"GO FAST" Footage from Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy. Bird? Balloon?

[Mick West]

As well its path appears to be a straight line when the footage is stabilized to the ocean:

And what you see there is mostly NOT the object moving. It's the parallax from the camera approximately tracking the ocean, and the motion of the jet.

 

[Agent K]

I wonder why Gimbal is named so appropriately and Go Fast so inappropriately. Has TTSA or Elizondo ever explained how they were named?

 

[Getoffthisplanet]

GF_jet_MAX_30kt-180dg.txt

Forgive me if I'm being obtuse.

This is a reasonable calculation of the distance and direction of the jet from the beginning of the video to the end based on the on-screen data?

 

[Mick West]

Forgive me if I'm being obtuse.

This is a reasonable calculation of the distance and direction of the jet from the beginning of the video to the end based on the on-screen data?

Yes, it uses the speed of the jet and the bank angle. It also adds wind. However that's a constant. You could remove it. Here's one with zero wind.

Note I automatically add the variables like wind into the filename and info comment.

 

[Mick West]

First of all, the document you link to is an older generation ATFLIR, the NITE-Hawk. Instead of doubling the FOV from 1.5 to 3.0, you may need to cut it in half to 0.7.

When I finally made what I consider to be a close approximation to the video in Blender the parallax looks closest with a fov of 0.7

I think I can prove it's nearer to 0.7°. Notice during one of the fast camera movements, starting around 8 seconds in, the heading angle goes from 39 to 40. On the first frame when it's 40, there's a distinctive black streak.


Manually tracking the center of this streak one frame at a time until the angle goes to 41 give us one degree of rotation.


I had to extrapolate the last few dots just approximating the distance.We can skew this down to remove the vertical rotation, and line it up with the left side:


Gives about 0.88°, which is a lot closer to 0.7 than it is to 1.5

 

[igoddard]

And what you see there is mostly NOT the object moving. It's the parallax from the camera approximately tracking the ocean, and the motion of the jet.

Ought not the non-tracked segments produce a difference in the graphing, something roughly like this?



I added a light-blue line for the LOS during the non-tracked phase when the camera would be aiming at roughly the same areas of ocean. The parallax-induced pseudo-motion that would occur in this phase is shown with the 'parallax component'. It might technically be another variant of parallax.

This is just rough-sketched over your pristine work, please excuse that it's surely rather ham-fisted, I'm just sketching out a rough idea for additional analytical detail as the original graph doesn't seem to model the non-tracked segments.

 

[Mick West]

Ought not the non-tracked segments produce a difference in the graphing, something roughly like this?

Sure, but the graph only covers the period of time when the object is tracked. Before that there's a variety of camera positions, slows drifts with ground lock, and rapid movements that would be tricky to show on this graph in any real detail. If you ignore the rapid camera movements (saccades) then the result would be something like what you show.

 

[jarlrmai]

Simulating the non tracked part of the video with the ground tracking and saccades in Blender is tougher it seems.

I'm not sure if the camera does some sort of auto ground tracking and then a person manually adjusts it 'ahead' of the object.

 

[Mick West]

I'm not sure if the camera does some sort of auto ground tracking and then a person manually adjusts it 'ahead' of the object.

That's what happening, as far as I can tell. It's ground tracking based on the jet's speed and position. Then the pilot is presumably adjusting the camera to acquire the target.

 

[jarlrmai]

I'll try and stick a tracking marker ahead of where the object is and sync to it in a keyframe, then keep moving the tracking marker.

 

[Christophe Isbert]

I wonder why Gimbal is named so appropriately and Go Fast so inappropriately. Has TTSA or Elizondo ever explained how they were named?

1/2 off topic : "Gimbal" is a word commonly used to designate a target approaching Az or El limits of a radar, therefore, I would not be so quick into claiming that it has anything to do with the ATFLIR pod.

I don't know why exactly and who precisely dubbed this footage "go fast" since "slow mover" would have been more adapted for this specific piece of footage. Maybe TTSA has nothing to do with this choice, maybe they do, we can only speculate for now but I think it was not a wise choice. I also think that people who are in direct contact with TTSA should ask them.

 

[Mick West]

I don't know why exactly and who precisely dubbed this footage "go fast" since "slow mover" would have been more adapted for this specific piece of footage. Maybe TTSA has nothing to do with this choice, maybe they do, we can only speculate for now but I think it was not a wise choice. I also think that people who are in direct contact with TTSA should ask them.

