2004 USS Nimitz Tic Tac UFO FLIR footage (FLIR1)

Agreed -- In fact, I find it more likely that the object in the video is NOT the Tic Tac that Fravor encountered. And the distance to the object in the video seems to be a crucial piece of information that needs to be established before one can make a conclusion one way or another.

I agree that the object in the video is likely not the tic tac. For calculations, I've been using 0.7 and 2.8 degrees for narrow (NAR) and medium (MFOV) field of view, based on the old spec sheet.
https://web.archive.org/web/2009121...s/sas/documents/content/rtn_sas_ds_atflir.pdf

I've been using 30 nautical mile range to the object in the video just because the secondhand fightersweep account says
External Quote:
The WSO first picked up a contact on the radar around 30nm away while it was operating in the RWS scan mode. He checked the coordinates and it was indeed hovering at their precise CAP point. He attempted several STT locks, to no avail. Later, in the debrief, he explained that he had multiple telltale cues of EA. The target aspect on the track file was turning through 360 degrees along with some other distinct jamming indications. In the less precise scan mode, the return indicated that the object was, in the WSO's words, "A few thousand feet below us. Around 15-20K– but hovering stationary." The only movement was generated by the closure of the fighter to the CAP location. The WSO resorted to the FLIR pod on board, slaving it to the weak track the RWS mode had been able to generate.
https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition
It's quite possible that by the time the FLIR saw the object, it was closer than 30 nmi. The above account also says that the object was "hovering at their precise CAP point," which corroborates Princeton's radar contact, and suggests that this was not an ordinary civilian jet. But the account also says that the F-18's radar indicated that the object was hovering below them and that the FLIR was slaved to the radar, yet the FLIR footage shows the object moving to the left above them, assuming that TTSA's video annotation is correct when it says "Sensor aimed 6° above aircraft axis."

Later, the fightersweep account says
External Quote:
It was simply hanging in midair. He [the WSO] switched to the TV mode and was able to again lock the FLIR onto the object while still trying, with no luck, to get a STT track on the radar. As he watched it, the AAV moved out of his screen to the left so suddenly it almost seemed to disappear. On the tape, when it is slowed down, the object accelerates out of the field of view with shocking speed. The WSO was not able to reacquire the AAV either in RWS or with the FLIR.
Yet the FLIR footage shows the object being tracked as it moves left, not "hanging in midair," assuming the F-18 was heading straight, since the artificial horizon stays level. At the end of the video, the object leaves the zoomed-in field of view with normal non-shocking speed, and it should've been trivial to zoom out and reacquire it.
 
At the end of the video, the object leaves the zoomed-in field of view with normal non-shocking speed, and it should've been trivial to zoom out and reacquire it.

Whether the speed is shocking or not depends on how far away the object was. Assuming the motion to the left off the screen at the end of the video was due to actual motion of the object, and not a camera movement artifact, it could actually be multi-mach speed if the object was far enough away.
 
Whether the speed is shocking or not depends on how far away the object was. Assuming the motion to the left off the screen at the end of the video was due to actual motion of the object, and not a camera movement artifact, it could actually be multi-mach speed if the object was far enough away.

If it's 30 nmi away, it's about 500 mph. It would have to be really far away and really big and high up to be going multi-mach speed, but no matter how far away it was, it wasn't moving too fast to reacquire the lost track. It was tracked just fine when it was moving left at about 0.23 degrees/second prior to losing track. And why would the fightersweep account assume that it's very far away after stating that it was about 30 nmi away?
 
Last edited:
If it's 30 nmi away, it's about 500 mph. It would have to be really far away and really big and high up to be going multi-mach speed, but no matter how far away it was, it wasn't moving too fast to reacquire the lost track. It was tracked just fine when it was moving left at about 0.23 degrees/second prior to losing track. And why would the fightersweep account assume that it's very far away after stating that it was about 30 nmi away?

Hmm... I'm getting a speed of 760 mph if it's at 30 nautical miles distance. That's considerably above the speed of sound at that altitude.
 
