How Can Highly Trained Military Pilots Possibly Misinterpret Things They See?

[Slow Joe]

How in the world can pilots not know what parallax is? Aren't pilots trained to fly by instruments alone because their eye's cannot tell the difference between the sky and sea in some weather conditions?

 

[Mick West]

How in the world can pilots not know what parallax is? Aren't pilots trained to fly by instruments alone because their eye's cannot tell the difference between the sky and sea in some weather conditions?

They are, but more because you can't see the ground at all. However that's not really anything to do with parallax.

 

[tobigtofool]

Pentagon ex-UFO chief says conspiracy theorists in government drive spending

Conspiracy theorists working for and within the US government are perpetuating myths about UFOs that millions of taxpayer dollars are then spent looking into, a "self-licking ice cream cone", according to the Pentagon's former chief investigator of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

Exactly as many here suspected

Cool lets not let them continue this corrupt behavior, have one more investigation, and throw them all into jail!

They are, but more because you can't see the ground at all. However that's not really anything to do with parallax.

Question, in the air on a flight sim its pretty easy for me to lead any target and hit them from pretty far away, why can I judge a speed, direction and movement of those objects but real pilots get confused?

Even while flipping around and stalling and stuff you can easily determine the speed and trajectory of moving dots super far away and head them off at the pass to win the fights.

 

[Mendel]

Question, in the air on a flight sim its pretty easy for me to lead any target and hit them from pretty far away, why can I judge a speed, direction and movement of those objects but real pilots get confused?

Even while flipping around and stalling and stuff you can easily determine the speed and trajectory of moving dots super far away and head them off at the pass to win the fights.

You can do that because your targets are all fighter-sized objects moving at fighter-type speeds. If one was a balloon, and you didn't know, you'd get thrown off, because your expectations (and your confidence!) would mislead you.

 

[JMartJr]

You can do that because your targets are all fighter-sized objects moving at fighter-type speeds. If one was a balloon, and you didn't know, you'd get thrown off, because your expectations (and your confidence!) would mislead you.

It would be interesting if somebody who knew about game coding and such could come up with a patch (or whatever the correct word is) that would insert some balloons into one of those simulations... in their copious free time...

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

It's going to be a bit of an overgeneralization and, admittedly, I know little about piloting. Although, I have spoken before about how we tend to give way too much authority to people just for simply having jobs. We commonly see people bring up the "how can they be wrong" "how could they get duped" in regards to people in Intelligence, which, no, those skills do not grant you super-thinking, they enable you to think analytically and mitigate biases, still prone to many errors.
I'd heavily be willing to wager with pilots it's similar, just because you have all that time in the air seeing stuff, does not mean you will be able to know anything and everything, at every moment, on first sight, with solely visuals. How come they misinterpret things finely starts to narrow down to them just being human, and we all work at the processing speed our brain allows.

 

[Harabeck]

To speak a bit more broadly to the topic, pilots are actually quite poor witnesses of things they are unfamiliar with. They are trained to quickly identify and respond to threats, not take careful observations.

...

Yet the pilots involved in the shootdown were unable to identify the objects sighted, even as they fired a $400,000 missile at what was likely a $12 balloon. How can that be? According to Leslie Kean, the New York Times' trusted UFO author (and ghost promoter), pilots

represent the world's most experienced and best-trained observers of everything that flies… these unique circumstances potentially transform any jet aircraft into a specialized flying laboratory for the study of rare anomalous phenomena.

She seems to actually believe that pilots are some sort of super-observer, whose reported observations cannot be disputed. Unfortunately, that claim is based on assumptions, not on facts. J. Allen Hynek, the scientific advisor to the Air Force's Project Blue Book, had the opposite view. He wrote,

Surprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses (The Hynek UFO Report, Dell, 1977, p. 271)

Space writer and skeptic James Oberg gives us an explanation of this:

I just think we need to keep in mind that fighter pilots are NOT 'trained observers', they are 'trained SURVIVORS". They live to retire and get their pensions by interpreting all visual cues in the most hazardous possible form, as embryonic indications of somebody trying to kill you. They 'don't think twice' in such cases, they are better-safe-than-sorry in their immediate instinctive actions. If it turns out the visual cues were NOT dangerous, at worst there is some embarrassment and teasing, but it beats the alternative -- funerals. I've seen recent cases where they got into dogfight mode over visual stimuli hundreds of miles away -- AS THEY SHOULD, if in doubt at all.

