NYT: GIMBAL Video of U.S. Navy Jet Encounter with Unknown Object

Well yeah took me 30 secs to find, but it is helpful if people can do some looking themselves

11. ATFLIR SYSTEM. 12. The pod adapter unit is installed on the left fuselage at weapon station 4. The pod can be installed or removed to be compatible with the aircraft mission requirements.

1623414710277.png


This may vary on the Super Hornet do we know the exact model F/18 in Gimbal?
 
Well yeah took me 30 secs to find, but it is helpful if people can do some looking themselves

11. ATFLIR SYSTEM. 12. The pod adapter unit is installed on the left fuselage at weapon station 4. The pod can be installed or removed to be compatible with the aircraft mission requirements.

View attachment 45018

This may vary on the Super Hornet do we know the exact model F/18 in Gimbal?
The E is the single seat variant of the super hornet (you can tell from the air intakes).

Super Hornet is E/F (single/double)
Hornet is C/D (single/double).

This is for sure a 2 seater (you can hear both pilot and WSO) and probably an F (two seater super hornet).
 
i already knew where it could be attached, that wasnt the question :)

my question was if the attachment point matters for the hypothesis of the rotating gimbal at the moment we assume it had to OR if it could provide more wiggle room

because what i believe is the strongest argument for the glare rotation claim is when the object really rotates at the exact moment the gimbal had to rotate as well, for the same degree and the same direction
 
i already knew where it could be attached, that wasnt the question :)

my question was if the attachment point matters for the hypothesis of the rotating gimbal at the moment we assume it had to
It can only be attached in one place. Slow down a bit and read the information.
 
It can only be attached in one place. Slow down a bit and read the information.
Why did Chris say the pod can be mounted on different spots?

Btw might have been answered already but why do we know its an Raytheon ATFLIR and not another targeting pod?
 
Why did Chris say the pod can be mounted on different spots?

Btw might have been answered already but why do we know its an Raytheon ATFLIR and not another targeting pod?

Navy F/18 only has ATLFIR and LITENING and we are told by TTSA these are ATFLIR and the UI matches the ATFLIR pods.

Also news articles indicate Navy uses ATFLIR on the F/18

https://www.flightglobal.com/us-navy-stays-with-raytheon-pods/43720.article

The SNIPER on the F/16 Chris flew might be mountable on other hardpoints on that specific airframe.

All the pictures and documents we can find indicate that the ATLFLIR is specifically for the left fuselage mount point on the F/18
 
It's not a smudge. A "smudge" seems like a misinterpretation of the theory. It sounds like some people think the smudge IS the shape. Dave Falch just did a video repeating his old objections, and now brings up a "smudge"
.
Fair enough. I would use the word "defect" or something else. what is important is that there may be something on the window that contributes to scatter from a bright source, causing a glare. And if the entrance aperture of the system is on or near the window, which makes sense and based on some of these designs is certainly possible, then a defect can contribute to a large range of field angles.
 
A TMA is often used when you need a large field of view (like multiple degrees) with low aberration content. Not common in astronomy where FOVs are often small (largest I've personally used has been 20 arcminutes), but sometimes for surveys, like the LSST (Vera Rubin Observatory). The LSST's TMA is on axis, but other TMA's I've seen have looked like this design, with multiple off-axis conics, which are often difficult to make and to align.
Edited to add: this ray trace makes it look likes the entrance aperture isn't too far in front of the primary, a fact perhaps relevant to the idea of how much a smudge on a window would create glare for different object angles.
I know TMAs, I have designed them. And also used them in my lab.
They are notoriously hard to align. This is because the tolerances of the optical distances are very tight.
The advantages are also that you need less reflective surfaces than other telescope designs.
 
"LITENING AT, is in production and was fielded in 2003"

There are a lot of versions so perhaps I'm wrong or this is not considered old.
 
... and the synchronization of the rotation to the camera bumps.
Within the first seconds of the clip, when the pod is looking 52deg left and the plane is banking, there's a bump that's similar to the other ones but does not result in a rotation of the glare. I'm not disputing the claim, but just trying to figure out what part of the pod causes the image to shake.
 
Within the first seconds of the clip, when the pod is looking 52deg left and the plane is banking, there's a bump that's similar to the other ones but does not result in a rotation of the glare. I'm not disputing the claim, but just trying to figure out what part of the pod causes the image to shake.
The whole plane could bump at that point, turbulence, the claim isn't that every movement on the image is a ATFLIR rotation alone it's that ATFLIR major rotations can cause physical bumps to the camera system. So the fact that the rotation correlate with bumps is a sign that something physical is happening with the system and that that same physical thing is linked to the apparent rotation of the "object."
 
