DHS "Rubber Duck" Footage

[Mick West]

More bad (or, at the very least, entirely unclear) reasoning:
Reali, page 42:

In Fig. A8 (p. 17) and Fig. E2 (below), the green line shows a possible trajectory of the object as the plane tracks it in its circular path. The yellow points RV1, RV5 and RV9 show where a river repeatedly comes into view. This shows that the object is traversing a circular path and is not located in a single location because the landscape keeps changing and repeating as the river comes in and out of view. If the object were stationary or circling a small area then the same objects in the landscape would be visible from different perspectives and this is not the case. Further in Appendix F Secs. 3-7 (p. 44-47) the pilot's description indicates that object was traveling through the valley and against the wind for an extended period of time. This is not consistent with a stationary object or one that was confined to a small area in its movement.

In particular:
"If the object were stationary or circling a small area then the same objects in the landscape would be visible from different perspectives and this is not the case."

That would only be true if the object was sat stationary on the ground, which it obviously is not.

As the object is stationary at some altitude above the ground, then it's literally impossible to see "the same objects in the landscape" from "different perspectives." Except:

1. Where the ground track crosses itself. i.e. the brief points where the spiral crosses itself.
2. The unlikely case where the plane is on the same line of sight, just further away)

A slow moving object moving in a straight line would also be very unlikely to ever have the same part of the background on video (other than the points where the ground tracks cross)

 

[Mick West]

They do give a link to a HD version of part 2 of the video:
https://zenodo.org/record/7301342/files/Rubber Duck 2.ts?download=1
Which might be useful if someone ever wants to play with automated screen scraping of coordinates, or suchlink.
Here's an mp4 version, seems pretty much the same
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ysqcp9jdfrvrwm/Rubber Duck 2.mp4?dl=0
and part 1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nstao23bgouw8wp/Rubber Duck 1.mp4?dl=0

 

[flarkey]

They do give a link to a HD version of part 2 of the video:
https://zenodo.org/record/7301342/files/Rubber Duck 2.ts?download=1
Which might be useful if someone ever wants to play with automated screen scraping of coordinates, or suchlink.

I didn't even know that was a thing. But after a quick Google it seems to be.

 

[Mick West]

On page 5, Reali says:

The object is tracked by an airplane and appears to be moving at a velocity against the wind as described one of the pilots in Appendix F Sec. 6 (p. 46). The plane is circling the object at 157 to 245 mph and motion parallax along with the trajectory of the object with respect to the plane may produce a false appearance of high velocity. This is analyzed in Appendix A Sec. 3-6 (p. 15-25).

Page 46:

The third anomalous characteristic of the UAP displayed in the video is its speed. The characteristic was also noted by the aircrew: the UAP "... did fly into the wind without difficulty."

They include the full field report.

7. CPB FIELD ENCOUNTER REPORT
CBP (redacted) Field Encounter (Unclassified/FOUO)

Report Title:
Family Unit Alien group used a diversionary tactic for a small unmanned aerial system incursion into U.S.
Date and Time of Information:
11/23/2019 00:33

Executive Summary:

On November 23, 2019, after the apprehension of a Family Unit Alien group of 92 illegal aliens in Border Zone (redacted) Area of Responsibility, an Army National Guard air asset spotted a small unmanned aerial system (SUAS) making an incursion into the United States from Mexico. TUS agents were unable to respond to the UAV due to the apprehension of the FMUA. Additional air assets were unable to respond to the area when the Army National Guard air asset had to return to base at 02:52 hours.


On November 23, 2019, at approximately 00:33 hours, the (redacted) Station (TUS) Common Operating Picture (COP) camera operators observed a large group of subjects illegally enter into the United States in Border Zone (redacted). At approximately 01:09 hours, TUS agents responded and apprehended the Family Unit Alien (FMUA) group of 92 without incident (ref. (redacted)).

