F-16 Pilot- Chris Lehto analyses Gimbal footage

I was rather expecting Chris Lehto to come back saying: 'Aha, but you can't trust the banking angle shown on the screen. Any expert pilot knows that isn't reliable. ' I don't think he has (yet), but be prepared!

The UFO enthusiasts increasingly remind me of the flat-earthers. If you refute one claim, then without blushing they come up with some ad hoc excuse. If you're not careful you'll be knocked over by the rapidly moving goalposts.
It's already happening, estimating the bank angle from the artificial horizon is better than assuming 3 degrees. But it's all lost in the noise.

We are already at the point where we have videos from guys like sim pilot Alpha Check about the complete infallibility of US military systems, and videos from ex F16 pilots telling us the same systems present inaccurate numbers.

We also now have two UFO theory proponents telling us 2 different things about the same on screen number, TTSA and Chris Lehto.

I'm sure at the time of the TTSA release if we had questioned the RNG figure on Go Fast we would have been told "the systems don't make mistakes," now the same people are saying oh that figure, the one that basically says it's not low/fast, that's now wrong.

Chris Lehto, pilot says the videos are odd, all over UFO Twitter/Reddit, CW Lemoine says they don't show anything unusual, ignored.
 
I was rather expecting Chris Lehto to come back saying: 'Aha, but you can't trust the banking angle shown on the screen. Any expert pilot knows that isn't reliable. ' I don't think he has (yet), but be prepared!
One thing we shouldn't expect, though, is that he will ever say "I was wrong." Judging from his YouTube persona he strikes me as a guy who is incapable of admitting error.
 
One thing we shouldn't expect, though, is that he will ever say "I was wrong." Judging from his YouTube persona he strikes me as a guy who is incapable of admitting error.
Do you think he could admit he was wrong about having two things at different distances in focus at the same time? Mick presented a single photo of Yosemite that totally obliterated that ridiculous claim. After he said that (smugly even) he lost all credibility from my perspective.
 
I was rather expecting Chris Lehto to come back saying: 'Aha, but you can't trust the banking angle shown on the screen. Any expert pilot knows that isn't reliable. ' I don't think he has (yet), but be prepared!

The UFO enthusiasts increasingly remind me of the flat-earthers. If you refute one claim, then without blushing they come up with some ad hoc excuse. If you're not careful you'll be knocked over by the rapidly moving goalposts.
thats because their spaceships are all manufactured by the same company: "Russel's Teapot Inc"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
 
The moment you go to a lot of effort to specifically call someone out for not talking to pilots like you, then ignore their polite requests to address that issue with you, a pilot, you lose much credence from me.

He still has time to address all this of course, I mean he could have posted here 1st.
 
Do you think he could admit he was wrong about having two things at different distances in focus at the same time? Mick presented a single photo of Yosemite that totally obliterated that ridiculous claim. After he said that he lost all credibility from my perspective.
Ha! We'll see, but my guess is that he ignores that point completely.
 
I was rather expecting Chris Lehto to come back saying: 'Aha, but you can't trust the banking angle shown on the screen. Any expert pilot knows that isn't reliable. ' I don't think he has (yet), but be prepared!

In some ways, that would be progress. Once everything in the video has been declared "unreliable", we're effectively here:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zdmqV2iDN8

Some might say we're there already, of course. ;-)
 
I was half into writing this comment, trying to give the guy the benefit of the doubt because it was obvious to me that he was confusing terminology - confusing focal blur with motion blur. But then I watched again and at 13:00, while talking about the water being blurry, quote :"and you could say yea well because it's moving, right?"
So yeah, I tend to trust these guys and just because he made this mistake does not negate other interesting aspects he pointed out. But that was an epic fail. Like those MMA fighters that taunt and trash talk and the second they jump in the ring, BAM, they get Micked.
 
It's interesting that the TTSA crowd -- who adamantly deny Gimbal could be a distant airliner -- seem uninterested in finding out the date, time, lat, long, and heading of the Gimbal F-18. Then they could show that there were no airliners anywhere near that vector. But maybe they're afraid of a replay of the 2014 Chilean Navy UFO, which the Internet solved in <72 hours after a failed 2-year Chilean military investigation.
 