The Chilean UFO is not defined.

You can see two distinct heat sources flickering with poorly defined edges. What you would expect looking at the exhaust of a jet engine (airliners have engines wide apart). What you are seeing in the Chilean video is not just "glare". It's simply the hot gases pointing directly towards the camera. That is why they are not a solid shape. They flicker as the gasses diffuse in the atmosphere.

Just like this video shows clearly:

Source: https://twitter.com/DaveFalch/status/1278856646954029057


Gimbal does not flicker. The edges are solid and not undefined. It doesn't look like a jet exhaust.

It could be glare from a solid powerful IR source (e.g. not a flare burning as it would flicker but a hot space capsule reentering? or an IR laser pointing at the camera?).
 
Gimbal does not flicker. The edges are solid and not undefined. It doesn't look like a jet exhaust.

It could be glare from a solid powerful IR source (e.g. not a flare burning as it would flicker but a hot space capsule reentering? or an IR laser pointing at the camera?).

"Solid edges" I would not say though. Looks rather fluffy to me.
I think somewhere om metabunk we discussed the possibility of "IR jamming", which basically means over-illuminating the IR can from the pod. As the cam is likely sensitive from 4-12um, the effect of some high power LED source of laser (on a drone?) would be significant.
 
Watching the Gimbal video again, I wondered if we are making enough use of the clouds? It is evident from parallax effects that the Gimbal object is much further away than the furthest visible clouds, since it appears static while the clouds appear to move rapidly from left to right between the viewing point and the object. Theoretically this could be explained by the object moving rapidly from right to left in the same direction as the viewing point (i.e. the Navy jet), but this would require implausible speeds. Could anyone estimate the size and distance of the clouds, taking account of the strong zoom factor and limited field of view? I also note that the apparent size of the object (i.e. the black or white IR 'blob') is of the same order of magnitude as the cloud features themselves, e.g. at 0:19 in the video the long axis of the object is about a quarter the size of the lumpy cloud tops, despite being (as argued above) much further away. This tends to support the view that what we are seeing is glare much larger than the physical object itself, though I suppose it might be argued that the cloud features need not be very large.

Incidentally, has anyone identified the small white square which rotates clockwise from about a 10 o'clock to a 12 o'clock position during the course of the video? I think this was mentioned somewhere in previous discussion, but I don't recall any identification. It appears to be part of the display, not the scene.
The clouds are behind the object, which is why they move left to right instead of right to left as the camera turns to the right, as indicated by the white square LOS Cue that shows where the camera is pointing relative to the platform.

External Quote:
http://www.jf18-resource.com/Utilities/Janes_FA18E-Simulation-Manual.pdf
1623511083212.png

◆ LOS Cue: The small dashed box provides a quick idea of the approximate azimuth and elevation of the ATFLIR LOS with respect to your aircraft. The Pod LOS cue is displayed in a top down format where the center of the display represents the aircraft (with the nose pointed towards the top of the page). The Pod LOS box is positioned on the left or right side of the page based on the current Pod Azimuth, and the box is positioned vertically on the page based on pod Elevation.
 
"Solid edges" I would not say though. Looks rather fluffy to me.
I think somewhere om metabunk we discussed the possibility of "IR jamming", which basically means over-illuminating the IR can from the pod. As the cam is likely sensitive from 4-12um, the effect of some high power LED source of laser (on a drone?) would be significant.
Here's what a DIRCM looks like.
External Quote:
 
You can see two distinct heat sources flickering with poorly defined edges. What you would expect looking at the exhaust of a jet engine (airliners have engines wide apart). What you are seeing in the Chilean video is not just "glare". It's simply the hot gases pointing directly towards the camera. That is why they are not a solid shape. They flicker as the gasses diffuse in the atmosphere.

This is entirely and utterly wrong.

Firstly there are four heat sources, not two.

Secondly, it is glare, 100%. Hot gasses from jet exhaust are only visible directly in a small cone, no bigger than the engine in diameter.

Thirdly, the gas does not "diffuse into the atmosphere" at high altitude, it violently mixes and drops below freezing in a fraction of a second. You can see this in the simple fact that contrails form, as liquid water (then ice) only a short distance behind engines, with a cross-section much smaller than the plane.