A Reddit post from 4 years ago appears to be another account of the Nimitz incident from a crew member who was not a pilot. It contains a potential explanation of what happened to David Fravor's "gun tape":

External Quote:
That night in the berthing I asked a very close friend in intel if he could confirm the legitimacy of the film. Without speaking, he gestured that it was correct. So, my skepticism began to fade and that next day a group of individuals were "cod'ed" onto the carrier and they retrieved all the tapes. I can confirm they cod'ed onto the ship, but the seizure of tapes came from people that work in those shops.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comme...re_while_on_board_an/?st=JBGR1RZM&sh=51769c5f
 
How did you get 0.23 deg/sec? I was using 0.35 deg/sec, since it moves through half of the screen in about a second.

It moved from 0 to 8 degrees azimuth in 35 seconds, or 0.23 deg/sec average.
When the track was lost, it only moved a quarter of the field of view in a second, because it was at 2X zoom.
 
It moved from 0 to 8 degrees azimuth in 35 seconds, or 0.23 deg/sec average.
When the track was lost, it only moved a quarter of the field of view in a second, because it was at 2X zoom.

Isn't the 2X zoom already accounted for by reducing the 1.5 degree FOV for NAR by half?
 
A Reddit post from 4 years ago appears to be another account of the Nimitz incident from a crew member who was not a pilot. It contains a potential explanation of what happened to David Fravor's "gun tape"

Nice find. Other Reddit posts by the same person provide more information, including info about the Nimitz radar
External Quote:
Just to give more specific info, i was aboard the USS Nimitz during the encounter. My job was to strip the black boxes from every plane. The black box tracks all of the flight data which tracks the life limits of aircraft parts. I was in charge of stripping black boxes. Although, I did not see the actual film, i replayed the flight in a 3d computer generated re-enactment. All of the evidence I could gather from my technical position verified the story.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1qyu5i/my_ufo_encounterexposure_while_on_board_an/cdinguw/

I didn't talk to any radar analysts. I believe (not positive at all) that we only had 1 radar analyst position in my squadron. Obviously, the ship has tons of radar analysts but my squadron only has 1. He is our Ops O or Operations Officer. He did describe the speed being .8 mach which he compared to a Cessna. It was traveling at 20,000 ft every time it was spotting and disappeared from the radar within minutes of appearing twice prior to the scrambling of jets. I may have remembered the speed incorrectly, I am no expert on aircraft physics and those specifics. I do believe he said ".8 mach"...
the tapes (although they lasted 24 hours) were absolutely limited to individuals with highest clearance. (Hence, my friend in intel).
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1qyu5i/my_ufo_encounterexposure_while_on_board_an/cdi39ue/

My personal belief is that it was a military project. I believe they were attempted to test its stealth/evasive capabilities by testing the strike group. We had 3 aircraft carriers in an unusually large exercise which would have provided a pretty good testing ground for such technology. That is just my opinion!
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1qyu5i/my_ufo_encounterexposure_while_on_board_an/cdi1le7/
It sounds like he's talking about the Nimitz radar, as opposed to the Princeton's more powerful radar.
Strange that he says he didn't talk to any radar analysts, but then quotes one.
0.8 mach at 20,000 ft would be 566 mph, which is consistent with the FLIR video.
 
Not sure what to make of this, but NASA was conducting a X-43A scramjet test flight on Nov. 16, 2004 at the San Clemente test range. A B-52 was flown at 40,000 ft and Mach 0.8 to carry and release the test vehicle:

External Quote:

The B-52, with the stack mated under its wing, took off from EAFB in the Western Aeronautical Test Range (WATR) of DFRC, with a transition to the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWC-WD) Sea Range for the drop, boost, experiment, descent, and splashdown portions of the mission. The entire mission following the drop from the B-52 was carried out autonomously, and the HXRV was not recovered after splashdown. The expected flightpath over the NAWC-WD Sea Range was calculated so that any potential mission debris would land in designated weapons testing zones, which are free of boat traffic during NAWC-WD missions.

In order to launch the vehicle in the calculated hazard zones, the stack had to be dropped from the B-52 precisely within a 3 -minute launch window while the B-52 was flying at Mach 0.8. To meet this launch objective, waypoints along the B-52 ground track from EAFB were defined. Mission planners from the DFRC Operations Engineering branch carefully defined activities during the 45-minute captive-carry flight to the launch point so that all in-flight vehicle preparations would take place on a timed schedule. These waypoints and the B-52 ground track are outlined in Fig. 2. The B-52 both originated and ended its flight at EAFB (noted by the EDW waypoint). Table 1 describes the activities onboard the B-52 along the B-52 flight profile. The entire research mission was controlled and monitored by the flight research team in the DFRC Mission Control Center (MCC).

https://archive.org/stream/nasa_techdoc_20060027798/20060027798_djvu.txt
Could the object in the FLIR video be the B-52?
 