This situation has raised another thought for me:

All the information is available in a straightforward, digestible form from Mick and the explanations genuinely could not be any simpler or easier to understand without loss of information. They are each like 5-7 minutes long and disagreeing with them requires some difficult-to-justify logical moves.

Now the issue seems to be that people simply refuse to watch them and instead are resorting to all sorts of subversive tactics to deny and suppress the information while promoting anything that can convince people to not listen to the arguments, appeals to authority etc.

So what can be done, in a "strategic" sense, to promote people actually engaging with the evidence and arguments? It seems like anywhere I present these videos as evidence, I have to get into an argument about video game developers vs pilots.
 
This situation has raised another thought for me:

All the information is available in a straightforward, digestible form from Mick and the explanations genuinely could not be any simpler or easier to understand without loss of information. They are each like 5-7 minutes long and disagreeing with them requires some difficult-to-justify logical moves.

Now the issue seems to be that people simply refuse to watch them and instead are resorting to all sorts of subversive tactics to deny and suppress the information while promoting anything that can convince people to not listen to the arguments, appeals to authority etc.

So what can be done, in a "strategic" sense, to promote people actually engaging with the evidence and arguments? It seems like anywhere I present these videos as evidence, I have to get into an argument about video game developers vs pilots.

It's fascinating. It seems it's more to do with people wanting to believe a certain claim. (And there are a lot of people I've encountered who seem to deeply want to believe in aliens!)

We all do this to some extent. We become invested in a viewpoint. I try not to. I try to invest in the discovery of evidence, wherever it may lead. But it is hard to do when people are shouting obvious falsehoods. It's natural to want to engage in arguments. At least it is for me.

I think the Socratic method is a good approach. Ask questions. Be kind. Arguments tend to cause people to just dig into their current positions.

But I'm pretty pessimistic overall. People are predisposed to believe strange things. The evidence seems to indicate that evidence won't change that.
 
It's interesting that the TTSA crowd -- who adamantly deny Gimbal could be a distant airliner -- seem uninterested in finding out the date, time, lat, long, and heading of the Gimbal F-18. Then they could show that there were no airliners anywhere near that vector. But maybe they're afraid of a replay of the 2014 Chilean Navy UFO, which the Internet solved in <72 hours after a failed 2-year Chilean military investigation.
In this case I'm a fan of believing the Pilot/WSO who say in the video that it's a drone

Funny how UFO believers go suddenly deaf when that is said. Believe pilots, except when they say something contrary to beliefs it seems
 
Chris mentioned the Bokeh argument at 20 mins into his video, but I don't think he was using this word correctly. The blur isn't caused by parts of the image being out of focus.

From wiki:

In photography, bokeh (/ˈboʊkə/ BOH-kə or /ˈboʊkeɪ/ BOH-kay;[1] Japanese: [boke]) is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image.[2][3][4] Bokeh has also been defined as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light".[5] Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause very different bokeh effects.[6] Some lens designs blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce distracting or unpleasant blurring ("good" and "bad" bokeh, respectively).[6] Photographers may deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions, accentuating their lens's bokeh.

source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh
 
In this case I'm a fan of believing the Pilot/WSO who say in the video that it's a drone

Funny how UFO believers go suddenly deaf when that is said. Believe pilots, except when they say something contrary to beliefs it seems

I don't know if there is a definitive transcript, but to my ear, in the unedited (and uncensored) video - it sounds like he's saying "it ain't a fuckin' drone bro."

[it-ainna] is slurred together in a way that's familiar to me as a midwesterner.

This also matches his surprised tone when he says, "my gosh."


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKHg-vnTFsM&ab_channel=8NewsNOWLasVegas


Ultimately I think the audio is too garbled to say with certainty whether he is confirming or denying that it is a drone at that moment.
 
I don't know if there is a definitive transcript, but to my ear, in the unedited (and uncensored) video - it sounds like he's saying "it ain't a fuckin' drone bro."

[it-ainna] is slurred together in a way that's familiar to me as a midwesterner.

This also matches his surprised tone when he says, "my gosh."


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKHg-vnTFsM&ab_channel=8NewsNOWLasVegas


Ultimately I think the audio is too garbled to say with certainty whether he is confirming or denying that it is a drone at that moment.