As Hynek and others have repeatedly discovered, pilots are not dispassionate nature-viewers, they are survival-focused specialists in avoiding lethal hazards in the air, and as such they properly interpret visual stimuli in the most hazardous [and closest] manifestation, AS THEY SHOULD. As early as the 1930s scientists realized that pilots were POOR observers of mid-air objects such as meteors and they continue to be poor observers of missile and space events, and we WANT them to be, in order to enhance the chances of them and their passengers staying alive -- better too many 'false-positive' avoidance reactions, than a single false-negative in a genuine collision-course event.

Oberg cites a 1936 article, Air Pilots and "Meteor Hazards" by H. H. Ninger, published in Popular Astronomy (V. 44, p. 45). It notes,

Press reports lead us to believe that air pilots are subject to a rather serious hazard because of meteors. Recently the newspapers carried a startling account of how a resourceful pilot battled a shower of meteors and by an ingenious series of dips and swerves averted what would have proved to be a major disaster had the plane been piloted by a less dexterous hand. The culmination of this amazing feat of aerial acrobatics was a plunge for safety into a canyon. Thus, by the preservation of eleven lives and a valuable aircraft, a new name was added to the already long list of aerial heroes! Only a few months ago, another keen-witted pilot saved himself and his precious of mail by dipping the right wing of his plane to avoid one of those dreadful blazing projectiles in Nebraska. In March, two years ago, two pilots in the southwest related their hair-raising experiences as they found themselves facing an aerial inferno; but fortunately both of them were spared.

The article relates several such more incidents, then goes on to show that the pilots were many miles from the actual location of these meteors. Also, all such visible meteors occur high in the stratosphere, "far above any height ever reached in ordinary flying." So these pilots' breathless accounts of their narrow escape from approaching meteors are, sorry to say, wildly inaccurate.

https://badufos.blogspot.com/2023/02/do-pilots-make-relatively-poor-witnesses.html

 

[Alexandria Nick]

They're human beings. That's all there is to it. They're prone to mistakes, maybe fewer than others, but they can misunderstand things.

Example:
Back in 2011, an Air Canada flight out over the Atlantic had an experienced crew flying from Toronto to Zurich. The FO had 24 years in aviation, the last 14 years at Air Canada, with 12,000 hours total flight time including approximately 2,000 hours on the Boeing 767 in the previous 4 years. This happened to that FO:

At 0155, the captain made a mandatory position report with the Shanwick Oceanic control centre. This aroused the FO. The FO had rested for 75 minutes but reported not feeling altogether well. Coincidentally, an opposite–direction United States Air Force Boeing C–17 at 34 000 feet appeared as a traffic alert and collision avoidance system (TCAS) target on the navigational display (ND). The captain apprised the FO of this traffic.

Over the next minute or so, the captain adjusted the map scale on the ND in order to view the TCAS target and occasionally looked out the forward windscreen to acquire the aircraft visually. The FO initially mistook the planet Venus for an aircraft but the captain advised again that the target was at the 12 o'clock position and 1000 feet below. The captain of ACA878 and the oncoming aircraft crew flashed their landing lights. The FO continued to scan visually for the aircraft. When the FO saw the oncoming aircraft, the FO interpreted its position as being above and descending towards them. The FO reacted to the perceived imminent collision by pushing forward on the control column. The captain, who was monitoring TCAS target on the ND, observed the control column moving forward and the altimeter beginning to show a decrease in altitude. The captain immediately disconnected the autopilot and pulled back on the control column to regain altitude. It was at this time the oncoming aircraft passed beneath ACA878. The TCAS did not produce a traffic or resolution advisory.

https://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/aviation/2011/a11f0012/a11f0012.html

Sixteen people were treated for injuries after this avoidance maneuver. Yes, fatigue played a role, but that just emphasizes that they're human beings and they're not infallible.

 

[Galaga]

The notion that pilots (military or otherwise) have superior perception comes more from what we non-pilots want to believe than anything else. I want to believe my commercial airline pilot has the eyes of an eagle and the quickness of a ninja. Said pilot is far more likely to be suffering from a hangover, lack of sleep, distraction over some family issues, etc.

I argue that all pilots are actually getting less perceptive. These days a commercial pilot has basically the same job as a security guard. They are rarely in control of the planes, and mostly just sit there. Try staring at the same image for 4 hours straight. You will eventually start seeing stuff that isn't there...