Last edited:
Nice find. Other Reddit posts by the same person provide more information, including info about the Nimitz radar
External Quote:
Just to give more specific info, i was aboard the USS Nimitz during the encounter. My job was to strip the black boxes from every plane. The black box tracks all of the flight data which tracks the life limits of aircraft parts. I was in charge of stripping black boxes. Although, I did not see the actual film, i replayed the flight in a 3d computer generated re-enactment. All of the evidence I could gather from my technical position verified the story.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1qyu5i/my_ufo_encounterexposure_while_on_board_an/cdinguw/

I didn't talk to any radar analysts. I believe (not positive at all) that we only had 1 radar analyst position in my squadron. Obviously, the ship has tons of radar analysts but my squadron only has 1. He is our Ops O or Operations Officer. He did describe the speed being .8 mach which he compared to a Cessna. It was traveling at 20,000 ft every time it was spotting and disappeared from the radar within minutes of appearing twice prior to the scrambling of jets. I may have remembered the speed incorrectly, I am no expert on aircraft physics and those specifics. I do believe he said ".8 mach"...
the tapes (although they lasted 24 hours) were absolutely limited to individuals with highest clearance. (Hence, my friend in intel).
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1qyu5i/my_ufo_encounterexposure_while_on_board_an/cdi39ue/

My personal belief is that it was a military project. I believe they were attempted to test its stealth/evasive capabilities by testing the strike group. We had 3 aircraft carriers in an unusually large exercise which would have provided a pretty good testing ground for such technology. That is just my opinion!
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1qyu5i/my_ufo_encounterexposure_while_on_board_an/cdi1le7/
It sounds like he's talking about the Nimitz radar, as opposed to the Princeton's more powerful radar.
Strange that he says he didn't talk to any radar analysts, but then quotes one.
0.8 mach at 20,000 ft would be 566 mph, which is consistent with the FLIR video.
It sounds like he was talking about the aircraft radar and not the ships radar. He said his squadron had only one radar analyst. He is referring to an aircraft squadron.
 
It sounds like he was talking about the aircraft radar and not the ships radar. He said his squadron had only one radar analyst. He is referring to an aircraft squadron.

His original post said
External Quote:
I was attached to an F18 squadron and worked in a technical capacity, as opposed to working on the flight deck. For 3 days in a row, an Operations Officer noticed an aircraft breaching our restricted airspace. The aircraft was traveling at a low speed at around 20,000 feet. The first 2 days the aircraft was observed, it disappeared from radar after a few minutes before being able to investigate. In preparation for this aircraft, the carriers had f18s ready to scramble.
So they saw the aircraft on radar for three days in a row before scrambling the F-18s. Sounds like the ship's radar.
 
His original post said
External Quote:
I was attached to an F18 squadron and worked in a technical capacity, as opposed to working on the flight deck. For 3 days in a row, an Operations Officer noticed an aircraft breaching our restricted airspace. The aircraft was traveling at a low speed at around 20,000 feet. The first 2 days the aircraft was observed, it disappeared from radar after a few minutes before being able to investigate. In preparation for this aircraft, the carriers had f18s ready to scramble.
So they saw the aircraft on radar for three days in a row before scrambling the F-18s. Sounds like the ship's radar.
Probably . Remember ships are linked. It may not be Nimitz's radar. They used to call it NTDS. Naval Tactical Data System.
 
The 1.0x zoom refers to digital zoom. The actual magnification comes from the focal length. Of which the widest is 6°, and the ones used were 1.5° and 3°, mostly 1.5°. The image is highly magnified. It's hard to draw comparisons to the naked eye, but it's roughly 10x magnification.
Here's a nice graphic (from here) that might help explain focal length.

d787e48186df769035576361a5eacbb5.jpg

It shows "Super telephoto" @ ~4˚. The NAR setting for most of the Nimitz UFO is @ 1.5° x 1.5°, so even beyond super telephoto! This really changes my impression of the target. Given the pilot that took the Nimitz footage wasn't Fravor and arrived at a later time, we can't say for sure if the target was ever seen with the naked eye by anyone. Huge factor!
 
