Recreating the Gimbal's "Fleet" on the SA Page with Sitrec

I'm not saying anything, I'm sharing what I got from a short exchange. Why didn't you ask all these questions yourself when you talked with him ?
I talked to him before I added the SA page to Sitrec. I was trying to get him to be more precise, but unfortunately, he started to have concerns about talking about classified things - he said even the range of the SA page would be something he was not comfortable, discussing and he'd have to think about it. Then we ran out of time.

But right now we don't have a consistent story that works with the video.
 
Alphas answer doesn't really tell us much.

Maybe you can have your all your normal tracking ATFLIR RADAR correlation etc turned off, but why would you?

You have a radar lock on a target you want to see what it is, you set it as L+S hit SLAVE and everything automatically points at it.

But they are very obviously NOT doing that in the GIMBAL video, why? It certainly leaves the door open for them to have a different target on RADAR than the ATFLIR is pointing. Which is kind of what they are debating in the audio. It also leaves the door open for them messing with the settings, as with Go Fast (same crew I think is now apparently confirmed)

eg another explanation is
L+S is simulated RADAR track as they initially suspect as per the report.
ATFLIR is pointed and auto-tracked on distant aircraft on a similar but not identical LOS?
Confusion.
 
@jarlrmai I could accept this theory if there wasn't so much match between the reconstructed trajectory of Gimbal from the FLIR, and the description of the radar track on the SA. The object stopped on the SA when the lines of sight curve (i.e. the object has no clear horizontal velocity) in the range provided by the WSO.

Even if there was uncertainty on when the stop does actually happen, how do you explain that a radar track would show a stop like this, all that while locking by error on a wrong target?

A weird radar glitch, with other glitches shown as a fleet, right when the pilots lock on a random unidentified plane? And the random plane has lines of sight that coincide with the trajectory of the bogus radar track, in the range of that radar track? How far-fetched is that?

We come back to only a bizarre instrument glitch can explain this forum's scenario, but there is no evidence that the instruments were malfunctiuning.
 
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@jarlrmai I could accept this theory if there wasn't so much match between the reconstructed trajectory of Gimbal from the FLIR, and the description of the radar track on the SA. The object stopped on the SA when the lines of sight curve (i.e. the object has no clear horizontal velocity) in the range provided by the WSO.

Even if there was uncertainty on when the stop does actually happen, how do you explain that a radar track would show a stop like this, all that while locking by error on a wrong target?

A weird radar glitch, with other glitches shown as a fleet, right when the pilots lock on a random unidentified plane? And the random plane has lines of sight that coincide with the trajectory of the bogus radar track, in the range of that radar track? How far-fetched is that?

We come back to only a bizarre instrument glitch can explain this forum's scenario, but there is no evidence that the instruments were malfunctiuning.
All we have to go on the radar data is someones word though, if i'm being totally honest I personally feel like Graves seems to be almost 'retconning' the SA/RADAR descriptions based on the wilder interpretations of the GIMBAL video. This is purely my view not a 'Metabunk' view or a Mick view, I have no idea what others think.

I'd rather not try to have a fractured discussion with him over Twitter as Mick has attempted, if we can't have it on this forum then where can we have a discussion with open/honest Q and A with answers to the questions that feel like they are being dodged? So we can see if his recollections actually do explain things.

If we take a step back what we are essentially saying that there is a more rational explanation for GIMBAL based on the video alone i.e. what we can see, Graves says there is RADAR etc data we cant see that says that we are wrong, but when we ask for more details or try to reconcile what is said with that we know about the systems used we don't get a satisfactory explanatory model. If GIMBAL truly is evidence for some extraordinary thing then this forum and Mick and I etc are the only people basically looking at it hard enough to provide any counter argument to it basically being the among the most important documents in history with Graves being the gatekeeper of that information. Convincing us is at the moment the final stumbling block really. But Graves seems unwilling to partake in the discussion in any real depth.
 
there is no evidence that the instruments were malfunctioning
The fact that the radar reportedly showed a 'whole fleet' of objects behaving bizarrely that were not observed in any other way is itself evidence of malfunction. Not conclusive, obviously, but still evidence. If the speed equipment at Wimbledon showed a tennis serve at 250 mph, you wouldn't shout 'world record serve!', you would ask someone to check the equipment. But it seems that common sense goes out of the window when UFOs are involved.
 
