mixed in (like the original video getting censored). The motivation is unclear, maybe they really did steal/redirect 22 million bucks for some bullshit program and want to justify it with this but I don't see how they think they could get away with it. Either way, if this was the case, they could have just doctored the videos or done them with CGI entirely, so trying to analyze them in terms of real physics might be a waste of time.

2) the government really doesn't know what happened, which means there really is more to the story besides confusing far off planes with an AAV which presumably some smart folk would have figured out before giving it to the press and making fools of themselves. Man made, ours or OpFor? Possible connection to a submersible craft? Or actual aliens? Why they would go public with this in any scenario is also beyond me.
 
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2) the government really doesn't know what happened, which means there really is more to the story besides confusing far off planes with an AAV which presumably some smart folk would have figured out before giving it to the press and making fools of themselves.

That's not at all unprecedented though. The Chilean Navy case had many smart people look at it before giving it to the press. It was just a plane.
 
That's not at all unprecedented though. The Chilean Navy case had many smart people look at it before giving it to the press. It was just a plane.

Something as chidlish as the Navy trolling an overzealous reporter by giving them something that people joked about being UFOs as if they were actually taking it seriously (while the brass elbow each other in the ribs about it) i could almost understand.. but then there's Fravor saying for several years that he saw what literally amounts to your standard UFO (small craft with no visible propulsion or wings doing things that normal aircraft can't do). And he names a few other aviators (including his co-pilot) that might very well say they saw the same thing. And I'm not saying that just because someone served in the military for a couple of decades they're immune to making shit up for attention or money...

but the "Department of Defense" watermark on this video and their TACID acceptance of Fravor's claims when they admitted to the existence of the AATIP without much further comment gives me pause and makes me wonder if there's any chance this was coordinated. From the original NYT piece they mention the video was 'released' in August but I can't find any more context on that... and then there is the issue of the Tick Tack video apparently being taken down for some time. But yeah, I guess its possible that Reid & Bigelow put pressure on the Pentagon to release this vid and Fravor & his guys are on the payroll and lying about what they saw(even if the story's at least a couple of years old - they might have been waiting for the right time). It would help if the DoD would confirm if these 2 clips are actually from the same time and place we're talking about
 
Something as chidlish as the Navy trolling an overzealous reporter by giving them something that people joked about being UFOs as if they were actually taking it seriously (while the brass elbow each other in the ribs about it) i could almost understand..

They WERE taking it seriously. They spent two years investigating it.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr..._us_586d37bce4b014e7c72ee56b?lciacn1ruwjkmx6r
External Quote:

An exceptional nine-minute Navy video of a UFO displaying highly unusual behavior, studied by Chilean authorities for the last two years, is now being released to the public. The CEFAA - the Chilean government agency which investigates UFOs, or UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena), has been in charge of the investigation. Located within the DGAC, the equivalent of our FAA but under the jurisdiction of the Chilean Air Force, CEFAA has committees of military experts, technicians and academics from many disciplines. None of them have been able to explain the strange flying object captured by two experienced Navy officers from a helicopter.

The Chilean government agency always makes its cases public when an investigation is complete, and acknowledges the existence of UAP when a case merits such a conclusion.

General Ricardo Bermúdez, Director of CEFAA during the investigation, told me that "We do not know what it was, but we do know what it was not." And "what it is not" comprises a long list of conventional explanations. Here is what happened:
Same thing here, but with a different country. Yes it's a video of an unidentified flying object. You are reading far too much into it.
 
They WERE taking it seriously. They spent two years investigating it.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr..._us_586d37bce4b014e7c72ee56b?lciacn1ruwjkmx6r
External Quote:

An exceptional nine-minute Navy video of a UFO displaying highly unusual behavior, studied by Chilean authorities for the last two years, is now being released to the public. The CEFAA - the Chilean government agency which investigates UFOs, or UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena), has been in charge of the investigation. Located within the DGAC, the equivalent of our FAA but under the jurisdiction of the Chilean Air Force, CEFAA has committees of military experts, technicians and academics from many disciplines. None of them have been able to explain the strange flying object captured by two experienced Navy officers from a helicopter.

The Chilean government agency always makes its cases public when an investigation is complete, and acknowledges the existence of UAP when a case merits such a conclusion.

General Ricardo Bermúdez, Director of CEFAA during the investigation, told me that "We do not know what it was, but we do know what it was not." And "what it is not" comprises a long list of conventional explanations. Here is what happened:
Same thing here, but with a different country. Yes it's a video of an unidentified flying object. You are reading far too much into it.