The 1.0x zoom refers to digital zoom. The actual magnification comes from the focal length. Of which the widest is 6°, and the ones used were 1.5° and 3°, mostly 1.5°. The image is highly magnified. It's hard to draw comparisons to the naked eye, but it's roughly 10x magnification.

Here's a nice graphic (from here) that might help explain focal length.

My quote there is conflating "focal length" and "field of view". Focal length is (kind of) the distance in mm between the lens and the sensor (the top number in your diagram). Field of view is an angle (the bottom number).
 
My quote there is conflating "focal length" and "field of view". Focal length is (kind of) the distance in mm between the lens and the sensor (the top number in your diagram). Field of view is an angle (the bottom number).

So can you confirm what the FOV in the video would be at NAR with 2x zoom? 0.7 degrees or 0.35 degrees?
 
So can you confirm what the FOV in the video would be at NAR with 2x zoom? 0.7 degrees or 0.35 degrees?

No. I've seen both 1.5° and 0.7° for the NAR FOV. (2x would be half that)
https://web.archive.org/web/2009121...s/sas/documents/content/rtn_sas_ds_atflir.pdf
Metabunk 2018-01-22 15-23-31.jpg



https://forums.vrsimulations.com/support/index.php/A/G_Advanced_Targeting_FLIR_(ATFLIR)
External Quote:
The Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) system provides three pilot-selectable fields of view (FOV): Wide field of view (WFOV), which is 6°x6°, medium field of view (MFOV), which is 3°x3°, and narrow field of view (NAR) which is 1.5°x1.5°.
I would tend towards Raytheon's numbers.
 
My quote there is conflating "focal length" and "field of view". Focal length is (kind of) the distance in mm between the lens and the sensor (the top number in your diagram). Field of view is an angle (the bottom number).
Here's a nice graphic (from here) that might help explain focal length.

It shows "Super telephoto" @ ~4˚. The NAR setting for most of the Nimitz UFO is @ 1.5° x 1.5°, so even beyond super telephoto! This really changes my impression of the target. Given the pilot that took the Nimitz footage wasn't Fravor and arrived at a later time, we can't say for sure if the target was ever seen with the naked eye by anyone. Huge factor!

The NAR field of view (FOV) is more like 0.7°. As far as resolution, you want the instantaneous field of view (IFOV), which is the FOV seen by the sensor, and is usually given as the FOV divided by the number of pixels, so in the NAR setting with a 640x480 pixel sensor, the IFOV is about 20 to 25 microradians per pixel. The resolution in IR is also diffraction limited, so adding more pixels won't make the image much sharper. If the target length is 1/25 the display, then it's about 640/25=25.6 pixels long, although the display seems to be cropped to be more square, so it may be fewer than 640 pixels wide.

Anyway, we have the video, Fravor's eyewitness account, and various accounts of radar contacts. Some of them describe weird motion, others don't. The video itself doesn't really show anything weird, but the FLIR camera was reportedly slaved to the F-18's radar, which detected the object "at their precise CAP point," which corroborates the Princeton's radar, which reportedly detected weird motions like an object descending from 80,000 feet, which is what Fravor was vectored to intercept when he saw the weird tic tac.
 
I cropped it to simulate 2X zoom, reduced it to about 240x240 pixels, which is how small the original mpeg file was, and then resized it back to about 500x500.
Do you think that it would be going right to left like the Nimitz target, which seem to move along that vector fairly slowly?

I used my video editor to count frames at each LOS degree.

First in each row is each LOS degree, second is the range of time (eg, 4135…4143) that LOS occurs by the ATFLIR screen clock, third is its frame range (eg, 0-255) from beginning to end of footage, and fourth are its frames per LOS degree.