@jarlrmai Well said, and I also wish we had an easier communication with the pilots directly involved in these events. They show some kind of hedging, that can be interpreted with suspicion. But also it's understandable because as you say, they are seen as some sort of gatekeeper for this mystery, which they didn't ask for. Every single word is scrutinized, and reporting this stuff is not their job. They don't seem to be very interested in our nerdy discussions on every single detail of the vids, they are people who like action I guess, not endless debates.

One last thing I don't think they see people on this forum as the "stumbling block", they aim for members of Congress etc... But for sure people who have spent the most time analyzing these videos are here!
 
The fact that the radar reportedly showed a 'whole fleet' of objects behaving bizarrely that were not observed in any other way is itself evidence of malfunction. Not conclusive, obviously, but still evidence. If the speed equipment at Wimbledon showed a tennis serve at 250 mph, you wouldn't shout 'world record serve!', you would ask someone to check the equipment. But it seems that common sense goes out of the window when UFOs are involved.
It's not a question of common sense, there is simply no way to prove the instruments were malfunctioning. They say they didn't, who else would know better?

And this is not an isolated event, sightings/radar returns of weird object happened before/after. They would know at this point if their systems were malfunctioning all this time.
 
We technically don't even know if "radar" is the right word to use here. In the latest round of FOIA'd documents we see
1657248723399.png
What's the missing word? "Radar" doesn't fit (too short), neither do other common acronyms like "TWS" or "RWS", nor does there seem to be a pressing need to redact WWII technology. So where was the information coming from? How reliable is it, particularly when tracking, say, a stealth platform with a sophisticated electronic warfare suite, like an F-35?
 
We technically don't even know if "radar" is the right word to use here. In the latest round of FOIA'd documents we see
1657248723399.png
What's the missing word? "Radar" doesn't fit (too short), neither do other common acronyms like "TWS" or "RWS", nor does there seem to be a pressing need to redact WWII technology. So where was the information coming from? How reliable is it, particularly when tracking, say, a stealth platform with a sophisticated electronic warfare suite, like an F-35?

I agree. The sentence about the 'whole fleet' has been often reported as "Look at the ASA" (actually I have never seen it reported as "Look at the SA" before I saw it in this thread).

1657264950357.png



Now I'm no motherlanguage English, i cannot tell if they said "Look at the ASA" or "Look at the SA". But if they said "ASA" then it's not a radar, it's an Automatic Spectrum Analyzer:
1657265346932.png

DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms


An Automatic Spectrum Analyzer is a device which is used to analyze and categorize electromagnetic signals received by an Electronic Warfare suite, in practice a group of passive, directional radio receivers used to keep the electromagnetic environment under control, such as this one:

1657265773396.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SLQ-32_electronic_warfare_suite


An EW suite is able to find, more or less roughly, the direction from which a certain emission is coming from and is able to categorize and classify it (ie: different airplanes may be distinguished from the characteristics of their radar emissions). The target position cannot be pinpointed, nor the distance determined in any way except by triangulation, if one has two EW receivers far apart enough.

The world is full of electromagnetic disturbances, false echoes, anomalous propagation, anomalous signals (ie.: from a faulty transmitter somewhere), etc. etc., and the EW suite receivers are very sensitive. That's what they 'saw': a whole fleet of spurious signals which could have come from practically anywhere in the world (or even from a malfuctioning of the EW suite itself). Events like this happen regularly and noone would even remember this 'whole fleet' weren't it for the F-18 crew coincidentally imaging something else a little later, with that 'else' being totally unrelated to the original EW observations which triggered the frenzy of the chase.
 
It's 'SA' for sure, the F18 does not have that instrument, the phrase 'ASA' is either people misinterpreting it or the pilot misspeaking / accent / audio quality.

They mean the Situational Awareness screen on the other cockpit monitor. Which is an overhead ownship centered display of all tracks known to the aircrafts computer.
 
It's 'SA' for sure, the F18 does not have that instrument, the phrase 'ASA' is either people misinterpreting it or the pilot misspeaking / accent / audio quality.

They mean the Situational Awareness screen on the other cockpit monitor. Which is an overhead ownship centered display of all tracks known to the aircrafts computer.
SA or ASA, it's not a radar. The situational awareness screen gets its data from many sources, including radars and electronic warfare systems. The targets shown could have been detected by an EW system (for instance, on one of the ships) with a giant uncertainty range (and even a dubious existence, possibly).