Well these cases have some important differences. In Chile it was some guys on a helicopter screwing around with their FLIR and seeing something they thought was right next to them but actually much further away (as you said, the mistaken plane was on radar, just not where they were looking).

In the Nimitz case it was a missile cruiser's radar picking up a specific contact at a specific location, vectoring in aircraft who either saw the object with their Mark I eyeball well enough to tell how big it was and what it was doing or got some radar signature, all the while presumably bouncing this information back and forth with the missile cruiser, followed by the object being intercepted again a few hours later, this time captured on FLIR (visual contact unknown). You have to admit it's a pretty incredible story. So either it's made up (with the implications i mentioned) or it's not.. which means at the least it will end up in some book as a case study about the power of suggestion lol
 
Still on CNN they talked about the left move at the end, being of extraterrestrial origin, when you track something that far away and it veers off a little and you change zoom, of course it will zap through the screen at very earthly speed, they want to believe
 
A wikipedia entry has been made for the now renamed USS Princeton incident, being a wikipedia editor, i asked for its deletion, it is evidently part of Luis media campaign to reinstate his former investigation unit, but Wikipedia has a long history of promoting each "sides" of an affair even if the other side is quacky, so my deletion attempt might not stand and Luis will have his sun shine again

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Princeton_aerial_object_incident
 
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a Reddit thread tries to debunk your debunking
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy...nk_recently_released/?st=jbfmvvxs&sh=32702f85
Not sure why I even bother but the article is dishonest.

In the end the object does not gently drift of screen. If you bother to watch the video (both of them) and understand what it's showing, the object does anything but gently drift away.

Also its deploying a sly tactic to claim legitimacy. It mentions a completely unrelated video to present an air of authority. "this video is bunk, thus the other must be as well"

Also don't forget that because something looks like something doesn't mean it is that something. It's not because it looks like a duck that it is a duck.

Final comment, the video in question comes from a gun cam. Fighter pilots are extremely well trained people. To assume that they are incapable of using their equipment and are not competent to distinguish a plane from something unusual is really stretching it.

But hey, people on both sides have made a career on peddling bullshit.

Regardless, the body of years of honest research establishes that something not from our known civilization is seen in the skies and in bodies of water. No amount of debunking will change those facts.

funny
 
A wikipedia entry has been made for the now renamed USS Princeton incident, being a wikipedia editor, i asked for its deletion, it is evidently part of Luis media campaign to reinstate his former investigation unit, but Wikipedia has a long history of promoting each "sides" of an affair even if the other side is quacky, so my deletion attempt might not stand and Luis will have his sun shine again

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Princeton_aerial_object_incident
Your reason for deletion is odd. The writer gets some facts wrong like
External Quote:
Raw footage from the encounters shows oval-shaped objects that match the pilots description of objects vaguely shaped like Tic Tacs
implying there is multiple footage, which as far as "those in the know" are concerned, is false.

But I don't see the article make any specific claims that the story the wiki entry relates is a definitive claim of a ufo. Metabunk is not debunking the pilots story.


edit add: you also make completely unsubstantiated claims
External Quote:
this article here is part of a media campaign from Delonge ufo site https://coi.tothestarsacademy.com/ with Luis Elizondo head of the former ufo investigation at the Pentagon, probably intended to secure more funds for his project
Do you have proof the article was written by someone involved with Delonge's program?
 
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Your reason for deletion is odd. The writer gets some facts wrong like
External Quote:
Raw footage from the encounters shows oval-shaped objects that match the pilots description of objects vaguely shaped like Tic Tacs
implying there is multiple footage, which as far as "those in the know" are concerned, is false.

But I don't see the article make any specific claims that the story the wiki entry relates is a definitive claim of a ufo. Metabunk is not debunking the pilots story.


edit add: you also make completely unsubstantiated claims
External Quote:
this article here is part of a media campaign from Delonge ufo site https://coi.tothestarsacademy.com/ with Luis Elizondo head of the former ufo investigation at the Pentagon, probably intended to secure more funds for his project
Do you have proof the article was written by someone involved with Delonge's program?