On the military end there is more pilot engagement, but as this wonderful group has proven time and time again, military pilots do not have to know how any of the systems feeding them information work. They don't get trained on the subjects of automated tracking, lens flare, aperture shapes, etc.

Come to think of it, the answer is right in front of us! From this day forward all pilots shall be required to watch Mick's YouTube videos!

...and his balloon simulator.

 

[Harabeck]

...

On the military end there is more pilot engagement, but as this wonderful group has proven time and time again, military pilots do not have to know how any of the systems feeding them information work. They don't get trained on the subjects of automated tracking, lens flare, aperture shapes, etc.

...

To reinforce that point, Brian dunning discusses this issue on substack:

...

I did speak with two people whom I was unable to include in the film whose current job is training military pilots. One emailed me:


https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch...ges/a0d41b4a-b539-4aad-a30b-2a9d59d96b70.heic
...

This YouTube commenter (take that for what it's worth) offers the following extra bit of color:



Makes sense; fighter jockeys have a million things more important to worry about than the inner workings of their camera. In the case of Fravor's Tic Tac video, the camera was simply rotating a new optical pathway into position and causing the image to jump; Fravor insists the object jumped because it suddenly moved at incredible speeds — even though the numbers on the screen said in black and white the camera was just flipping a new lens into position.

...

https://briandunning.substack.com/p/pilots-are-actually-terrible-at-identifying?r=j83yw

I mean it's hard right? Just learning to operate such a complex vehicle is hard enough by itself. Actually understanding each sensor system and all of the unusual scenarios/glitches they might encounter might constitute the equivalent of a good portion of an engineering degree.

 

[Mendel]

The military has/had a separate role for those aircrew who observe.

Article:

An air observer or aerial observer is an aircrew member whose duties are predominantly reconnaissance.
...
Air observers were trained at the Air Observer Schools.
...
Modern FAA anti-submarine and attack helicopters are still crewed by a pilot and observer, the observer being responsible for managing the detection and weapon systems - while the pilot does the flying, the observer "fights the aircraft" making the necessary tactical and navigational decisions.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_observer

 

[tobigtofool]

You can do that because your targets are all fighter-sized objects moving at fighter-type speeds. If one was a balloon, and you didn't know, you'd get thrown off, because your expectations (and your confidence!) would mislead you.

Idk about that, bomber squads fly pretty slow, and you shoot at blimps in warthunder all the time. It's like you can spot enemies in these games from literally specks on the horizon and head them off 5 minuets later let alone while you're flipping around and stuff.

Under no circumstances would I expect to misread a speck in the air in one of these games, at 2am after coming home from the bar.

So I find it hard to believe its easy for a fighter pilot like Fraver who has shown to me to be pretty competent in interviews to have been mistaken or a victim of parallax. But humans do make mistakes.

I argue that all pilots are actually getting less perceptive. These days a commercial pilot has basically the same job as a security guard.

I could agree that likely there are a large amount of people that cant make those judgments as easily as others and that could be a factor.

But in cases like fraver and slates account, I don't think they would both so easily make that mistake during daylight.

 

[JMartJr]

But in cases like fraver and slates account, I don't think they would both so easily make that mistake during daylight.

I think about it statistically: there is some small chance that any given pilot when faced with, say, a balloon, will misinterpret what is going on, misjudge size and thus distance and speed of what they are seeing, and fill in details in memory and create an incredible UFO report out of an odd balloon encounter. It is pretty unlikely, most of the times they'll see a balloon and recognize a balloon -- but not every single time. So from time to time some pilot, could be anybody it's not a reflection on their skills and training, makes this mistake and sees a hypersonic UFO doing impossible things. There are a LOT of pilots flying a LOT of missions, in airspace where a LOT of balloons escape, a lot of planes are flying out in the LIZ, a lot of drones are bopping about, etc. Some very tiny percentage of those lead to misconceptions and strange UAP reports.

To me, unless pilots are infallible, this would seem unavoidable if there are enough pilots, balloons, missions, drones, etc. And most pilots are good -- but not infallible.

 

[LilWabbit]

I think about it statistically: there is some small chance that any given pilot when faced with, say, a balloon, will misinterpret what is going on, misjudge size and thus distance and speed of what they are seeing, and fill in details in memory and create an incredible UFO report out of an odd balloon encounter. It is pretty unlikely, most of the times they'll see a balloon and recognize a balloon -- but not every single time.