4˚R, 4135…4143, 0-255 (255)
3˚R, 4143…4147, 256-381 (125)
4˚R, 4148…4148, 382-411 (29)
3˚R, 4149…4158, 412-704 (292)
2˚R, 4158…4207, 705-962 (257)
1˚R, 4207…4209, 963-1036 (73)
1˚L, 4209…4213, 1037-1148 (111)
0˚L, 4213…4219, 1149-1334 (185)
1˚L, 4219…4223, 1335-1436 (101)
2˚L, 4223…4229, 1437-1592 (155)
3˚L, 4229…4232, 1593-1712 (119)
4˚L, 4232…4236, 1713-1838 (125)
5˚L, 4236…4240, 1839-1946 (107)
6˚L, 4240…4243, 1947-2042 (95)
7˚L, 4243…4248, 2043-2187 (144)
8˚L, 4248…4249, 2188-2212 (coherence lost)


From 4˚R to 0˚L (excluding 0) is 1,142 frames
From 0˚L to 4˚L (excluding 0) is 500 frames

So there's an asymmetry in its motion. However, might this be an artifact of the F18's motion? It stays very level throughout, so there's no sign of banking. However, the rudder affects yaw, allowing for turning left and right while maintaining horizontal stability. So is it even possible to tease apart the target's from the F18's motion?
 
Last edited:
Do you think that it would be going left to right like the Nimitz target, which seem to move along that vector fairly slowly?

I used my video editor to count frames at each LOS degree.

First in each row is each LOS degree, second is the range of time (eg, 4135…4143) that LOS occurs by the ATFLIR screen clock, third is its frame range (eg, 0-255) from beginning to end of footage, and fourth are its frames per LOS degree.

From 4˚R to 0˚L (excluding 0) is 1,142 frames
From 0˚L to 4˚L (excluding 0) is 500 frames

So there's an asymmetry in its motion. However, might this be an artifact of the F18's motion? It stays very level throughout, so there's no sign of banking. However, the rudder affects yaw, allowing for turning left and right while maintaining horizontal stability. So is it even possible to tease apart the target's from the F18's motion?

You mean going right to left? 0.23 deg/sec isn't slow, it's 500 mph if it's 30 nmi away.
The F-18 banks right a little bit throughout the video, but probably not enough to account for the motion, since it looks like it banks more in the beginning when the motion is slower. It's hard to tease apart just from eyeballing the bank angle in the video.
 
0.2 deg./sec. is fairly typical of what I see with airliners crossing at about 70 km. range. If you call one radian 60 deg,, and take a typical speed as 250 m/sec. it works out at around 15 degrees/sec. /( range in km.) at closest approach, less if not tangential.
tracking rate.PNG
 
Here's a gif animation of the full 2x TV segment @ 3.5x speed.

df0994fa07ca18f734efea768810ab83.gif


It seems almost we're initially seeing it somewhat down its length and it gradually rotates so that we're seeing it flush alongside. It also seems like we get some non-capsule-shape indications at the very end of the segment, along its bottom, and its left-side nose becomes more tapered perhaps on account of an apparent slight lower protrusion from the capsule form at the closing. That changes may be clues of being a jet.
 
It ought to be pointed out how TTSA damaged the Nimitz evidence by squeezing it horizontally versus the original file posted in 2007. Here I've normed their heights, revealing that their copy of the Nimitz footage was narrowed. These are not the exact same frames.

7f43b06a38c338839c7237e7aa460b57.jpg


The original is square, just as the ATFLIR FOV is supposed to be. Fixing TTSA's footage requires a width correction of exactly 110%. Youtube (at least in the past) would sometimes squeeze videos horizontally. To test for that possible cause I tested the TTSA logo placed over the footage for circularity, as it too should be squeezed if the cause originates with youtube. Their logo is a perfect circle. So it seems they somehow managed to damage the evidence they "released." People have paid them $2.5 million for having provided damaged evidence, probably of jets.
 
Here's a gif animation of the full 2x TV segment @ 3.5x speed.

df0994fa07ca18f734efea768810ab83.gif


It seems almost we're initially seeing it somewhat down its length and it gradually rotates so that we're seeing it flush alongside. It also seems like we get some non-capsule-shape indications at the very end of the segment, along its bottom, and its left-side nose becomes more tapered perhaps on account of an apparent slight lower protrusion from the capsule form at the closing. That changes may be clues of being a jet.

Are you starting to see what I was describing in my previous post?
To me the target in TV mode looks like an airplane heading left and towards the camera, banking to the target's right, and viewed from below. I can sort of make out its wings and tail.
 
The targets dropping from 80,000 ft. could be unrelated to the visual targets, such as ozonesondes after bursting. They can be equipped with radar reflectors.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ozwv/ozsondes/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosonde

I did wonder if this was a weather balloon/Project Mogul sort of thing, and when Fravor talked about the tic tac "mirroring" him, like being at 6 o'clock when he was at 12 o'clock, could the tic tac just be a balloon ascending vertically and Fravor overestimating the range to it as he was circling it before it popped? But then Slaight should've seen that from above, and some accounts describe the capsule moving fast and straight. And where did it come from, the submarine?
 