I'll let Wikipedia decide, thank you, there are UFO promoters in Wikipedia too, i don't think it is of historic significance to publish every incident in the sky on wikipedia because some want to believe and it's not because it is news that it is good news, maybe we could made a wikipedia entry "the USS Nimitz incident and how some ufo lobbyists can hijack the media attention to suit their agenda" that would make a fine entry
 
I'll let Wikipedia decide, thank you,

You posted your unsubstantiated speculation here on Metabunk. So I will reply as I see fit.

i don't think it is of historic significance to publish every incident in the sky on wikipedia
I don't think every off-topic off-site commentary on the Nimitz topic needs to published on Metabunk. Further off topic posts will be deleted.
 
Analysis of the "jerk" in velocity that's actually caused by the change in zoom levels.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIl4peYb59E

External Quote:


There's been some discussion about how these infrared UFO videos show impossibly high accelerations and g-forces

The is the end of the Nimitz video where the UFO shoots off, and looks like it accelerates rapidly.

Someone pointed me to this analysis by a retired physics professor, who calculates a massive g-force at at this point on the graph when it goes from V1 to V2. You can see this here in the video when the UFO suddenly jumps and speeds up.

However he missed that this coincides with a change in zoom from 1x to 2x

So to get an accurate track, we need to shrink the second half of the video down to half size.

When we do that we see that there isn't actually any speed up, and it all proceeds at more or less the same speed. No massive g-force required.

 
Tldr:
Multiple airmen (including both flights of F-18s) reported (according to Cmdr. Fravor) seeing a white, capsular or cylindrical shaped unidentified aircraft, with no wings or visible propulsion system, easily outperforming the F-18s. All of this was at coordinates where the Princeton tracked these bogies with it's more advanced radar systems. These reports aren't consistent with a distant planes simply being coincidentally picked up by the FLIR by the second flight of F-18s. The rapid lateral (in relation to the viewfinder) movement of the object also doesn't fit a distant plane unless this was also another camera artifact.

A couple of things I noticed in this CNN interview with Cmdr. Fravor



@ 3:04 - He describes the objects movements as ping ponging from one direction to another - it "would hit and go the other way". This is not evident anywhere in the 'tic-tac' video. All object movement and glitching, apart from the drifting off the screen at the end, can be easily explained as movement and mode/zoom switching of the camera system.

@ 4:13 - Speaking about the 'tic-tac' footage, he says, "you can't really discern what it is", but that, "there's a couple of shots when it gets closer, there's a couple of objects coming out of the bottom". Not only is this very significant claim not evident in the video, it does not appear anywhere in the Fightersweep article, nor in any of the related information on the To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science COI page. Those sources, including the declassified pilot report, only describe the object as uniformly smooth. One would infer that Cmdr. Fravor never saw the object close enough with his eyes to notice anything protruding or being released from the bottom of the object, and that he is relying on the fuzzy, grainy FLIR footage to make this dubious determination. I believe this calls into question the integrity of his account.
 
@ 3:04 - He describes the objects movements as ping ponging from one direction to another - it "would hit and go the other way". This is not evident anywhere in the 'tic-tac' video. All object movement and glitching, apart from the drifting off the screen at the end, can be easily explained as movement and mode/zoom switching of the camera system.

Agreed, the extremely rapid movement diagonally down right is clearly a camera movement, probably associated with the change from NAR (1.5°) to WFOV (6°), then it switches back to NAR, but has lost lock and the target just drifts off.
 
We can learn the following from a closer look at the f4.mpg file, directly downloaded from the Wayback Internet Archives:

1- In comparison with the TTS video, it lasts longer, 1'16.717 vs 1'16.209.
2- There are two missing frames in the beginning of the f4 video.
3- There are three missing frames at the end of the TTS video.

ee7b8b53e6a477dea52c213926683e92.png


4- The overall quality is better (less compression) in the f4 file.

Also, a close inspection of the metadata (with EXIFTool) is interesting:

501ef8e10a7d289dee16b54f866cac40.png


Compared to an original unedited mpeg-2 video (to the right), all the metadata tags are presents and correctly filled in. These are typical of the MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 standard, with the difference that MPEG-1 has lower resolution and a bitrate less than 1.5Mbit/s.

5- This line shows, besides the classic 4:3 format, that it is compliant with the NTSC standard for Americas (including USA). The mention "525 line" refers to the NTSC color encoding used for the television signal which consist of 30000/1001 interlaced (2x262.5 scanned lines) frames of video per second.

The CCIR601 mention refers to the standards as defined by the CCIR (International Telecommunication Union and Radiocommunication Sector) for encoding interlaced analog video signals in digital video signals.