2021-06-12_08-29-55.jpg


Fourthly, we have examples of continuous filming of a plane, including from Falch that show this. Note the exhaust gas cones, and note how as it gets further away the glare takes over.



Finally, yes there's some shimmer in the Chilean case, but that's because it's further away, and viewed from a low altitude, so there's more atmospheric distortion. A solid object would shimmer.
 
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The clouds are behind the object, which is why they move left to right instead of right to left as the camera turns to the right, as indicated by the white square LOS Cue that shows where the camera is pointing relative to the platform.
Evidently I was even more confused than usual. I knew that the camera was turning to the right, relative to the axis of the jet, but the jet itself is turning rapidly to the left, and the net effect, as seen from a 'God's-eye-view', is that the camera is turning to the left (i.e. counter clockwise as viewed from above). I must then have assumed that nearer objects would appear to move faster than more distant ones, by the usual rule of parallax when the observer is moving. But I overlooked that the camera is tracking the object of interest itself, so it stays in a fixed position in the image whatever the effect of camera movement on other objects. My apologies for wasting people's time.

Thanks for the answer about the white square.
 
Evidently I was even more confused than usual. I knew that the camera was turning to the right, relative to the axis of the jet, but the jet itself is turning rapidly to the left, and the net effect, as seen from a 'God's-eye-view', is that the camera is turning to the left (i.e. counter clockwise as viewed from above). I must then have assumed that nearer objects would appear to move faster than more distant ones, by the usual rule of parallax when the observer is moving. But I overlooked that the camera is tracking the object of interest itself, so it stays in a fixed position in the image whatever the effect of camera movement on other objects.

The sum total of the camera and jet rotations is simply that the object is remains in the center of the screen. If you focus on that simple observation, then the parallax is really about how the camera is moving not how it's rotating.

This is often unintuitive and I find myself doing a little physical test to verify. I hold my thumb up halfway to the screen, then move my head right. Everything moves left, but the closer object moves more.

If I focus on the thumb, the distant object moves right, the same direction as my head.



This is something you'd think would be second nature my now, but I still have to check.
 

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Evidently I was even more confused than usual. I knew that the camera was turning to the right, relative to the axis of the jet, but the jet itself is turning rapidly to the left, and the net effect, as seen from a 'God's-eye-view', is that the camera is turning to the left (i.e. counter clockwise as viewed from above). I must then have assumed that nearer objects would appear to move faster than more distant ones, by the usual rule of parallax when the observer is moving. But I overlooked that the camera is tracking the object of interest itself, so it stays in a fixed position in the image whatever the effect of camera movement on other objects. My apologies for wasting people's time.

Thanks for the answer about the white square.
Simply rotating the camera doesn't really affect parallax; the observer's motion does, so if the observer moves to the right of the distant object, then things behind the object will also appear to move right relative to the object, while things closer to the observer will move in the opposite direction to the left of the object.
 
This is entirely and utterly wrong.

Firstly there are four heat sources, not two.
Yes of course. What I meant is that the nearby engines appear as one single blob.

We don't see this in Gimbal. So the only "airplane" source would be a fighter (single of two jets but close together).

Secondly, it is glare, 100%. Hot gasses from jet exhaust are only visible directly in a small cone, no bigger than the engine in diameter.
Thirdly, the gas does not "diffuse into the atmosphere" at high altitude, it violently mixes and drops below freezing in a fraction of a second. You can see this in the simple fact that contrails form, as liquid water (then ice) only a short distance behind engines, with a cross-section much smaller than the plane.
I think the Chilean video proves you are wrong here.

The engine exhaust is a couple of tons of air at around 500–700°C (plus afterburner in some cases.). I understand contrails are ice crystals but I doubt that means the ENTIRE air mass is cooled to below freezing instantly while remaining in a "small cone". I would assume it expands and mixes with the sub 0 temperature air and the water in it would freeze.

The hot exhaust is short lived. There is a lot of very cold air all around and it rapidly expands and cools down.

Regarding the "small cone, no bigger than the engine in diameter" I doubt it. Even looking at the contrails you can notice:
- they start 50 meters behind the engine (1-2 second delay)
- their diameter is several times the diameter of the engine
- it gets larger with distance as the gasses are (obviously) expanding and mixing with the air.

Look at the Chilean case. The contrails appear huge and hot despite being ice crystals. The air is very very cold (-50° at 10k meters?). Even ice appears hot in comparison. Interesting...