Indeed. Unusual (statistically unlikely) viewing conditions susceptible to misjudgment even by professional 'viewers' are inevitable given enough time and observations. Say, a decade and thousands of observations of objects by thousands of pilots.

For example Fravor's report was a sincere eyewitness report which adds to the mass of eyewitness reports from the general public as well as trained professionals, whereby the power of human imagination together with the brain's visual perception functions and unusual viewing conditions (such as parallax illusions and featureless objects), further informed by cultural fiction and myth, fills observational information gaps.

 

[Nemon]

To reinforce that point, Brian dunning discusses this issue on substack:

Brian Dunning doesn't seem to know the Nimitz incident well. He seems to think that Fravor filmed his TicTac, which wasn't the case. Fravor was also not "on the scene", as Dunning says earlier in his article, when Chad Underwood was recording the FLIR video. When the video was made, Fravor's intercept had already ended.
I have often encountered the mistake that there is a clearly assigned video of the TicTac — the FLIR video. But even if the operations center had tracked the Fravor object correctly and Underwood had filmed this one, which seems somehow unlikely, Fravor would no longer have been part of the action.
At least Dunning doesn't express himself clearly enough to exclude my reading.

 

[Brian Dunning]

They're human beings. That's all there is to it. They're prone to mistakes, maybe fewer than others, but they can misunderstand things.

Why do you say pilots may make fewer mistakes than non-pilots?

 

[Brian Dunning]

Brian Dunning doesn't seem to know the Nimitz incident well. He seems to think that Fravor filmed his TicTac, which wasn't the case.

I've never thought that. If you can point out where I've asserted such, I will gladly make the correction.

But you are generally right that I don't know those incidents well. I don't bother to, as I find such things have little importance. UFO people can tell all the stories they want, it won't change the facts of interstellar travel.

 

[Nemon]

I've never thought that. If you can point out where I've asserted such, I will gladly make the correction.

Thank you for your quick reply so that we can clear this up if one of us is mistaken.
I take my assessment from these passages in the article:

state that I ignored the unimpeachable testimony from great and respected military pilots like David Fravor (one of the pilots on the scene when the Tic Tac video was filmed).

https://briandunning.substack.com/p/pilots-are-actually-terrible-at-identifying?r=j83yw

I have to admit that the stament above does not claim David Fravor recorded the FLIR video. Nonetheless it confirms the opinion that there is a video of the TicTac, which in my opinion is a problematic assumption.

In the case of Fravor's Tic Tac video, the camera was simply rotating a new optical pathway into position and causing the image to jump; Fravor insists the object jumped because it suddenly moved at incredible speeds — even though the numbers on the screen said in black and white the camera was just flipping a new lens into position.

This passage then attributes the video somewhere to Fravor; although in this statement it is remains unclear whether it is his TicTac and/or his video. Yet the statement clearly refers to the FLIR video, which was made by Chad Underwood. And David Fravor was not exactly "on the scene" anymore when that happened. At least not actively on the scene.

All in all, I agree with your article. But since, as I said, I have repeatedly encountered the misunderstanding that there is clearly a video of Fravor's TicTac, I am a little sensitive about this detail. This misconception implies a different evidence situation than actually exists. I hope I've been able to put my opinion into words in a comprehensible way.

 

[Harabeck]

Idk about that, bomber squads fly pretty slow, and you shoot at blimps in warthunder all the time. It's like you can spot enemies in these games from literally specks on the horizon and head them off 5 minuets later let alone while you're flipping around and stuff.

Under no circumstances would I expect to misread a speck in the air in one of these games, at 2am after coming home from the bar.

So I find it hard to believe its easy for a fighter pilot like Fraver who has shown to me to be pretty competent in interviews to have been mistaken or a victim of parallax. But humans do make mistakes.



I could agree that likely there are a large amount of people that cant make those judgments as easily as others and that could be a factor.

But in cases like fraver and slates account, I don't think they would both so easily make that mistake during daylight.

"But I can do it in a video game" is a terrible argument. Warthunder has a mode that is more realistic than most games, but is still arcadey next to the most hardcore sims which are in turn still not perfect representations of reality. Even if they presented a perfect visual recreation of reality, they wouldn't be simulating unexpected objects!