Well TTSA clearly though it was moving fast. There site currently says about it:
https://coi.tothestarsacademy.com/2015-go-fast-footage/

GO FAST is an authentic DoD video that captures the high-speed flight of an unidentified aircraft at low altitude

Content from External Source

Despite it being neither high speed nor low altitude, and not demonstrably an "aircraft".

They also say:

• There are no obvious wings or tails on the object. Even IR imagery of a cruise missile, would have visible wings at this range.
• There is no exhaust plume from the object. An exhaust plume is clearly visible on conventional aircraft in the mid-wave infrared frequency used by the ATFLIR.

Content from External Source

Neither of which are correct when your target is far enough away to be a dot. A moot point anyway, as the size of the object is <10 feet.

 

[Christophe Isbert]

I knew that TTSA made these comments but we still need some clarifications to avoid drawing a premature conclusion :

1. TTSA wrongly dubbed it "Go Fast" based on this short footage alone
2. TTSA dubbed it "Go Fast" based on informations/data linked to this event (not only the short footage)
3. Another entity wrongly dubbed the footage that way based on the footage only and TTSA kept that nickname
4. Another entity dubbed the event "Go Fast" based on informations/data linked to this event (not only the short footage)

It might not be an exhaustive list but I could already come up with four possibilities. Now, there's a good reason why I've asked people around me to ask them, by answering these questions about all 3 videos, we might learn a few things if we ever get an answer from them. I know, I might be a little too optimistic on this one.

 

[Christophe Isbert]

Despite it being neither high speed nor low altitude, and not demonstrably an "aircraft".

Agreed.

• There are no obvious wings or tails on the object. Even IR imagery of a cruise missile, would have visible wings at this range.
• There is no exhaust plume from the object. An exhaust plume is clearly visible on conventional aircraft in the mid-wave infrared frequency used by the ATFLIR.

Content from External Source

Neither of which are correct when your target is far enough away to be a dot. A moot point anyway, as the size of the object is <10 feet.

We might be able to see winglets if zoom level was increased to 2.0 if there were some of course but there's no exhaust plume and the bogey does not seem to radiate any heat while being within the IR sensor operating range. Therefore, I don't agree with their "winglet" argument but I don't agree neither with yours because if it was an aircraft or a missile/rocket far and/or small enough to be displayed as a point target in the MWIR, we should see its heat signature if it was not a stealth aircraft or maybe a glide bomb. What we see is a "cold" target. Biological or something else like a lighter than air ?

I don't know as I am writing, it could also be something we did not think about yet or a "true" unidentifiable object.

 

[Christophe Isbert]

My bad Mick,

You meant that we should not necessarily see its exhaust plume if it was far enough to be a dot. I agree.

But there's no heat signature in general on this target and it's not an aircraft.

 

[jarlrmai]

Its 6-10 feet big if that, cold, moving slowly and at 13000 feet, as far as we can tell it is as zoomed in as that military spec IR camera can do.

So it's not an aircraft, it's not fast, it's not low. It fits the description of a bird or a weather balloon.

So not only does it not seem worthy of being called anomalous as it is doing nothing than cannot be explained by known objects, the statements in the TTSA analysis relating to the behaviour of the object are incorrect and this can be trivially demonstrated from the figures given in the ATFLIR overlay. So they are either incredibly bad at analysing footage from aircraft (which is supposed to be what some of them did for a job) or disingenuous or both.

 

[Mick West]

Size estimates. The video frame is 950 pixels across in the Washington Post version. When the object is closest (3.3 nautical miles), the object appears around 12 pixels across. Hard to say exactly. But from these numbers we can calculate the angle subtended by the object as as 12/950*1.5 degrees)

tan(12/950*1.5 degrees)*3.3 nautical miles in feet =6.6 feet



Arguably you could say it's larger, but I think if anything it's smaller, as it's very blurry.

So what birds have a 6 foot wingspan, and can fly at 13,000 feet?

(or what other object, like weather balloons).

And really I should update this, as it looks like the FOV is actually 0.7 degrees. In that case the size indicated would be three feet.

 

[igoddard]

I wonder why Gimbal is named so appropriately and Go Fast so inappropriately. Has TTSA or Elizondo ever explained how they were named?

TTSA indicates that Gimbal was the name of the file they received from the DoD. As they state on their Gimbal-video page:

The filename “GIMBAL” seems to be traceable to the unusual maneuvering of the UAP.

Content from External Source

@ http://archive.is/Q9wh0

So they're saying they didn't name it as they themselves are attempting to interpret the name. In contrast, their errant claims that the Go Fast object goes fast implies that they gave it that name.