When it was released by TTSA with Elizondo on board, they had subtitled the video. See below:

When you slow it down, he say's "it is a f...ng drone bro"

1623218437576.png
 
When it was released by TTSA with Elizondo on board, they had subtitled the video. See below:
the subtitles are not primary evidence
they're likely just what the person charged with providing the subtitles thought they heard
since we can hear the same audio they did, the subtitles don't mean anything
 
the subtitles are not primary evidence
they're likely just what the person charged with providing the subtitles thought they heard
since we can hear the same audio they did, the subtitles don't mean anything

The thing you are not considering is that it was released by TTSA with Elizondo, Elizondo was the guy who got the video and had access to AATIP's investigation on the event which would have included interviews with the pilot and WSO.

If they released the vid with that caption and it wasn't as Elizondo remembered as per the case file, he surely would have corrected it
 
Assuming they talked to the pilot is pure speculation. We have no idea what their investigations consisted of or if they were consistent across 'events.'
 
Only the UFO proponents get to assume whatever they want about what may or may not have happened. They also get to decide which parts of whatever TTSA/Elizondo said is true/false depending on whatever suits the case at the time.
 
Only the UFO proponents get to assume whatever they want about what may or may not have happened. They also get to decide which parts of whatever TTSA/Elizondo said is true/false depending on whatever suits the case at the time.

Well yes, that's the general spirit of this forum. Don't speculate. Support your position with things that can be verified within reason. It doesn't really matter what the UFO believers do.
 
I don't know if there is a definitive transcript, but to my ear, in the unedited (and uncensored) video - it sounds like he's saying "it ain't a fuckin' drone bro."

[it-ainna] is slurred together in a way that's familiar to me as a midwesterner.

This also matches his surprised tone when he says, "my gosh."
As a "midwesterner" there's no "a" sound at all. If I had to guess at the garbled part it would be "dude".
 
As a "midwesterner" there's no "a" sound at all. If I had to guess at the garbled part it would be "dude".
I disagree but as has been pointed out, we can only make assumptions based on available data.

With audio garbled that badly you can literally change your perception of what is being said by thinking. What you hear when you listen to unclear audio is partially your brain filling in the gaps and what you hear is more likely than not to confirm your prior bias anyway.

My guess is he is probably saying "it is a fuckin' a drone bro", but I could just as easily guess the opposite. The TTSA captions are likely accurate but it sounds like we have no evidence of that beyond educated guesses.

My only point was to challenge the presumption that we know exactly what he is saying and why he is saying it.
 
Last edited:
My guess is he is probably saying "it is a fuckin' a drone bro",
That's what I would lean towards, but I've historically flip-flopped on interpreting a variety of ambiguous audio, so I'd not trust my impression on audio that's disputed.
 
I don't know if there is a definitive transcript, but to my ear, in the unedited (and uncensored) video - it sounds like he's saying "it ain't a fuckin' drone bro."

That is not what I am hearing at all. To my ear he is saying "It is a fuckin' drone, bro."

Slowing it down to half speed, the second word definitely ends with an s, and I can't hear another syllable following it that would indicate he's saying "isn't".
 
"You have the eye witness testimony of the individuals who got up close and personal with this thing"
Except with Gimbal, we don't have any such testimony.

I think he's just generally describing the UAP "phenomena" and essentially conflating Fravor's account with the Gimbal video.
 
Except with Gimbal, we don't have any such testimony.

I think he's just generally describing the UAP "phenomena" and essentially conflating Fravor's account with the Gimbal video.
We don't - he/AATIP did, that's what he said.
And no, I don't think he was conflating Fravors account.
You were talking about the Gimbal video and he said ""You have the eye witness testimony of the individuals who got up close and personal to this thing as it was rotating"
Crystal clear to me , there is no room for doubt on what he is saying there

Whether you believe him is a different matter.
 
Last edited:
We don't - he/AATIP did, that's what he said.
And no, I don't think he was conflating Fravors account.
You were talking about the Gimbal video and he said ""You have the eye witness testimony of the individuals who got up close and personal to this thing as it was rotating"
Crystal clear to me , there is no room for doubt on what he is saying there

Whether you believe him is a different matter.