But you are certainly the contrails expert here. :-)

Fourthly, we have examples of continuous filming of a plane, including from Falch that show this. Note the exhaust gas cones, and note how as it gets further away the glare takes over.
View attachment 45070
I don't understand your point here.

Finally, yes there's some shimmer in the Chilean case, but that's because it's further away, and viewed from a low altitude, so there's more atmospheric distortion. A solid object would shimmer.
It's at 4500 feet and pointing up. Not 40k feet but still pretty high for atmospheric distortion no? It shimmers and also shows protrusions as the gasses expand in all directions.
 
Look at the Chilean case. The contrails appear huge and hot despite being ice crystals. The air is very very cold (-50° at 10k meters?). Even ice appears hot in comparison. Interesting...
Contrails are visible because they are solid (ice) or liquid. Opaque.

Hot air is literally invisible in IR unless it's really hot. You don't see anything from the side other than a tiny cone
2021-06-12_12-45-27.jpg


But when it's facing you it's really bright, and you get glare.

2021-06-12_12-45-56.jpg


When it gets further away (smaller on-screen) the glare is bigger, as the exposure is more (auto-gain)

2021-06-12_12-46-52.jpg



Eventually, all you have is glare.
2021-06-12_12-48-03.jpg
 
It gets brighter as it gets further away? The auto gain just makes the hot air more visible and hence you see a bigger cloud of it. The first picture shows a black background, so not much gain. The second a brighter background so more gain. The higher gain lights up the air in the background (which also radiates some heat) and also lights up more of the cloud of hot gas emitted by the engines.
It's not glare, and neither is this:
Screenshot_2021-06-12-22-17-40-035~2.jpeg


Taken from this video:
 
Regarding the "small cone, no bigger than the engine in diameter" I doubt it. Even looking at the contrails you can notice:
- they start 50 meters behind the engine (1-2 second delay)
Commercial airliners typically cruise above 200 m/s. Wouldn't 50 meters behind the engine only be a 200 to 250 millisecond delay?
 
It gets brighter as it gets further away?
Only because it's smaller on screen.

And no, it's not the cloud of hot gasses. It's glare. Consider your example:
screenshot_2021-06-12-22-17-40-035-2-jpeg.45078

That jet is flying forward at 200mph, and yet you somehow suggest the light area is a "cloud of hot gas" that extends in front of the engines.

Are you suggesting there is never any glare in thermal cameras?
 
What you are seeing in the Chilean video is not just "glare". It's simply the hot gases pointing directly towards the camera.
Nonsense. And to understand why, imagine that instead of being far away, the plane was instead a couple of hundred meters from the camera, and think about what it would look like then. Would the image be completely ocscured by a blob of "hot gases" several stories high? Why or why not?

Edit: looks like everyone else beat me to the punch!
 
And no, it's not the cloud of hot gasses. It's glare. Consider your example:
screenshot_2021-06-12-22-17-40-035-2-jpeg.45078

That jet is flying forward at 200mph, and yet you somehow suggest the light area is a "cloud of hot gas" that extends in front of the engines.

Are you suggesting there is never any glare in thermal cameras?
No, but if my example is "not the cloud of hot gasses", what do you suggest is causing this glare?
 
Nonsense. And to understand why, imagine that instead of being far away, the plane was instead a couple of hundred meters from the camera, and think about what it would look like then. Would the image be completely ocscured by a blob of "hot gases" several stories high? Why or why not?

Edit: looks like everyone else beat me to the punch!
If you were standing a 100 meters behind a jet at full power you wouldn't see it in IR as the hot gasses (yes, a couple of stories high) would cover it almost entirely.

As I said: each engine outputs several tons a second of air at 500-700 degress. Where do you think it goes?

This is also known as Jet Blast.