I just noticed the irony of this TTSA statement on that same page:

GIMBAL is a product of one of the most sophisticated tracking systems on US military aircraft.

Content from External Source

Yes, lol, that was also our conclusion, the appearance of an anomalous aircraft is a product of the ATFLIR.

 

[Christophe Isbert]

Its 6-10 feet big if that, cold, moving slowly and at 13000 feet, as far as we can tell it is as zoomed in as that military spec IR camera can do.

The FOV is set on NAR (narrow) but from my understanding of the ATFLIR pods, when it comes to zooming, we are dealing with an incremental step zoom and not a continuous zoom. In the "Go Fast" footage and unlike "Flir 1" and "Gimbal" where zoom level goes up to 2.0, in the "Go Fast" footage, zoom level is always 1.0. This is why I made my comment about the "winglets".

I saw that you guys, specially Mick, worked really hard on what I call the SAI (Situation Awareness Indicator), that little white square seen in both "Gimbal" and "Go Fast" ATFLIR interfaces. I came to the same conclusion about "Gimbal", it cannot be displaying the azimuth of the IR camera so chances are it is displaying "True North".

It gets more complicated with "Go Fast" since the SAI seems to behave differently and to be honest, I need to work more on this issue before coming to a provisional conclusion. It is important because if we ever find out date and time and approximate locations for both events (I sent an FOIA to investigate this issue), we could then have a better idea of the ground speed of the aircrafts with sounding data (weather balloons). Also, it could become a second and complementary (if not even more reliable?) method to estimate the turn rate of the aircrafts, therefore, it would help to recreate a more accurate trajectory for both the aircraft and its bogey since and as you understood it, wind speed & direction (their relation to ground speed of the ACFT) and turn rate affect both trajectories or flight paths if you prefer.

Why ?

It's simple, coming up with an hypothesis is great but being able to test it is a must. Let's say it was a lighter than air (Go Fast) and this is my #1 hypothesis as I am writing, we could test that hypothesis in the future and see how solid it really is.

 

[Agent K]

So they're saying they didn't name it as they themselves are attempting to interpret the name. In contrast, their errant claims that the Go Fast object goes fast implies that they gave it that name.

Especially odd to use a different naming convention for segments from the same video. If Go Fast was named by TTSA, then perhaps the Pentagon named it Balloon or Parallax.

 

[igoddard]

Especially odd to use a different naming convention for segments from the same video. If Go Fast was named by TTSA, then perhaps the Pentagon named it Balloon or Parallax.

Lol! I wouldn't be surprised. And here's another oddity. Why would Elizondo's team be speculating on why the file was named 'Gimbal' if it was something his ATIP program studied? It's as if the footage is from another department entirely, like maybe a department associated with teaching pilots about confounding screen targets.

And why would Elizondo not have a study or report his ATIP office produced about this footage, or any footage? Instead they merely dump a few blurry videos on us and ask us to just believe they're anomalous aircraft. Yet from the work here, it's obvious the ATIP program didn't do any actual study of these videos given what's been done here is a straightforward modeling of the numerical data in the footage. Any team of professional analysts tasked with the duty to understand ATFLIR footage would first model what the data in the footage means. And every time doing so significantly undermines or falsifies the claims TTSA is asking us to just accept. So what did ATIP actually do?

 

[Mick West]

I saw that you guys, specially Mick, worked really hard on what I call the SAI (Situation Awareness Indicator), that little white square seen in both "Gimbal" and "Go Fast" ATFLIR interfaces. I came to the same conclusion about "Gimbal", it cannot be displaying the azimuth of the IR camera so chances are it is displaying "True North".

It gets more complicated with "Go Fast" since the SAI seems to behave differently and to be honest, I need to work more on this issue before coming to a provisional conclusion.

I'm not sure why you say this, as they seem to behave consistently to me. It appears to be the heading and tilt angle of the target relative to the jet.

 

[Kaen]

I’ve made a detailed 3D mathematical analysis of two fragments in the video:
- The video fragment investigated by Bruce Maccabee.
- The video fragment where the jet is flying level and the ATFLIR is locked on the object.

For both fragments I computed the horizontal angular velocity of the object, in the first fragment I did this for two ATFLIR FOV values (0,7 and 1,5 degrees).

If the object’s angular velocity must be the same for both fragments (i.e. the object speed is stable), it is possible to determine both the ATFLIR’s FOV and the true ground speed of the jet from these calculations.