He's just saying what we hear in the video.
 
He's just saying what we hear in the video.


Elizondo: "You have the eye witness testimony of the individuals who got up close and personal to this thing as it was rotating"

Mick: "Do we actually have eyewitness testimony, we have the audio on the tape"

Elizondo: "Yeah, we have eyewitness testimony, you might not have it, but it's there"

As above, he is saying they had eyewitness testimony for the Gimbal , ie not what you hear in the video.



Might be worth trying to FOIA. Will have to look into it.
 
Last edited:
Elizondo: "You have the eye witness testimony of the individuals who got up close and personal to this thing as it was rotating"

Mick: "Do we actually have eyewitness testimony, we have the audio on the tape"

Elizondo: "Yeah, we have eyewitness testimony, you might not have it, but it's there"

Well unfortunately I DON'T have it, nobody does. So we have no idea what he's actually referring to. Someone could ask him, and get some specifics. But he tends to keep such thing vague.

Key questions:
1) An eyewitness to this exact same object at this moment in time?
2) How far away were they?
3) What did they describe seeing?
4) Why didn't they take video?
 
That is not what I am hearing at all. To my ear he is saying "It is a fuckin' drone, bro."

Slowing it down to half speed, the second word definitely ends with an s, and I can't hear another syllable following it that would indicate he's saying "isn't".
The point (which I made explicit in the follow up post) is that you can very easily insert lots of different words into badly distorted audio and there is likely no definitive way to know precisely what is being said at that moment without confirmation from the source. I tend to agree with your interpretation, but he could just as easily be saying the opposite, or saying something completely different, or he could have merely stumbled over his words.

We're mostly inferring based on context that he's probably saying it's a drone - in that context though I then see the dialog of the other Speaker saying "the wind is going 120 knots to the west" to be a counter-point to Speaker A's interpretation of the object.
 
Hello i'm a brand new member and really new to this whole thing so maybe this is a dumb point but here goes.

Mick, I think you missed one of the key points of Chris' video in your rebuttal. His point of reference for the location of the object is not the intersection between the camera views, but instead a trajectory of the object being recorded that places it at a location on each line at each time point. This has a few key assumptions, mainly that the object is going at a constant velocity without turning. That's why his representations for location of the object are places where the distance between each line of bearing is equal, not the intersections. Focusing on the intersection between point 1 and 2 in your simulation makes no sense to me. How could an object be at the intersection of line of bearings 1 and 2 but then Jump to the line of bearing of point 3? it makes no sense. Each line of bearing represents some location where the object must be at that point in time. Assuming it's moving (a decent assumption given its elevation) It takes 10 seconds to get from a point on line 1 to line 2 to line 3.
 
How is wind speed a counter to it being a drone?
I will be honest and say that I do not fully understand exactly how wind blowing against the direction of an object in flight effects that objects velocity.

It was my assumption that any flying object moving against a 120knot wind would get slowed down or have its motion effected by that head wind in obvious ways. If that is not accurate then I will happily drop that point.

For context, in the non-military market the fastest drone I was able to confirm has a top speed of just over 163MPH, while of course the military market has drones capable of just under mach 1 (or mach 2 if you count the QF-16 as a drone.)

As a small counter, I'm wondering what *you* think the speaker is trying to convey by sharing that information. He certainly sounds impressed by it.
 
I will be honest and say that I do not fully understand exactly how wind blowing against the direction of an object in flight effects that objects velocity.

It was my assumption that any flying object moving against a 120knot wind would get slowed down or have its motion effected by that head wind in obvious ways. If that is not accurate then I will happily drop that point.

The quote is a bit curious. However, airplanes in the air act line we might when on a train. They have to maintain speed only relative to the air around them, not maintain an absolute speed. Any flying object simply has to maintain forward momentum relative to their previous position in the air around them, not relative to the ground below, so wind speeds aloft don't really make that much difference in terms of flying ability. It's like if your goal is to get to the front of the train, the only thing that matters is your speed relative to the floor of the train, not to the ground outside of the train.

But perhaps they had some other overlay that indicated the ground speed of the object (radar maybe?).
 
Last edited:
Back
Top