Even if someone with Fravor's credentials is not *likely* to make a mistake (which I am granting for the sake of argument here), thousands of such pilots have been operating for the last century. Some of them will make mistakes, and that is a more likely explanation than exotic technology or phenomena.

 

[Duke]

"But I can do it in a video game" is a terrible argument. Warthunder has a mode that is more realistic than most games, but is still arcadey next to the most hardcore sims which are in turn still not perfect representations of reality. Even if they presented a perfect visual recreation of reality, they wouldn't be simulating unexpected objects!

Even if someone with Fravor's credentials is not *likely* to make a mistake (which I am granting for the sake of argument here), thousands of such pilots have been operating for the last century. Some of them will make mistakes, and that is a more likely explanation than exotic technology or phenomena.

It's kinda like saying, "I win every game playing 'Operation' against my kids, I don't understand how doctors lose surgical patients."

 

[Eburacum]

This misconception implies a different evidence situation than actually exists. I hope I've been able to put my opinion into words in a comprehensible way.

Almost everybody makes this mistake, but I don't see any evidence that Dunning is one of them.

On the other hand, Fravor appears to have been one of the very first people who saw the video, and I suspect (but cannot prove) that the video changed his own recollection of his own first-hand sighting, and many of the attributes of the video are now indelibly associated in his memory with the first event. This may also have happened with Dietrich, the other first-hand witness to the first event who has come forward.

AIUI, there were two other witnesses present in the planes who have not yet come forward, but now, twenty years later and after the FLIR video has been repeatedly shown on TV and the Internet, I would expect their recollections to be somewhat influenced by the video clip as well.

 

[Nemon]

Almost everybody makes this mistake, but I don't see any evidence that Dunning is one of them.

On the other hand, Fravor appears to have been one of the very first people who saw the video, and I suspect (but cannot prove) that the video changed his own recollection of his own first-hand sighting, and many of the attributes of the video are now indelibly associated in his memory with the first event. This may also have happened with Dietrich, the other first-hand witness to the first event who has come forward.

AIUI, there were two other witnesses present in the planes who have not yet come forward, but now, twenty years later and after the FLIR video has been repeatedly shown on TV and the Internet, I would expect their recollections to be somewhat influenced by the video clip as well.

Well, Brian Dunning is known to have an audible voice and will let me know if I am right with my guess.
A lot has already been said elsewhere on Metabunk about the memories and narratives under the influence of various factors, and it's obvious that you have to take that into account. I haven't looked today to see exactly what Fravor's processes were and when he saw which version of the video. Perhaps we will pick this up again when Sean Kirkpatrick's report is published soon (?). In the recent podcast, he made a reference to the TicTac (tethered balloon). Once again, however, it was so clumsy that the media immediately took him to task for it.

 

[tobigtofool]

"But I can do it in a video game" is a terrible argument.

I don't think so. We're talking about parallax, no I don't think its a terrible argument at all. 3d space is 3d space. We use simulations on this site all the time.

The idea that in a situation that you wouldn't be able to determine the characteristics of the object you are circling, is not realistic in my experience.

Humans make mistakes sure, but to expect such an egregious one during an actual training mission too much of a stretch IMO based off thousands of hours flying flight sims giving me a firm grasp on 3D space and movement.

Im saying I can confidently say it would be impossible for me to misread a blimp as a moving aircraft if Im in the same 3D space. I could say there is a chance, but I'd only be saying that to appease people who cant stand absolutes. But If I were honest about what I felt, I am absolutely 100% positive I could not make that mistake.

Im that confident that it'd be impossible for me to say i saw the things that fraver saw without actually seeing them.

And under Fraver and his wingman's circumstances I don't think they would, especially under the circumstances of his sighting, and the time of day.

I think to determine how easy it is for other people to make those mistakes should find some data: exactly how many pilots during tests or active duty, reported seeing something flying around, that was later determined in fact, to be a blimp or balloon.

I wonder if there is any data on that? I doubt it, but maybe? Ill poke around.

 

[Ann K]

But If I were honest about what I felt, I am absolutely 100% positive I could not make that mistake.

To quote someone else, but I can't remember who: "Do you know what it feels like to be wrong? It feels exactly like being right."

Mistakes are made by people who think they're right. And in the circumstances we are discussing, you would be making mistakes while (1) operating a plane (2) moving at a very high speed (3) through a turning maneuver in three dimensions. That's three factors that would complicate your judgment.