ATFLIR FOV: 0,7
Jet ground speed: 340-400 kt

The mathematics is explained in the pictures.
A snapshot of the spreadsheet is included.

First fragment:



Mathematics of first fragment:




Second fragment:



Mathematics of second fragment:



Spreadsheet:



As can be seen in the spreadsheet: Only in the bold printed area the object angular velocities of both fragment match, and only for the 0,7 degrees FOV. There is no match to be found for the 1,5 degrees FOV.

[EDIT]: Accidentally copied the final-1 version of my spreadsheet.
In the final version I added a small correction to ∆ dαo/dt to compensate for the smaller range in the case where the ATFLIR was locked on the object.

 

[Andrew Saturn]

Not sure if this is helpful or entirely useless:

I received a response from the Department of Defense, Defense Intelligence Agency, Office of Government Information Services.

In summary, they said they have absolutely no records of that footage or declassifying it or providing it to the New York Times. They are contacting other agencies within the Department of Defense to figure out if that footage was ever classified, and if they can determine if it ever even came from the DoD in the first place. All signs are pointing to no.

 

[sitarzan]

Not sure if this is helpful or entirely useless...

It would be killer if you scanned it or something and uploaded it somewhere and shared the URL here so we all could see it. Thanks in advance.

 

[jarlrmai]

If it didn't come directly from the military could this come from a Raytheon video? Is there a chance of obtaining longer segments to provide more context?

 

[Christophe Isbert]

I'm not sure why you say this, as they seem to behave consistently to me. It appears to be the heading and tilt angle of the target relative to the jet.

Sure, let met explain, it's not related to how it "behaves" but to its position on the interface.

It's very hard to find informations on the SAI (Situational Awareness Indicator), also called SAC ("C" as Cue) in other flight manuals (Combat sim). The only informations I found about it comes from simulators (Flight Manuals). I only uploaded one screen capture of such a manual, there's more but they all say the same thing.



When I insert a disc on the "Go Fast" footage, the Azimuth angle is not that much off (1°) but my disc might not be accurately positioned. Now comes my problem, the elevation angle is way off (-9° instead of -22°).



This is what happens when I superimpose "Gimbal" and "Go Fast" when respectively, Az is 48°L in both cases and El is -2° for "Gimbal" and -28° for "Go Fast". It looks like I have an "ok" match for "Gimbal" (point A if the SAI is not displaying true north) but again, it's way off when it comes to El angle for "Go Fast" (point B). I added a yellow point B to show where the SAI should be from my understanding and if the center of the interface represents -90° (straight below the aircraft)




I hope you guys understood why I am going through some head-scratching.

 

[Alien Overlord]

Sure, let met explain, it's not related to how it "behaves" but to its position on the interface.

It's very hard to find informations on the SAI (Situational Awareness Indicator), also called SAC ("C" as Cue) in other flight manuals (Combat sim). The only informations I found about it comes from simulators (Flight Manuals). I only uploaded one screen capture of such a manual, there's more but they all say the same thing.



When I insert a disc on the "Go Fast" footage, the Azimuth angle is not that much off (1°) but my disc might not be accurately positioned. Now comes my problem, the elevation angle is way off (-9° instead of -22°).



This is what happens when I superimpose "Gimbal" and "Go Fast" when respectively, Az is 48°L in both cases and El is -2° for "Gimbal" and -28° for "Go Fast". It looks like I have an "ok" match for "Gimbal" (point A if the SAI is not displaying true north) but again, it's way off when it comes to El angle for "Go Fast" (point B). I added a yellow point B to show where the SAI should be from my understanding and if the center of the interface represents -90° (straight below the aircraft)




I hope you guys understood why I am going through some head-scratching.

Indeed, with linear interpolation, -45° El would be the halfway point on the disc's radius. With spherical linear interpolation, it would be -60° El. You've divided the radius in 5 parts in your graph, so in both cases, at -28°, the dot should at least be past one of the subdivisions, yet it isn't. Maybe the distance of the dot is squared or curved in some other way?

The dot seems to move in a straight horizontal line on the screen as the plane banks left towards the object (around the time the pilot yells "got it!"). So the dot is definitely not a direct representation of the Az/El angles, and is probably relative to the plane's rotation, not to the ground plane. But can we extract useful information from that?

 

[Mick West]

But can we extract useful information from that?

See the data I extracted here:
https://www.metabunk.org/posts/220383/

 

[Mick West]

And more specifically for understanding what it is:

The "radius" angle is related to the aircraft bank angle. If I overlay the bank angle on the above graph:



We can see the where the bank angle is slowly decreasing towards the end, the indicator angle is decreasing - presumably because the object is getting closer.