Here is a 747 at takeoff for example (people have died playing this game)
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqVjD3nBSQg&t=76s


And here is a boeing guide on this issue: http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_06/textonly/s02txt.html
When modern jet engines are operated at rated thrust levels, the exhaust wake can exceed 375 mi/h (325 kn or 603 km/h) immediately aft of the engine exhaust nozzle. This exhaust flow field extends aft in a rapidly expanding cone, with portions of the flow field contacting and extending aft along the pavement surface (fig. 1). Exhaust velocity components are attenuated with increasing distance from the engine exhaust nozzle. However, an airflow of 300 mi/h (260 kn or 483 km/h) can still be present at the empennage, and significant people and equipment hazards will persist hundreds of feet beyond this area. At full power, the exhaust wake speed can typically be 150 mi/h (130 kn or 240 km/h) at 200 ft (61 m) beyond the airplane and 50 to 100 mi/h (43 to 88 kn or 80 to 161 km/h) well beyond this point.
and
An idling airplane can produce a compact version of a Category 3 hurricane, introducing an engine wake approaching 120 mi/h (104 kn or 192 km/h) with temperatures of 100°F (38°C). This wake velocity can increase two or three times as the throttles are advanced and the airplane begins to taxi

It is clear the hot gasses expand significantly and over a very large area. They don't remain at extremely high temperatures but are clearly much warmer than the ambient air.

Here is an image from this report that gives results of ground measurements on the Pratt & Whitney JT8D of the Douglas DC-9 and shows how quickly the temperature drops behind the aircraft due to mixing and radiation.

7X8iz.png


This is a non Afterburner equipped low bypass engines so similar to a fighter jet minus the afterburner.

The exhaust cools "rapidly" from 600 degrees to 150 but that's still a lot of air to dissipate and expanding over a large area.

Why don't we always see the full extent of the jet exhaust in the IR videos? In the chilean video we can even see that ICE contrails appear warmer than the surround air (which is very much below freezing) and seems to appear out of thin air.

I think it has to do with the "exposure adjustment" the sensors employ. The exhaust nozzle is at 600 degrees F and so the exposure is set pretty high. You loose the contrast between below freezing air and the "larger exhaust" at "just" 30 degrees celsius.

But that's only an hypothesis. Interesting.

(sorry for the mix of C and F)
 
Nonsense. And to understand why, imagine that instead of being far away, the plane was instead a couple of hundred meters from the camera, and think about what it would look like then. Would the image be completely obscured by a blob of "hot gases" several stories high? Why or why not?

On top of what Gtoffo posted, I think the aircraft was added to the blob later and may not be exactly to scale...

Here's a video showing the true ratios between an aircraft and its blob:



Here's my take on the `glare vs hot gas' matter:

What is perceived as "lens glare" in FLIR images is probably "CCD bloom". It looks the same, but has a different cause and happens in a different area of the FLIR (the CCD instead of the optical system).

You will hardly find any references to `IR glare' (except on Metabunk of course), because the absence of glare is considered as one of the unique selling points of FLIR camera's:​
Thermal cameras aren't affected by visible light, so they can give you clear pictures even when you are looking into the setting sun. In fact, you can aim a spotlight at a FLIR and still get a perfect picture.
Source: https://www.flir.com/discover/ots/thermal-vs-night-vision/

The only references to IR glare you'll find are linked to reflections in glass, since glass tends to reflect IR (which is why lenses made of glass are not used in an ATFLIR).

FLIR camera's are almost insensitive to glare in their optical system, which is one of the reasons why they are so popular.

Here's a picture of the sun taken with a low cost thermal camera (left part of picture):
1623679560241.png

Source: https://emilywick.com/2016/09/17/transforming-temperature-into-light-with-a-thermal-camera/

FLIR's seem to demonstrate glare, though, but what you see is something else, something happening in the CCD instead of in the optical system: Blooming:

Each pixel in the CCD catches IR photons and transforms them into electrons (resulting in an electric charge).​
At saturation, pixels lose their ability to accommodate additional charge. This additional charge will then spread into neighbouring pixels, causing them to either report erroneous values or also saturate. This spread of charge to adjacent pixels is known as blooming and appears as a white streak or blob in the image.
In addition, because this extra-large number of electrons needs to be moved down the sensor in order to be read by the CCD readout register, moving this saturated spot causes a vertical streak/smear down the image.
1623679699702.png

Source: https://www.photometrics.com/learn/imaging-topics/saturation-and-blooming


This means that a certain heat source can occupy more pixels than its true size if the corresponding CCD area is bombarded with enough IR photons, causing the pixels to saturate and to saturate their neighbours as well.​

The heat from jet engines, for instance, can occupy more pixels than its true size because of saturation of the CCD area where the IR photons hit. This will typically happen if the photons hit a tiny area of the CCD, like when you create an image of a jet far away and all the IR photons emitted by the jet engines hit a small spot on the CCD (see video above):
1623679762494.png


If you zoom in or out with the optics of the camera, the number of IR photons entering the camera does not change since that number is determined by the entrance pupil of the camera. However, these photons are distributed over a larger CCD area if you zoom in, because the optical system basically projects the zoomed image on the CCD. Zooming in will lead to less bloom because each pixel in the CCD now has less photons to absorb.