 

[JMartJr]

exactly how many pilots during tests or active duty, reported seeing something flying around, that was later determined in fact, to be a blimp or balloon.

The Batman Balloon and assorted UAPs in that same set of sightings springs to mind. Thread about those balloons here: CLICK ME!

 

[tobigtofool]

The Batman Balloon and assorted UAPs in that same set of sightings springs to mind. Thread about those balloons here: CLICK ME!

The consistency here would be, did he say it was flying around like Fraver said the tictac did? Or did he say he spotted an object that was in place? Meaning he just said he observed something, not missunderstood behaviors.

In reading the quoted text I don't get an answer to that question.

Do we know the statements? Ill edit it in if I find them.

Edit, I have discovered they identified the flight characteristics accurately via visual contact:

The Task Force reports noted that the objects were able to remain stationary in high winds, with no movement, beyond the capability of known balloons or drones.

the WSO spotted a third object, described as the "Metallic Blimp." It appears to have various appendages.

unidentified objects and aircraft, positioned directly in their daily flight paths.

Source: https://www.mysterywire.com/ufo/new-uap-photographs/

To quote someone else, but I can't remember who: "Do you know what it feels like to be wrong? It feels exactly like being right."

Mistakes are made by people who think they're right. And in the circumstances we are discussing, you would be making mistakes while (1) operating a plane (2) moving at a very high speed (3) through a turning maneuver in three dimensions. That's three factors that would complicate your judgment.

Could it be at all possible that we are wrong about how easy it is to misidentify the trajectory of an object while you are circling it in a vehical you have control of?

This is all I am saying really, that I find it hard to believe it's easy to make for a military pilot to make that mistake, but I want to find out if there are case examples before I argue about it, thank you @JMartJr for helping me sleuth for them.

For me personally, I think there's a better chance David Fraver saw a test flight of a drone, than mistook a balloon for an agile aircraft or added false memories to his sighting.

 

[Mick West]

Edit, I have discovered they identified the flight characteristics accurately via visual contact:

No, you did not. How on earth do you know it's accurate?

 

[tobigtofool]

No, you did not. How on earth do you know it's accurate?

We'll I suppose the article you linked could have made that up?

Source: https://www.mysterywire.com/ufo/new-uap-photographs/

I am sorry I will add in the link to follow the quotes I snipped.

 

[Eburacum]

I have discovered they identified the flight characteristics accurately via visual contact:

The Task Force reports noted that the objects were able to remain stationary in high winds, with no movement, beyond the capability of known balloons or drones.

That doesn't sound very accurate to me. The article was talking about the 'Acorn', 'Metallic Blimp', 'Sphere' and 'Pyramid'. Most of these objects were probably balloons or drones, so the assessment of their behaviour was most likely in error. The Pyramid clip seems to show stars, distorted by a triangular aperture.

Here's the Metallic Blimp; it looks like an escaped toy balloon to me.

 

[tobigtofool]

That doesn't sound very accurate to me. These objects were probably balloons or drones, so the assessment of their behaviour was most likely in error.

"directly in my flight path" "metallic blimp" and "stationary" sounds super accurate of assesment of balloon behavior to me.

Saying, it remained stationary, is accurate. 0-10m mph is basically stationary in the air at that altitude.

Saying, "that it's windy according to the readouts, so it should be moving more!" is an opinion, but what they described they saw, is in line with how balloons behave. Not out of line for that.

Fraver's on the other hand describes lots of movement, lots of flight characteristics, that nobody is claiming in this counter example.

Since the thread is about misunderstanding what you actually "saw" based on how they identified it, and in this case, they described what they saw accurately.

So other than fraver, we don't have an example of fighter pilots misunderstanding what they saw (yet!) I am sure it's out there.

Trying to find military pilots who say they saw flight characteristics that are not those of a balloon but then we determined for a fact it was a balloon.

 

[Eburacum]

Not really; the statement you posted a link to says (and I repeat)

The Task Force reports noted that the objects were able to remain stationary in high winds, with no movement, beyond the capability of known balloons or drones.

That is the exact opposite of an accurate assessment of the behaviour of these objects.

----
I note that the so-called 'Acorn' UAP is in fact our old friend the Batman Balloon.