I'm sorry I cannot post an image, but if anybody has ever played Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations (CMANO) (*) he'll be used to see uncertain targets detected by EW assets: they pop in and out of existence suddendly, they jump around hundreds of miles crazily and do any kind of strange things. I think this is what they saw on their displays: not radar returns, but EW tracks. If they said 'ASA' (as so many people have said since the beginning (**)) this is sure, while if they said 'SA' this is not a confirmation at all that they tracked the 'fleet' with a radar. But even if they did, this does not imply the tracks they saw were even real, nor that they were in any way related to the object imaged in the video.

(*) CMANO is barely a game, it's more an aero/naval warfare simulator, with special attention given to sensors. I'd love to show you pictures of what I mean, but my copy remained on my old PC and I cannot run it anymore now. I'm sorry.

(**) I have to apologize again because I cannot give you a link, but I remember an old TTSA post in which they said 'Look at the ASA' which they then explained "is a kind of radar" (which is false).
 
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Where did I say it was a RADAR?
SA or ASA, it's not a radar. The situational awareness screen gets its data from many sources, including radars and electronic warfare systems. The targets shown could have been detected by an EW system (for instance, on one of the ships) with a giant uncertainty range (and even a dubious existence, possibly).

I'm sorry I cannot post an image, but if anybody has ever played Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations (CMANO) (*) he'll be used to see uncertain targets detected by EW assets: they pop in and out of existence suddendly, they jump around hundreds of miles crazily and do any kind of strange things. I think this is what they saw on their displays: not radar returns, but EW tracks. If they said 'ASA' (as so many people have said since the beginning (**)) this is sure, while if they said 'SA' this is not a confirmation at all that they tracked the 'fleet' with a radar. But even if they did, this does not imply the tracks they saw were even real, nor that they were in any way related to the object imaged in the video.

(*) CMANO is barely a game, it's more an aero/naval warfare simulator, with special attention given to sensors. I'd love to show you pictures of what I mean, but my copy remained on my old PC and I cannot run it anymore now. I'm sorry.

(**) I have to apologize again because I cannot give you a link, but I remember an old TTSA post in which they said 'Look at the ASA' which they then explained "is a kind of radar" (which is false).
 
Where did I say it was a RADAR?
You didn't, indeed you questioned why there was no 'lock' indication on the display, which I took to mean you don't think it was a radar. But the discussion was revolving about radar/non-radar when you posted 'It's SA for sure' in your post #52, I needed to point out that the Situational Awareness display (if they said SA and not ASA after all) is not a radar too.
 
SA or ASA, it's not a radar. The situational awareness screen gets its data from many sources, including radars and electronic warfare systems
That's an important point which I don't think most people are aware of. I wasn't, and I suspect neither was Dimebag2 in his comments at #44 above:

Even if there was uncertainty on when the stop does actually happen, how do you explain that a radar track would show a stop like this, all that while locking by error on a wrong target?

A weird radar glitch, with other glitches shown as a fleet, right when the pilots lock on a random unidentified plane? And the random plane has lines of sight that coincide with the trajectory of the bogus radar track, in the range of that radar track? How far-fetched is that?

If in fact the mysterious objects on the SA screen were not from radar at all, but some system we know little about, then arguments about the probability of radar 'glitches' are moot.
 
Link to article about an updated version of this (already in use) Raytheon product on F/18 Hornets in May 2022
Here: https://www.naval-technology.com/news/raytheon-tests-apg-79v4-asea-radar-on-usmc-f-a-18-hornet/
Metabunk link policy requires us to quote from external links, like so:
Article:
Raytheon Intelligence & Space (RI&S) have successfully conducted the first flight of its pre-production APG-79 (V) 4 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar system.

The radar flew on US Marine Corps’ (USMC) F/A-18 Hornet multirole aircraft at Naval Air Weapons Station in China Lake, California.

During the flight test, the USMC pilots demonstrated the radar system’s integration with the classic Hornet avionics.
 