The engine blobs now are close to the real size you would expect from the hot air behind them (see video above):​
1623679841803.png

1623679881017.png



How does this change the "rotating gimbal" hypothesis?

Since hardly any `glare' is created by IR optics, simply assuming a bright IR source causing glare in the rotating Gimbal optics does not work.

A small irregularity on the ATFLIR wind screen then?

I don't think so, since the wind screen basically coincides with the entrance pupil of the ATFLIR. This essentially means that every pixel of the image created in the CCD is made from rays emitted by the corresponding outside area hitting every part of the surface area of the primary mirror. In other words, every pixel uses the whole surface area of the primary mirror to be created. Any irregularity in the corresponding wind screen area will not hinder the creation of any of the CCD pixels much, it can at most create some stray light showing up as a veiling glare on top of the image while the image is still recreated perfectly pixel by pixel.

A large irregularity on the wind screen maybe?

This would affect every pixel of the image and cause an almost equal blurring of the whole image, since the wind screen basically coincides with the entrance pupil of the ATFLIR (see explanation above). I do not see this in the ATFLIR images.

That's my take, folks. Take it or leave it, but I've spend enough time already on this topic. We'll see what the Pentagon report will bring, which will provide a more holistic view on the subject matter I guess, without any definitive answers yet.
 
It is clear the hot gasses expand significantly and over a very large area. They don't remain at extremely high temperatures but are clearly much warmer than the ambient air...


The exhaust cools "rapidly" from 600 degrees to 150 but that's still a lot of air to dissipate and expanding over a large area.

Why don't we always see the full extent of the jet exhaust in the IR videos? In the chilean video we can even see that ICE contrails appear warmer than the surround air (which is very much below freezing) and seems to appear out of thin air.

I think it has to do with the "exposure adjustment" the sensors employ. The exhaust nozzle is at 600 degrees F and so the exposure is set pretty high. You loose the contrast between below freezing air and the "larger exhaust" at "just" 30 degrees celsius.
The main atmospheric gases (nitrogen, oxygen and argon) don't emit much IR radiation, even if they are very hot to the touch, or to a thermometer. The jet exhaust gases themselves will contain a lot of CO2, H2O, and other compounds such as nitrous oxide, which do emit IR. So as they leave the engine they should appear 'hot' in an IR sensor. But as they spread into the surrounding air they will be diluted by the atmospheric gases, as well as losing heat by contact, condensation of water vapor (which dumps heat into the surrounding air), and by doing work of expansion. I don't know how far this explains the relatively small area of IR visibility around a jet, but it does mean that 'air' warmer than the normal temperature at the altitude will not necessarily show up strongly to a sensor. The 'exposure adjustment' of the sensors may also be relevant, but it doesn't explain how ice crystals in contrails do show up, as gtoffo mentions in the Chilean case. Ice crystals wouldn't be at 30 C. Not for long, anyway.
 
If you were standing a 100 meters behind a jet at full power you wouldn't see it in IR as the hot gasses (yes, a couple of stories high) would cover it almost entirely.
Again, nonsense. We have close-up IR video of planes that show nothing of the sort. It's fascinating that you and another poster stubbornly continue down this road, despite being shown to be wrong again and again.
 
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I think the aircraft was added to the blob later and may not be exactly to scale...
It is almost exactly to scale, otherwise the centers of the four roughly circular glare spots wouldn't line up with the positions of the engines.
You will hardly find any references to `IR glare' (except on Metabunk of course), because the absence of glare is considered as one of the unique selling points of FLIR camera's:
Thermal cameras aren't affected by visible light, so they can give you clear pictures even when you are looking into the setting sun. In fact, you can aim a spotlight at a FLIR and still get a perfect picture.
This quote isn't saying what you think it's saying, which is why this...

Since hardly any `glare' is created by IR optics,
... is demonstrably untrue, and an absurd assertion.

(...) simply assuming a bright IR source causing glare in the rotating Gimbal optics does not work.
Except for all of the multiple lines of evidence converging on the unassailable fact that it does. I understand that for some baffling reason you don't want to accept it, but it's simply true. No amount of specious rationalization or misunderstanding of science and engineering principles will change this fact, so:
I've spend enough time already on this topic.
...is for the best.
 
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