Also, this is typically what we can see for a Source Input Format ("SIF") as defined for the MPEG-1 standard. SIF is a format used for color space and subsampling, image resolution and frame rate of digital videos.

SIF is used in Low Definition TV ("LDTV"), VCD, or Mobile Television (HTV).

6- Frame rate: 30000/1001 frames per second.

7- There's an audio track, conform to mpeg specifications, with Layer II ("MP2") and a corresponding 192kbps bitrate. What is odd here is that the MPEG-1 Audio track, as we can hear it, looks different in the f4 file and in the TTS file, although it can be perceived as a background noise, in both cases.

I wonder if, when TTS says "it is important to note that the video was delivered without audio", they checked at first (if there's any in the TTS "original" file) the metadata. "Without audio" might simply mean for TTS "without any noticeable sound.

8- Image size (video resolution) is compliant with the SIF 525 line (NTSC) based-system format.

What can be concluded from all of this?

- The f4 and the TTS video were cut differently.

- The f4 video was cut by a software that does not let any traces on the metadata, or possibly created by an in-built system. I was thinking of the ROVER system, but looks like F/A-18 Hornets were modified with ROVER capabilities only in 2006, for the first deployment of the USS Ronald Reagan. Could another early similar system have been used?
Anyway, it have to deal with the way the video was captured and rendered either by an in-built system or later during the tech debrief. There's probably more to dig here as I would be curious to know how the video is recorded (was it really done, back in 2004, with the MPEG-1 standards?)

- Unless someone talented manipulated the video, I do not see any tampering evidence for the f4 file. I tend to think that it is a "real" untouched video, thus not a hoax. Not 100% impossible, but… there's no evidence of that.

- If all the metadata are original, then the file is compliant with the NTSC standard, meaning that it was likely created in a NTSC area (USA, Canada…) and not in an European area (in Germany for example).

- F4 video is compliant with a classic NTSC television system, in a low-resolution and bitrate SIF format.

- There's an audio track, but what can be heard just looks like a background noise, not similar in both video though. Here also, I guess that there's more to learn.
 
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Is this the clip you are talking about, Robert Page? I am also unsure if the two different videos shown is of the incident that Fravor witnessed...

All footage aside, what would be the possible explanations for Commander David Fravor's testimony below? He is claiming that four personal were witness to this...



Commander Fravor says "I'm looking at him/them with my eyes" (2:01) and then says he got "within a mile to a half mile" (2:20) of the object.

Seems awfully close to not have better footage than what is being shown. If he had eyes on the object and was within a mile, i'd love to hear his visual description. Did he give a description? Maybe i missed it.
 
I don't think that video is particularly interesting in itself. The pilots story is quite remarkable though, but has it been corroborated by anyone else? There was an aircraft carrier with a crew of several thousands, a cruiser with a crew of several hundreds, and several airplanes with two pilots each. The Super Hornets would have had two persons in them each. Not sure if the Super Hornets picked up the object on radar or if only the cruiser did, but there was a radar observation. If the object was moving at extreme speeds and acceleration then that should have been visible on radar as well. Yet the only person who have confirmed this story is one of the pilots as far as I can tell. And the only piece of evidence released is the short snippet of FLIR camera video showing something.

If they are trying to disclose information why don't they release all the relevant data related to the event. If there was a formal investigation, why not release the resulting report. If there was no formal investigation, that also seems odd. They send out several jets to investigate a radar signal, the pilots report seeing a strange object, yet they do nothing else about it? (Had command figured out what it was the pilots had seen?)
 
I don't think that video is particularly interesting in itself. The pilots story is quite remarkable though, but has it been corroborated by anyone else? There was an aircraft carrier with a crew of several thousands, a cruiser with a crew of several hundreds, and several airplanes with two pilots each. The Super Hornets would have had two persons in them each. Not sure if the Super Hornets picked up the object on radar or if only the cruiser did, but there was a radar observation. If the object was moving at extreme speeds and acceleration then that should have been visible on radar as well. Yet the only person who have confirmed this story is one of the pilots as far as I can tell. And the only piece of evidence released is the short snippet of FLIR camera video showing something.

If they are trying to disclose information why don't they release all the relevant data related to the event. If there was a formal investigation, why not release the resulting report. If there was no formal investigation, that also seems odd. They send out several jets to investigate a radar signal, the pilots report seeing a strange object, yet they do nothing else about it? (Had command figured out what it was the pilots had seen?)
There wasn't that many people involved. Yes a Nimitz class carrier can have a crew approaching 5,000 (if the the air wing is embarked) but I doubt anyone on the mess deck knew what was going on. I would be surprised if the number is more than 20. Still a big number.
 