I can guarantee that this object was not 'remaining stationary in high winds, with no movement, beyond the capability of known balloons or drones'.

 

[Eburacum]

The suggestion with Fravor's sighting is that the object he saw was significantly closer than he thought, so when he circled around it, the object appeared to be 'circling' opposite him at approximately the same rate. To model that in your aircraft combat simulation game, you would have to encounter something that was half as big as you thought it was.

Pilots tend to make the assumption that they are looking at an object with approximately the same size as an unknown (and potential enemy) aircraft; that is why they sometimes report meteors and bolides as nearby objects and take avoiding action, when in fact the meteor concerned may be upwards of a hundred kilometres away.

 

[tobigtofool]

Not really; the statement you posted a link to says (and I repeat)

That is the exact opposite of an accurate assessment of the behaviour of these objects.

----
I note that the so-called 'Acorn' UAP is in fact our old friend the Batman Balloon.

I can guarantee that this object was not 'remaining stationary in high winds, with no movement, beyond the capability of known balloons or drones'.

That checks out with me, it could have been going any amount of speed for all we know.

At 0-10 mph, it'd look stationary and basically be stationary.

If it were moving 20-40mph I would imagine you could be able to be fooled to think its basically stationary until you could see it's moving after a few passes

IMO At about 60+mph I think you're gonna be able to tell but it depends on how fast they were going and was it 1 pass? idk.

So it really depends on how fast that thing is actually moving, and how much visual contact they had. They do say it was a windy day but that's even less accurate way to describe how windy it was than saying its stationary while its really moving 30 mph in a straight line.

Once in real life in a Cessna I was told to fly directly towards a mountain while the pilot looked for something. In front of me was a hawk, about 2 miles out.. that hawk did not leave my flight path at all, I was going straight, it was going diagonal right, and it was in my flight path long enough for me to go, "hey you said go straight, but there is a hawk in our way... should I move?" and he looks up and goes "OH MY GOD!" and yanks the stick and we fly out of the way.

I cant remember how far we were by the time he took the stick, but we were close enough that I was watching the hawks head darting around, looking at the ground below, I checked we were at 5k feet! Ever since I've told the story that a hawk can see well enough to be like looking for prey, at 5k feet, that's what I think it was doing, that blows my mind.

But yeah, that hawk, how fast do we think it was moving? And it remained stationary in my flight path for about 2 miles it could have been though, from flying into the wind for all I know.

To me, the descriptions don't sound suspicious, they sound like how I would expect someone to describe a balloon.

I think the very windy day argument sounds like added fluff to make the reader think "see it couldn't be a balloon!"

Saying it is stationary checks out with how a balloon would look vs how it would behave in winds at that altitude.

Saying it shot up into the air and was constantly avoiding our flight patterns, is not.

 

[Mick West]

I think the very windy day argument sounds like added fluff to make the reader think "see it couldn't be a balloon!"

Saying it is stationary checks out with how a balloon would look vs how it would behave in winds at that altitude.

You you are saying the pilots were entirely wrong about what the balloon was doing, because they reported what it looked like. So they misinterpreted something they saw.

 

[tobigtofool]

You you are saying the pilots were entirely wrong about what the balloon was doing, because they reported what it looked like. So they misinterpreted something they saw.

I'm suggesting that the impact of a very windy day on a balloon is open to debate. However, describing a balloon as stationary after observing it during a single pass in the wind, or noting it was in my flight path, should not be considered a misinterpretation. Indeed, this is how I would describe the hawk as well.

Furthermore, the description of something as "constantly outmaneuvering us" across multiple passes does not align with the behavior of a balloon being carried by the wind. Nor do I believe someone like Fraver would misinterpret the situation under those conditions.

Personally, I believe there's a significant possibility that the pilot initially described it as stationary without delving into details. Later, someone might have noted it was a windy day and concluded that this confirmed it was a UAP, based on the pilot's statement that it appeared stationary.

 

[JMartJr]

Personally, I believe there's a significant possibility that the pilot initially described it as stationary without delving into details. Later, someone might have noted it was a windy day

Not sure this holds up. Somebody with airplane smarts correct me if this is wrong, but it looks to me like the balloon and the plane are in the same wind, if the plane makes a close pass, and that all relative movement between them would be accounted for by the speed of the plane moving THROUGH the air. If the plane was somehow to go motionless through the air it would not move relative to the balloon, regardless of whether they were both moving along with a 10 mph breeze or a 100 mph wind. (Always, barring turbulence...)