I believe the person on the radio may be referring the the AESA (APG active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar system). They just pronounced it "Ay-ES-Ay"

Link to article about an updated version of this (already in use) Raytheon product on F/18 Hornets in May 2022
Here: https://www.naval-technology.com/news/raytheon-tests-apg-79v4-asea-radar-on-usmc-f-a-18-hornet/

What do you guys think of this?
Given the SA is the name of the screen that they would actually look at and seems to be most commonly selected screen that is on the other MFD, it seems highly unlikely they are saying look at the "instrument that provides the data' rather then look at the screen that we always have on the right MFD. Especially given multiple places supply that data.

And even if they were saying that the screen the data from that RADAR would be on is most likely the SA screen..
 
already in use
Article:
The AN/APG-79 is a variant of an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar developed for the United States Navy's Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and Boeing EA-18G Growler aircraft, providing a high level of aircrew situational awareness.

The radar has a range of up to 150 km (80 nm) and multi-target tracking capabilities.

The APG-79 radar completed formal operational evaluation (OPEVAL) testing in December 2006. As of January 2007 the radar was installed in 28 aircraft; some were experiencing software problems but that issue was expected to be resolved by the end of fiscal year 2007.[4] As of July 2008, Raytheon had delivered 100 APG-79 sets to the Navy; on 3 June 2008, the Navy received the first APG-79-equipped Boeing EA-18G Growler. The Navy expects to order approximately 437 production radars.[5]

In December 2020, Raytheon offered AN/APG-79 for retrofitting the F/A-18 C/D.


Which type of F/A-18 was involved in the GIMBAL encounter?

Article:
With a half wavelength distance between the elements, the maximum beam angle is approximately 45°.
The more off-axis the target is, the lower is the effective antenna cross-section, since an F-18 AESA does not swivel. This limits the range.
 
I did some fishing and Ryan Graves (F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot) mentions the AESA upgrade in an interview with Tim Ventura.
Starting at around 08:51 of this interview with Tim Ventura.

Screen Shot 2022-07-10 at 1.58.12 PM.png

Tim: You've got the technology knowledge, right? And, so, I think where where most people were familiar with you where they kinda come into this was CBS 60 minutes. And what you told CBS was, you saw UAPs everyday for at least a couple of years in restricted air space off the Atlantic coast. So im wondering could I kinda start with that experience and could you tell me a little bit more about what you meant or what you saw.
Ryan Graves: Yeah sure. So I regret using the word saw and I only say that because, for me, the jet is the extension of our bodies when were up there, you know, once we strap in, but you know when we say saw I'm including all our our sensors and capabilities on the jet itself. So when we were initially flying when I initially got to VFA-11 as I said we were on deployment, we came back. We end up going through a maintenance cycle because our jets were one of the few aircraft that were plumbed for the proper coolant flow and whatever you know electronics are needed for the AESA radar upgrade. Not a fresh install of an AESA but an AESA upgrade. There's only a few squadrons that were slated for that. So we were flying at you know some days with APG-73 and then later in the day we'll be flying with the APG-79 and that's not particularly rare. It's rare in the fleet but that's what happens in the fleet replacement squadron all the time, is that you fly different jets with different radars.

I would greatly encourage watching the entire interview if you can.
 
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Which type of F/A-18 was involved in the GIMBAL encounter?
That would be an F/A-18F, a "two-seater Super Hornet". Interestingly, Ryan Graves recently came out saying that only aircraft equipped with the AN/APG-79 were seeing the tracks (this interview, approximately at 9:40). Also interesting how both this and the tic tac happened shortly after installation of a new radar system.

I don't think there's any question that what we hear is "SA", just pronounced a little weird. Notice that Graves in the interview above pronounces AESA as "ay-suh" /'eɪ.sə/, not "ay-ess-ay" /eɪ.ɛs.'eɪ/ or "ee-ess-ay" /i:.ɛs.'eɪ/. I think the aviator in question just pronounced "the" as /'ðiː/ instead of the more usual unstressed /ðə/, and this is getting confused with the beginning of the subsequent word. This is one of the most intensely discussed portions of that particular audio; if it was anything other than SA we'd surely know by now.
 
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I did some fishing and Ryan Graves (F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot) mentions the AESA upgrade in an interview with Tim Ventura.
Not a fresh install of an AESA but an AESA upgrade. There's only a few squadrons that were slated for that. So we were flying at you know some days with APG-73 and then later in the day we'll be flying with the APG-79 and that's not particularly rare.
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So that would've been in 2006 when the APG-79 was being tested.
Article:
Das Interface wurde modifiziert um zukünftig auch mit geringem Aufwand eine AESA-Antenne installieren zu können (hieraus resultiert dann das AN/APG-79).
The interface on the APG-73 had a modification that allowed an AESA antenna to be installed with little overhead (resulting in the AN/APG-79).
This is presumably why Graves calls it an upgrade.
 