A National Guard air asset, (redacted), was in the area when the FMUA group was apprehended and began to scan the surrounding area to check for any illicit traffic using the large FMUA group as diversion. At approximately 02:01 hours, the TUS Tactical Operations Center (TOC) Supervisor was notified that (redacted) had visual of a small unmanned aerial system (SUAS) carrying what appeared to be a package at coordinates N 31.479833, W -111.4215. The SUAS was observed between Cumero Mountain and Fresnal Wash, approximately three miles northeast of where the FMUA group was apprehended.

At 02:06 hours (redacted) provided a third and final coordinates of the SUAS of N 31.594667, W 111.479167, approximately 1.5 miles due east of Arivaca Lake. (redacted) advised that the SUAS was flying a slow back and forth pattern and that it appeared to be a circle towing a smaller circle underneath it. The SUAS was not giving off any heat signature but did fly into the wind without difficulty.

(redacted) had to return to base shortly after their final update (NFI). No other air assets were amiable to help in the search for the SUAS when (redacted) had to terminate. Mobile Surveillance Capabilities (MSC) and COP operators were unsuccessful assisting in locating the SUAS for the duration of the search or after (redacted) had to terminate.

Arizona would be MST, UTC-7, so the reports of a SUAS (drone) at 02:01 to 02:06 would be 09:01 to 09:06. That does put it in the middle of the Rubber Duck incident, both in time and location. However the description " it appeared to be a circle towing a smaller circle underneath it" does not seem to match.

And "the SUAS was flying a slow back and forth pattern" does not seem like anything that's apparent in the video.

However this is very interesting, and does seem to lend some support to the drone hypothesis.

 

[flarkey]

I have taken the Data points in Appendix E of the SCU report and plotted the data in 3d using Google Earth in a similar style to Figure A8..

Figure A8

In 3d In Google Earth... Green is at ground level. Red is at 14800 ft.

By joining the relative Air --> Ground datapoints we get the lines of sight (LOS) from the Camera to the ground...

In my post #119 above I hypothesised that if the object was drifting on the wind we would see a convergance of the lines of sight, similar to what we saw in the Aguadilla model. By rotating the view in google earth we get the following image...

This allows us to generate an approximate straight line path for the object, which we can then measure the distance and bearing of.

The line is at 2450m (8038ft) altitude, the ground is ~1150m (3772ft) , so is roughly 700m (2296ft) above the ground.

Distance of 6.85km was covered in a time of 28 mins. That equates to a speed of ~14kph on a heading of 342 degrees.

Now to look at the weather.... From @Mick West 's post above:

Use earth.nullschool.net. The altitude is probably somewhere between 850mb (1450m) and 700mb (3000m), you can change the date and time, and then click on the map and edit the URL to set an exact location, like
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/...raphic=-109.43,28.16,2443/loc=-111.440,31.510

View attachment 47088

This essentially incorporates the sounding data, but creates a more detailed model that should be more accurate for other locations.

That suggests a wind of 170 degrees at 9 km/h. This is very close to the speed of ~14kph on a heading of 342 degrees (342-180 = 162 degrees back bearing) deduced above.

This suggests that the object was just being blown by the wind and the apparent unusual motion is the result of the Parallax effect.

(Edits: Typos, formatting & clarifications)

 

[Mendel]

By joining the relative Air --> Ground datapoints we get the lines of sight (LOS) from the Camera to the ground...

Could you explain where exactly you're getting that data (air and ground) from? The column labels are confusing me.

The line is at 2450m (8038ft) altitude, the ground is ~1150m (3772ft) , so is roughly 700m (2296ft) above the ground.

Distance of 6.85km was covered in a time of 29.5 mins. That equates to a speed of ~14kph on a heading of 342 degrees.

Wind direction is given as where it's coming from, which is 180⁰ from where it's going. This motion could be caused by a 162 degree wind blowing at ~7.5 knots (=14 km/h).

Figure B4 (page 30) shows a plausible wind at approximately the right altitude:

Given that Tucson is some distance away from the "duck" sighting, that's probably as close as we're going to get.