One could subtract the two, with care. Exercise for the reader!

 

[Getoffthisplanet]

Probably beating a dead horse here, but, I finally had some time to plug the numbers into 3ds Max to see what happens.

While arguably more of a simple visualization of the data found in this thread than a full on scientific photogrammetric analysis, it was still fun work and a great learning experience.

Using the known axes of the ATFLIR camera combined with the assumed FOV, a camera was placed onto the jet trajectory that @Mick West and @Justin Shaw calculated (here and here). I disregarded the jet roll angle and just kept the camera parallel to the horizontal ground plane.


I was hoping to see the 3D reconstruction results correlate more closely to the actual video. Though, the discrepancies are likely due to mistakes I've made somewhere. So, first try...

*Edit to add - here is a closer view of the resulting unknown object's trajectory:

 

[sitarzan]

Not sure if this is helpful or entirely useless...

It would be killer if you scanned it or something and uploaded it somewhere and shared the URL here so we all could see it. Thanks in advance.

I admit to being a complete know-nothing when it comes to filing Freedom of Information Act requests. So how does it work exactly?

Do they send you stuff only if you first vow that you'll only ever talk about what they send you, but you're otherwise forbidden to ever show anybody else what they send you? Or some deal like that?

Where's the "Freedom" in that?

 

[deirdre]

Do they send you stuff only if you first vow that you'll only ever talk about what they send you, but you're otherwise forbidden to ever show anybody else what they send you? Or some deal like that?

no. its publicly available information.

but they haven't put it online yet so you have to request they send it to you. usually if its a situation that a lot of people are requesting they will eventually put the information online so they can save their clerks the bother of responding to everyone.

I'm saying that you can share it.

 

[sitarzan]

...you have to request they send it to you...

Either that, or we just have to take @Andrew Saturn's word for it, I guess

 

[deirdre]

Either that, or we just have to take @Andrew Saturn's word for it, I guess

you are asking him to scan the letter he received? or any responsive documents he may receive from his request?

The Black Vault guy scans his stuff and so far he concurs with @Andrew Saturn. this letter received March 28, 2018:

All offices searched produced ZERO results and I was given another "no records response" by a key agency mentioned by Mr. Elizondo. http://www.theblackvault.com/casefi...nge-and-the-secret-dod-ufo-research-program/#

Content from External Source

 

[Mick West]

Let's avoid speculation here. If you've got some useful facts about this video then let's see them. Speculating based on wording is not really useful here. If you want something from an individual, then ask them directly.

 

[westmedtim]

you are asking him to scan the letter he received? or any responsive documents he may receive from his request?

The Black Vault guy scans his stuff and so far he concurs with @Andrew Saturn. this letter received March 28, 2018:

All offices searched produced ZERO results and I was given another "no records response" by a key agency mentioned by Mr. Elizondo. http://www.theblackvault.com/casefi...nge-and-the-secret-dod-ufo-research-program/#

Content from External Source

AATIP was a DIA Program. New York Times verified this, themselves, via records obtained. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html

In response to questions from The Times, Pentagon officials this month acknowledged the existence of the program, which began as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Officials insisted that the effort had ended after five years, in 2012

Content from External Source

 

[Mick West]

New Summary Video, somewhat simplified and incorporating some bits from episode 4 of "Unidentified" on the history channel.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLyEO0jNt6M

 

[Agent K]

New Summary Video, somewhat simplified and incorporating some bits from episode 4 of "Unidentified" on the history channel.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLyEO0jNt6M

I might have mentioned this before, but could the Nimitz tic tac have been the same kind of thing? Cmdr. Fravor said it "mirrored" him as he circled down and it stayed on the same circle but opposite him. Perhaps it was actually at the center of the circle, and he assumed it was bigger, farther away, and moving. Then, it popped and he assumed it flew off quickly.
But if the other pilot saw them moving in a circle from above, then this explanation doesn't work.

Fravor also said that the tic tac was ping-ponging randomly when he first noticed it, which reminded me of someone who saw planet Venus ping-ponging randomly due to the saccade of his own eyes, in the absence of a stationary background for reference.

 

[Mick West]

Anthony Lappé, the showrunner for Unidentified responded to a question regarding Go Fast:
Source: https://twitter.com/anthonylappe/status/1142889959809961984



I followed up with a question:
Source: https://twitter.com/MickWest/status/1142907276321144832


[clip attached here]