Just before the Gimbal encounter the Navy tested the APG-79 radar:
Article:
From FY12 into FY14, the Navy conducted Software Qualification Testing (SQT) of System Configuration Set (SCS) H8E for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet ... the second phase tested improvements in the APG-79 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar

While the situation had improved compared to those other tests mentioned in the Wikipedia article, problems remained:
Article:
SCS H8E demonstrated incremental improvements in capability in Phase I. APG-79 reliability improved during both Phases I and II testing compared to previous operational tests and provides improved performance compared to the legacy APG-73 radar employed on earlier F/A-18 aircraft. Nonetheless, key deficiencies in operational performance remain to be addressed.
While the AESA radar demonstrated improved reliability, radar software instability resulted in failure to meet reliability and BIT performance requirements.

Now, Ryan Graves said on Twitter that just prior to the Gimbal encounter they:
Article:
just practiced using your F18’s radar to send telephone pole sized missiles ... [and] They flew out of the way during a night RTB, which just concluded with a perfectly functioning radar, to pursue something out of the ordinary.

But could it still be that something about the Gimbal encounter involved something the APG-79 might've had trouble with ?
Article:
The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet weapon system continues to demonstrate operational effectiveness and suitability for most threat environments; however, the platform is not operationally effective in specific threat environments, which are detailed in previous DOT&E classified reports.
 
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Ryan Graves on Lex Fridman,highlighted bits that describes the motion on the SA page:

Source: https://youtu.be/qLDp-aYnR1Y?t=5930


Lex Fridman 1:38:51
So what about the go fast and the gimbal videos that you mentioned earlier, there was like what's interesting there to you.

Ryan Graves 1:38:58
So the gimbal I'll talk about that one first. I was airborne for that one. The person that recorded it is good friend of mine. But I mean, both air crew, I knew both of them but the the WSO himself, very close friends with went through a lot of ??? training together. We went to the same fleet squadron. He ended up transitioning to be a pilot, and then came to where I was instructing, so I got to instruct him a bit on his transition. And, you know, the way that was was was we went out on a Air to Air Training Mission, so simulating an air fight against our own guys. They're acting like the bad guys and kind of go head to head against each other. And when we fly on those missions, we all fly with together, more or less, we set up and then we kind of attrite from the fight as we either you know, run out of gas or something happens. And so people usually go back onesies or twosies. And so the aircrew that recorded the Gimbal they were going back to the boat and we were on what's called a workup training event. And so this is like a month on the boat, where we're essentially conducting wartime operations more or less, to stress ourselves out and to kind of do the last training block before we go on deployment essentially. So it's it's pretty high stress, they actually do send aircraft from, like land bases to kind of try to penetrate. And we're expected to go intercept them. And so we're kind of practicing like we play. And so he saw these objects on the radar, the gimbal, and a fleet of other aircraft or vehicles. And they initially thought it was part of the training exercise that they were sending something into to try to penetrate the airspace. And so they, you know, they flew over to it and as they got close enough to get it on the FLIR, you know, I think everyone has heard the reaction. They realize that wasn't something they were expecting to see.

Lex Fridman 1:40:46
Can you actually describe what's in the video? And what's the reaction because they haven't seen it?

Ryan Graves 1:40:49
Yeah, a lot of swearing. But so what you see on the FLIR footage is a black or white, depending on you look at it object that somewhat shaped like a gimbal, it appears almost as if someone bought two plates together. And then there seems to be almost like a small funnel of higher energy that's at the top or the bottom of those plates, in a sense. So almost as if, you know, there's a stick going in between two plates, but not that pronounced, right. So there's an energy field that kind of went to a funnel on the top and the bottom, at least, that's how it's being portrayed on the FLIR. There's a lot of conversation about that being glare and things of that nature, but it was actually a very tight IR image, it just was nondescript shape, which was interesting. Typically, we would see the skin of the aircraft, we can see the flames coming out of the exhaust, especially at those ranges.

