Agent K
Senior Member
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
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."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
Later, the fightersweep account says
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.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.