 

[Alexandria Nick]

Why do you say pilots may make fewer mistakes than non-pilots?

Only a speculation that familiarity with their day to day work means they're less likely to mistake things they commonly encounter. I work in the railroad business and I'm more likely to not mistake a rumbling sound in the distance for a train versus a truck, just because I recognize subtle clues than a non-industry worker would not know.

 

[3db]

How in the world can pilots not know what parallax is? Aren't pilots trained to fly by instruments alone because their eye's cannot tell the difference between the sky and sea in some weather conditions

Pilots are not immune to seeing what the want to see.

Here a former naval aviator breaks down gun camera footage and audio from F-14s shooting down Libyian, fighters, because the F-14 pilot mistook his own airplanes movements as hostile Libyan maneuvers.

Source: https://youtu.be/RyMfC3M0fZQ?t=641


Here is gun camera footage of an A-10 attacking friendly vehicles, because the pilot thought the orange identification panels on top of the vehicle, who's only purpose is literally to mark the vehicle as friendly, as orange rockets.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I6-2NJhnf4


Here is gun camera footage of an A-64 destroying two friendly vehicles, despite not being sure where he was and what they were.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iesQorDCtFQ


No one is safe from making mistakes.

 

[tobigtofool]

Pilots are not immune to seeing what the want to see.

Here a former naval aviator breaks down gun camera footage and audio from F-14s shooting down Libyian, fighters, because the F-14 pilot mistook his own airplanes movements as hostile Libyan maneuvers.
Source: https://youtu.be/RyMfC3M0fZQ?t=641

Here is gun camera footage of an A-10 attacking friendly vehicles, because the pilot thought the orange identification panels on top of the vehicle, who's only purpose is literally to mark the vehicle as friendly, as orange rockets.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I6-2NJhnf4

Here is gun camera footage of an A-64 destroying two friendly vehicles, despite not being sure where he was and what they were.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iesQorDCtFQ

No one is space from making mistake.

The thing is these pilots are not miss identifying the physics here. The Gulf of Sidra the readouts from 70 miles away were the mistake, not the visual contact or parallax.

They were quite easily able to zero in on and target these objects so even when making mistakes, they still know how to judge how to engage a target based on its movement and position.

Which is why I don't think it explains how Fraver was mistaken about visual trajectory or fooled by parallax enough to describe what he claims he saw. Starting movement, stopping, sudden acceleration, reaching speeds they couldn't match.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/navy-pilot-recalls-encounter-ufo-unlike/story?id=51856514

Had any of these examples shown that the pilots were unable to engage with these targets in visual range it would be more comparable.

But they were able to engage all of these, the same way fraver should have been able to engage a balloon.

 

[Skalman]

They were able to engage them because what they thought they saw and what was really there corresponded quite well to what was really there, even though they made mistakes. Also, two of those are of engagement with targets on the ground, which helps immensely with regards to making accurate estimates since you have way more corroborating information from the surroundings.

Basically, we have two conflicting theories of what happened with Fraver.

Either 1) The pilot(s) saw a UAP of size A, at position B at speed C, which they instead, because of human error, estimated to have size X, located at position Y at speed Z. They failed to engage the UAP because of this mistake. The described behaviour of the UAP, if it had been at XYZ, was beyond the capacity of any known aircraft, but if it was at ABC, the behaviour as described is plausible due to parallax and the pilots' own movements. This explanation fits the facts and makes one assumption: the pilot(s) made an error when estimating the position, size and speed of the UAP.

Or 2) The pilot(s) saw a UAP of size X, at position Y going at speed Z and when they engaged it, it behaved as if it were of size A, located at position B at speed C. But because the pilot(s) would never make such an error it instead must have been at XYZ, meaning it was an aircraft with capabilities way beyond that of every other aircraft known to man. This explanation also fits the fact and makes one assumption: there is at least one aircraft with such superior flight capabilities that the most technologically advanced airforce in the world has no chance of even tailing it.

Now, which one is the more probable one? The one which assumes that even fighter pilots can make mistakes, especially in unfamilliar situations were the usual initial instincts and assumptions don't apply. Or the one which assumes that fighter pilots are infallible and that instead there is an aircraft which has capabilities so far beyond the rest of them that it maybe even breaks the laws of physics as we know them?