Lex Fridman 1:41:36
But and there was no flames, or there's no exhaust here,

Ryan Graves 1:41:39
there was no exhaust, there was no you know, there was no outgassing of propellant in any manner, right, it was just an object that had nothing emitting from it that was stationary in the sky, well not stationary, but it was it was moving along a path right, wasn't falling out of the sky. And it continued along, if we were to consider from a God's eye view again, on that SA page, it continued along in a path. And from the perspective, top down view, it just went another direction. So no, just instantaneous direction change from that perspective.

Ryan Graves 1:42:13
You also hear them you know, very excitedly talking on the tapes about, you know, whatever the heck this thing is, and look at the SA, there's a whole formation of them. And so the SA is a situational awareness page. And again, it's a large display that gives that God's eye view of all the radar contacts.

Lex Fridman 1:42:29
So the video is actually showing just one. And then they're speaking about many of them on the on this SA display,

Ryan Graves 1:42:38
right. And what they essentially saw was, if we were consider of the object north, so it's kind of offset to the north of the object, there was a formation about somewhere new forms 6 of these objects in a rough wedge formation, you know, so kind of side by side like this. And again, not in a like autopilot type manner, where it was very stiff, it was very kind of non mechanical, the flight mechanics again, and these objects were in that formation, and they were going along, and then they turned pretty sharply, but they still had a radius of turn, and then went back in the opposite direction. And during that turn, it was there kind of like all over the place. Like it wasn't tight, they weren't even like super, they weren't flying in a way I would expect them to be flying in relation to a flight lead. They were flying as if they were flying close to each other, but not in formation, which was kind of strange, right. And then when they rolled out that kind of tightened backed up, like so when they basically they started that turn and then 180 degrees out, essentially, they start flowing in the opposite direction, and kind of got back in that formation. And while that was happening, the gimbal object was proceeding [????] left to right. And as as those, the formation kind of turned up to the north, and was just passing back at the gimbal just kind of went back in the opposite direction. So to follow it back in that direction. And in the in the FLIR itself, you know, you see the object changes orientation quite a bit. So you see it more or less level, maybe canted, about 45 degrees. And then you see it kind of moving around like this almost as if it was a gimbal. I've come to learn after some, you know, having seen some research online and people really looking into this, that it seemed that the object actually climbed during that maneuver. And so the reason it looked like it turned immediately is because it turned like this, it turned in a vertical fashion like that, which is pretty interesting. That's kind of like another example of a flight mechanics that we don't normally operate because we don't change our directions by maneuvering in the vertical. If we can help it it's you're just killing the fuel, you know, and so if you're like, surveillance platform, looking to spend as much time around something you're not going to, you know, climb 500 feet every time you make a turn.
Content from External Source
Still rather unclear. "Turned pretty sharply"? I wish he's put some numbers on things - even if it's just the number of seconds for each stage of the process.
 
I think so, yes. That's a schematic for the initial configuration, he has always said the fleet broke formation while turning.

And with the fleet turning, an offset has to happen between it and Gimbal on the SA.

Gimbal was going left to right on SA, and that's what reconstructions from the FLIR give us at that range. It stopped briefly at the end, and went the opposite direction, which is also what the reconstructions show us.

I think there are hints of the vertical maneuver in the vid as we see the clouds get noticeably lower in the FOV right when reconstructions predict the U-turn at ~10Nm (clouds are pretty flat in that portion).

1659504451185.png

But that's another question.
 
Ryan Graves on Lex Fridman,highlighted bits that describes the motion on the SA page:


Ryan Graves 1:40:49
Yeah, a lot of swearing. But so what you see on the FLIR footage is a black or white, depending on you look at it object that somewhat shaped like a gimbal,
Content from External Source
(my bold)
In the same way that UFO stopped meaning "unidentified flying object" to have a meaning by its own ("alien spaceship"), is the same going to happen to "gimbal"? "Gimbal" will no longer be a device to orientate the camera, but a synonym of "flying saucer"?


So there's an energy field that kind of went to a funnel on the top and the bottom, at least, that's how it's being portrayed on the FLIR.
Content from External Source
I said once that pilots are the end-users of technology, but that doesn't make them experts in the technology. Speaking about spooky "Energy fields" revealed by IR is the kind of things that make me think he does not really understand IR images.