There wasn't that many people involved. Yes a Nimitz class carrier can have a crew approaching 5,000 (if the the air wing is embarked) but I doubt anyone on the mess deck knew what was going on. I would be surprised if the number is more than 20. Still a big number.
Yes, you're right, but I read somewhere the pilot was upset when he got back that they didn't debrief them properly, and that they were playing UFO-movies aboard the ship when they got back, which would indicate people were talking/joking about it.

According to some sources there were 6 planes, which means 12 pilots, that chased it and at least the USS Princeton was tracking the object on radar (some sources mention a E-2C Hawkeye as well). There must have been communications and other people monitoring the operation, and people in the command structure who knew everything? I have little knowledge about how they organize things on an air carrier but a lot of people should have seen and heard what was going on.
 
Yes, you're right, but I read somewhere the pilot was upset when he got back that they didn't debrief them properly, and that they were playing UFO-movies aboard the ship when they got back, which would indicate people were talking/joking about it.

According to some sources there were 6 planes, which means 12 pilots, that chased it and at least the USS Princeton was tracking the object on radar (some sources mention a E-2C Hawkeye as well). There must have been communications and other people monitoring the operation, and people in the command structure who knew everything? I have little knowledge about how they organize things on an air carrier but a lot of people should have seen and heard what was going on.
You're going to have to supply the sources regarding the E2C (crew of 6) and the other Super Hornets. The clowning was probably supplied by their own squadron. Again not the thousands claimed above.
 
You're going to have to supply the sources regarding the E2C (crew of 6) and the other Super Hornets. The clowning was probably supplied by their own squadron. Again not the thousands claimed above.
I never intended to say everyone of the crew knew about it, only that there must have been a lot of people involved!
External Quote:
The two Super Hornets returned to the USS Nimitz and were replaced by a second flight of four more Super Hornets, this time bearing Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) sensor pods.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/mil...the-us-navy-had-a-close-encounter-with-a-ufo/
popular mechanics have mixed up the nimitz video with the gimbal video though

External Quote:
While Princeton was communicating with Cheeks, they were also attempting to hand off their AAV contact to the Air Wing's E-2C Hawkeye, also airborne at the time.
https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/

TTSA also mentions the E2-C:
https://coi.tothestarsacademy.com/nimitz-report/
 
I never intended to say everyone of the crew knew about it, only that there must have been a lot of people involved!
External Quote:
The two Super Hornets returned to the USS Nimitz and were replaced by a second flight of four more Super Hornets, this time bearing Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) sensor pods.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/mil...the-us-navy-had-a-close-encounter-with-a-ufo/
popular mechanics have mixed up the nimitz video with the gimbal video though

External Quote:
While Princeton was communicating with Cheeks, they were also attempting to hand off their AAV contact to the Air Wing's E-2C Hawkeye, also airborne at the time.
https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/

TTSA also mentions the E2-C:
https://coi.tothestarsacademy.com/nimitz-report/
Still not a lot of people. The Super Hornets probably represent the same squadron. I served two years aboard USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in OZ division (intelligence).​
 
F4 video is compliant with a classic NTSC television system, in a low-resolution and bitrate SIF format.

In the 2.18.7 section of the NATOPS Flight Manual for the F/A-18E-F Super Hornet, we learn that the CVRS ("Cockpit Video Recording System") contains two video tape recorders, a HUD camera and two over-the-shoulder cameras that has the capability to record the left or right DDI from direct video input:

fa4d709d554f7a5838a4715232e30b99.png


The videos are directly recorded on removable 8mm video tape cartridges, which are commonly used for the NTSC television systems.

Then these removable cartridges can easily be post-processed to convert the analog signal to a digital one (MPEG-1 or MPEG-2) using a simple PC converter.

All of this, to me, looks quite normal and add to the legitimacy of the f4 video and the chain-of-custody to its creation, although I'm a little bit surprised to see that, even back in 2004, the Navy techs were still using the old MPEG-1 standard and analog signal recording systems.
 
1) The videos and Fravor's (and presumably the other airmen's) statements are completely unrelated. And if the implication is that he's lying, and since he's been involved in this since the beginning, and it's clear he's been given permission to talk to the media, it would have to be some kind of government psy-op, many years in the making, with a lot of confounding stuff mixed in (like the original video getting censored). The motivation is unclear, maybe they really did steal/redirect 22 million bucks for some bullshit program and want to justify it with this but I don't see how they think they could get away with it. Either way, if this was the case, they could have just doctored the videos or done them with CGI entirely, so trying to analyze them in terms of real physics might be a waste of time.