If estimates of of FOV, and angular velocity are correct, then the object would seem to be considerably smaller than an Easyjet A319 at a transverse speed of 500 knots. The slower the target it is, the closer and smaller the object becomes.
 
Do you see it now?
Not bad. Ya, I can kinda of see that. But I believe the silhouette of objects seen in visible light against a brighter background like the sky at great distance tend to diminish or narrow in size rather than bloom. The brighter background tends to 'shine into' their volume. But this TV target would seem to bloom by your proposed interpretation.

That said, given Fravor didn't see this target himself and only after looking at this footage said it looked like the UFO he saw, the value of the evidence in the Nimitz case, imo, drops significantly. Consider also that the pilot report attributes no opinion of the pilots who took this footage as to whether this target behaved unusually. The fact that the report was made to record Fravor's account and fails to mention that the other pilots who later on filmed this target also witnessed extraordinary behavior tends to suggest they didn't witness anything out of the ordinary.

It bothers me that Fravor's statements about "the UFO" jumble together what he saw with his eyes, what radar showed and what this footage shows. That he so easily blends together what may be different objects seen on different systems at different times into one continuous object has to make the critical thinker wary. The 'extraordinary evidence' criterion is the gold standard we have to keep constantly in mind here, and that kind of commingling memory is exactly contrary. The given evidence in this case simply cannot even come close to meeting Sagan's burden.
 
The 'extraordinary evidence' criterion is the gold standard we have to keep constantly in mind here, and that kind of commingling memory is exactly contrary. The given evidence in this case simply cannot even come close to meeting Sagan's burden.

A Pedant writes: It was actually Marcello Truzzi who coined the apothegm about extraordinary evidence. Apparently not a lot of people know that.
External Quote:

An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.

— Marcello Truzzi, "On the Extraordinary: An Attempt at Clarification", Zetetic Scholar, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 11, 1978
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Do you think that it would be going right to left like the Nimitz target, which seem to move along that vector fairly slowly?

I used my video editor to count frames at each LOS degree.

First in each row is each LOS degree, second is the range of time (eg, 4135…4143) that LOS occurs by the ATFLIR screen clock, third is its frame range (eg, 0-255) from beginning to end of footage, and fourth are its frames per LOS degree.

4˚R, 4135…4143, 0-255 (255)
3˚R, 4143…4147, 256-381 (125)
4˚R, 4148…4148, 382-411 (29)
3˚R, 4149…4158, 412-704 (292)
2˚R, 4158…4207, 705-962 (257)
1˚R, 4207…4209, 963-1036 (73)
1˚L, 4209…4213, 1037-1148 (111)
0˚L, 4213…4219, 1149-1334 (185)
1˚L, 4219…4223, 1335-1436 (101)
2˚L, 4223…4229, 1437-1592 (155)
3˚L, 4229…4232, 1593-1712 (119)
4˚L, 4232…4236, 1713-1838 (125)
5˚L, 4236…4240, 1839-1946 (107)
6˚L, 4240…4243, 1947-2042 (95)
7˚L, 4243…4248, 2043-2187 (144)
8˚L, 4248…4249, 2188-2212 (coherence lost)


From 4˚R to 0˚L (excluding 0) is 1,142 frames
From 0˚L to 4˚L (excluding 0) is 500 frames

So there's an asymmetry in its motion. However, might this be an artifact of the F18's motion? It stays very level throughout, so there's no sign of banking. However, the rudder affects yaw, allowing for turning left and right while maintaining horizontal stability. So is it even possible to tease apart the target's from the F18's motion?

Just occurred to me that the longer time it takes for the LOS to travel from 4˚R to 0˚L than from 0˚L to 4˚L I demonstrated above is consistent with getting closer to a distant target traveling right to left, because a target traveling at a constant speed would cover a smaller fraction of a given FOV when further away than when closer. There's also more back-and-forth-degree variance during the 4˚R to 0˚L period, implying the target was harder to track when it was further away, so the tracking is then more prone to error from local turbulence affecting the camera and causing it to make LOS-degree backtracks.
 
Back
Top