Ryan Graves 1:41:39
there was no exhaust, there was no you know, there was no outgassing of propellant in any manner, right, it was just an object that had nothing emitting from it that was stationary in the sky, well not stationary, but it was it was moving along a path right, wasn't falling out of the sky. And it continued along, if we were to consider from a God's eye view again, on that SA page, it continued along in a path. And from the perspective, top down view, it just went another direction. So no, just instantaneous direction change from that perspective.
Ryan Graves 1:42:38
right. And what they essentially saw was, if we were consider of the object north, so it's kind of offset to the north of the object, there was a formation about somewhere new forms 6 of these objects in a rough wedge formation, you know, so kind of side by side like this. And again, not in a like autopilot type manner, where it was very stiff, it was very kind of non mechanical, the flight mechanics again, and these objects were in that formation, and they were going along, and then they turned pretty sharply, but they still had a radius of turn, and then went back in the opposite direction. And during that turn, it was there kind of like all over the place. Like it wasn't tight, they weren't even like super, they weren't flying in a way I would expect them to be flying in relation to a flight lead. They were flying as if they were flying close to each other, but not in formation, which was kind of strange, right. And then when they rolled out that kind of tightened backed up, like so when they basically they started that turn and then 180 degrees out, essentially, they start flowing in the opposite direction, and kind of got back in that formation. And while that was happening, the gimbal object was proceeding [????] left to right. And as as those, the formation kind of turned up to the north, and was just passing back at the gimbal just kind of went back in the opposite direction.
Content from External Source
Can the "gimbal" object be identified in the SA page? I mean, if I understood right, Graves was able to see "the fleet of them" in his own SA page, but not the IR footage. The video has to be shown later, after being downloaded/saved from the ATFLIR to any computer. Then, how can he "synchronize" what he is shown later in a video, the way "gimbal" behaves, with what he saw in the SA page? How does he know the "gimbal" is changing direction, rotating or whatever, before, after, or at the same time than the fleet turns? Or is the IR video from ATFLIR also shared via datalink?


Ryan Graves 1:42:38
I've come to learn after some, you know, having seen some research online and people really looking into this, that it seemed that the object actually climbed during that maneuver. And so the reason it looked like it turned immediately is because it turned like this, it turned in a vertical fashion like that, which is pretty interesting. That's kind of like another example of a flight mechanics that we don't normally operate because we don't change our directions by maneuvering in the vertical. If we can help it it's you're just killing the fuel, you know, and so if you're like, surveillance platform, looking to spend as much time around something you're not going to, you know, climb 500 feet every time you make a turn.
Content from External Source
(my bold)
So, the U-turn while climbing is not something Graves witnessed? but he is now taking that hypothetical scenario from the calculations of others, while ignoring the straight-line scenario that would look the same.

He seems to favor the abnormal maneuver deduced by others to keep the strangeness, instead of using Occam's razor.
 
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"Shaped like a gimbal" is meaningless, Graves needs show us the "gimbal" that looks like the shape in the video.
 
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"Shaped like a gimbal" is meaningless, Graves needs show us the "gimbal" that looks like the shape in the video.
I don't think he means a Gimbal, he's using the wrong word. Gyroscope maybe, or spinning top. - not that it really looks like either of them.
 
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I don't think he means a Gimbal, he's using the wrong word. Gyroscope maybe, or spinning top. - not that it really looks like either of them.
And I think he's trying to deflect from the gimbal name of the video matching the prosaic explanation towards the video name being about the shape. But he won't have an open conversation with anyone skeptical who will question what he says so who knows.
 
He may not be using the term precisely, but he could also be referring to what a gimbal system looks like from the outside (also bit "cube in a square"-ish:

1659591111568.png
 
Here's my plan for the fleet, based on what should be the most authoritative description available.
slide formation.jpg
Source: Persistent Detection of Non Participating Aircraft by USN Tactical Aircraft ~ Ryan Graves, AIAA AV21

So a new contender for "most authoritative" emerges. Ryan Graves has a new article, and this time includes four mock-up images of the SA page.

Article:
The GIMBAL object was located between 5 and 10 miles away, while these other objects appeared to be spaced 3 to 5 nautical miles apart. What these numbers mean is discussed in more detail below. Offset to the north, and ahead of the GIMBAL object, this formation made a maneuver (I believe to the left) that caused the wedge formation to break down a little into what appeared to my trained eyes to be poor formation keeping.