I wondered this. Until the elusive chain-of-custody documentation is published, we won't know, particularly because none of the news channel reporters seems to be using their heads and asking better questions. Fravor hasn't confirmed whether the Nimitz clip is from his F/A-18 or whether it wasn't and he was just on the scene at some point before or after it was taken. Would be good to know. but he does reply to a question from an interviewer specifically making reference to the Nimitz video.
 
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Metabunk is not debunking the pilots story.
Debunking Nimitz clip is premature. At best you're only going to predict Fravor is a charlatan and at worst the effort is only going to how the thread was way off. Apparently there's some chain-of-custody documentation and if it is released and puts Fravor as the pilot behind the clip rather than an earlier aircraft or one soon after him then it's solid despite the magnification giving the impression of a faster moving object unless something is learned which discredits Fravor.
 
This is not evident anywhere in the 'tic-tac' video. All object movement and glitching, apart from the drifting off the screen at the end, can be easily explained as movement and mode/zoom switching of the camera system... One would infer that Cmdr. Fravor never saw the object close enough with his eyes to notice anything protruding or being released from the bottom of the object, and that he is relying on the fuzzy, grainy FLIR footage to make this dubious determination. I believe this calls into question the integrity of his account.

He says in a clip that the the object "was in a climb and we're in a descent getting a great look at it. This whole thing takes about probably up to 5 minutes from the time we show up..." The clip is 2 minutes long (of actual footage) so in his estimation there's about probably 3 minutes we're not seeing if indeed this clip is from his intercept of the object. He also says that he could see the object with his eyes too and was within half-mile distance of the object.
 
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Debunking Nimitz clip is premature. At best you're only going to predict Fravor is a charlatan and at worst the effort is only going to how the thread was way off. Apparently there's some chain-of-custody documentation and if it is released and puts Fravor as the pilot behind the clip rather than an earlier aircraft or one soon after him then it's solid despite the magnification giving the impression of a faster moving object unless something is learned which discredits Fravor.
that's a lot of "if"s.

you can debunk certain claims easily enough. Like 'this is proof the object zoomed away at abnormally high speed' or 'this is proof of a UFO' (because there are other possible explanations eg. it looks like a plane).
 
that's a lot of "if"s.

you can debunk certain claims easily enough. Like 'this is proof the object zoomed away at abnormally high speed' or 'this is proof of a UFO' (because there are other possible explanations eg. it looks like a plane).

Thanks for my abc's. There's one and you're ignoring that if the two are paired together by chain-of-custody documentation then you'd need to discredit Fravor rather than any claim. No, that's not a second, that's a clarification of the first.
 
Thanks for my abc's. There's one and you're ignoring that if the two are paired together by chain-of-custody documentation then you'd need to discredit Fravor rather than any claim. No, that's not a second, that's a clarification of the first.
Metabunk focuses on specific claims of evidence. So I don't need to discredit Fravor, this thread is about the FLIR footage claimed to be of the NIMTZ event.

(although, I really can't follow what you are saying in your comment).
 
So I don't need to discredit Fravor, this thread is about the FLIR footage claimed to be of the NIMTZ event.

(although, I really can't follow what you are saying in your comment

Well, basically, if Fravor is matched as the pilot of the jet that took the footage from which the Nimitz clip is made then Fravor's credibility supersedes the footage and any efforts you've made in debunking the clip will have be much less important because all the community have is the change in magnification being the cause for the otherwise unusual leap in velocities. Unfortunately that's all there is, but according to Fravor there's at least three minutes not available to the public and an acceleration of the object to mach 1 in 2 seconds which is 39G's of force in a linear vector.

I think Gimbal is guff. If any chain-of-custody docs can confirm the pilot then TTSA should be pressured for the rest of Fravor's footage and any other data to corroborate his account. I don't see Gimbal going anywhere.

References:

Fravor is asked "What would you estimate the speed?" to which he replies 'supersonic' and also 'like a bullet out of a gun'. Although he doesn't give the speed you can estimate based on the comment 'supersonic'; mach 1, 768mph.

He also describes being on site about 5 minutes. The Nimitz clip is 2 minutes. So there's 3 minutes not released if this is Fravor's jet making the recording.
 
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