 

[flarkey]

Could you explain where exactly you're getting that data (air and ground) from? The column labels are confusing me.

Sure, the SCU Paper Appendix E and Table E1 list the aircraft Latitude and longitude (columns 4 & 5) for 30 time stamps. Column 6). (Note the time stamps are M.S, rather than decimal Seconds). These points are times in the video at which the aircraft turns through N, S, E or W.

I trawled through the video for each of these timestamps and noted the Aircraft Altitude, and also the Boresight Position (Lat Long and Ground elevation). Had to convert between Lat/Long formats along the way, but the full data that I plugged into Google Earth is in the attached file.

 

[DavidB66]

A National Guard air asset, (redacted), was in the area when the FMUA group was apprehended and began to scan the surrounding area to check for any illicit traffic using the large FMUA group as diversion. At approximately 02:01 hours, the TUS Tactical Operations Center (TOC) Supervisor was notified that (redacted) had visual of a small unmanned aerial system (SUAS) carrying what appeared to be a package at coordinates N 31.479833, W -111.4215. The SUAS was observed between Cumero Mountain and Fresnal Wash, approximately three miles northeast of where the FMUA group was apprehended.

At 02:06 hours (redacted) provided a third and final coordinates of the SUAS of N 31.594667, W 111.479167, approximately 1.5 miles due east of Arivaca Lake. (redacted) advised that the SUAS was flying a slow back and forth pattern and that it appeared to be a circle towing a smaller circle underneath it. The SUAS was not giving off any heat signature but did fly into the wind without difficulty.

(redacted) had to return to base shortly after their final update (NFI). No other air assets were amiable [sic, presumably should be 'available'] to help in the search for the SUAS when (redacted) had to terminate.

The above is quoting from an internal Government source presumably obtained under the FOIA.
We are not told whether 'redacted' refers to the same source throughout, but that seems consistent with the text. If so, then the source is an 'air asset' using an IR camera of some sort [see reference to 'heat signature'], but possibly also direct eyeball visual ['had visual'] despite the time of around 2 a.m. This all suggests that the 'redacted' source is on the same aircraft as the source of the 'Rubber Duck' video, and does not have a vantage point independent from that of the video. (It would be another matter if the report were from an observer on the ground, e.g. one of the officers involved in apprehending the 'aliens'.) The value of the claims that 'the SUAS was flying a slow back and forth pattern', and 'did fly into the wind without difficulty', is therefore questionable, since any observer on the aircraft would be liable to be deceived by the same ambiguities of parallax as the video itself.

 

[Rory]

Well gee, that's a real slice of humble pie and foot in mouth for Reali and SCU. Also a nice vindication for Mick (and metabunk by extension) after Reali's clumsy diss in the NASA emails. It would be so nice if all parties involved could actually see and understand this whole conversation.

 

[flarkey]

Well gee, that's a real slice of humble pie and foot in mouth for Reali and SCU.

I doubt they'll ever see it. Certainly they won't acknowledge it.

 

[Mick West]

Could you explain where exactly you're getting that data (air and ground) from? The column labels are confusing me.

For the air data, see the first line here:

Compare to:

Through the video the degrees for lat and lon are always 31° and 111°, so the "Raw-Latitude" and "Raw-Longitude" omit them. Coincidentally the first minutes value is also 31, which is a bit confusing.
But the first air location is 31°31.4370', 111° 26.9383'
This is converted in their spreadsheet as 31+rawLat/60, 111+rawLon/60

Note the vert first line has an error, as they have 26.9383, when it should be 26.0383. @flarkey is using the correct value though, which is why his first line air coordinates are slightly different.

 

[flarkey]

Note the vert first line has an error, as they have 26.9383, when it should be 26.0383. @flarkey is using the correct value though, which is why his first line air coordinates are slightly different.

Well spotted. I only noticed this when I plotted the points in Google Earth and Point 1 was miles away from all the others. I corrected it manually.