Here's the first image. Presumably near the start of the video, but no times are given.
Position 1. General representation of encounter on SA page. Note 20 nautical mile scale..jpg

The SCL/20 means 20 NM from the plane icon to the top of the compass rose, so this is showing the Gimbal (i.e. the supposed object in the video) about 8NM away, and at a heading of about 315 (or 45L)

An issue with the headings is that Graves has not changed the compass rose or the plane icon, so it looks like it's flying in a straight line, when we know that it's actually banking to the left, and will turn through around 45°. There's simply no account for this in these diagrams or the description, which alone makes it nearly useless for reconstruction.

Another huge issue is that the fleet is depicted as flying EAST. This is WITH the wind, not against it. Graves is a bit unclear here, saying:
Article:
Offset to the north, and ahead of the GIMBAL object, this formation made a maneuver (I believe to the left) that caused the wedge formation to break


The HAFUs are also odd. Graves has the Gimbal as hostile, and the fleet as friendly. Also, top and bottom of the HAFU seems to indicate data from both on-board and datalink?

In Sitrec, I have them all as ambiguous, and only onboard data (top half):
2022-09-29_16-30-26.jpg

Graves then depicts the Gimbal moving 6NM from start to the turn-around point. For this to work with the LOS it would be something like:2022-09-29_16-59-34.jpg

Note the "Target Speed Knots", which has a paid and constant deceleration from around 15000 knots to zero, then "bounces" back in the other direction - a very strange motion. Viewed from the side, it's very sharp.

2022-09-29_17-21-21.jpg

Frustrating, as I've tried to get Graves to give detail before, and now this almost feels like one step back.

New Sitrec has a default setup that attempts to get close:
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?sitch=gimbal

 
Less extreme configuration with more realistic speeds/turn rates.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD_Ekbd6c78

(Open the video in Youtube if it's blurry, my video does not upload here)

This is what I call the middle-ground scenario, in which the object stops on the SA, but not in the air. It's simply decelerating below wind speed (120 Knots). In that configuration the fleet is facing the wind as it turns, about when the WSO says "they're going against the wind".
This reconciles the object being a rotating glare, and the pilots seeing a stop/reverse on the SA.

With wind facing Gimbal, we get in a configuration in which the object both stops on the SA AND in the air, suggesting it reverses direction and the rotation is intrinsic to the object. As I've said before I stay open-minded about the glare theory and the object rotating, hoping we'll hear from Raytheon/ATFLIR experts one day.

Given the results accumulated over the years, with culmination through Sitrec, there is room for a less passionate discussion, I think.
 
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There has been discussion about Ryan Graves saying the object stopped on the SA, then rotated. See below.

Article:
“The wedge formation was flying, let’s call it north, then they turned their return radius right into the other direction, which is how aircraft turn. We have to bite into the air. So they turn in the other direction and keep going. Meanwhile, the ‘Gimbal’ object that was following behind them suddenly stopped and waited for the wedge formation to pass. Then it tilted up like you can see in the clip, and that’s when my video cut out, but it just kept following the other five or six, doing like a racetrack pattern,” Graves stated, explaining what isn’t shown on the public “Gimbal” video.


That can be retrieved in the scenario when Gimbal is facing the wind. The object stops on the SA before the rotation. In that case it also stops in the air about when the rotation happens, questioning the rotation being a camera artifact. It looks like this.


Source: https://youtu.be/ql6rzMl3ADw

Note the altitude climb is less than before in these scenarios including wind, ~100-200ft.

Things are interesting when you look closely, there is plenty to discuss.
 
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Things are interesting when you look closely, there is plenty to discuss.
Indeed there is. One thing that needs discussion is something @Edward Current brought up, maybe a year ago. The non-physical nature of the nearby path(s)

Graves says:
Article:
they turned their return radius right into the other direction, which is how aircraft turn. We have to bite into the air.


Which suggests he thinks there is some aerodynamic action going on. However, with the Gimbal, he recalls that it slowed down and stopped in a straight line. This was indicated by the "aspect vector" pointing in one direction before doing a sudden flip. You see this in the current Sitrec defaults. Here I've put the SA in N-UP mode so we see absolute motion. I've also made the "target" jet (I'll get a flying saucer in there eventually) much larger so you can see the rotation along the path. Compare this with the rotation of the glare.



There's been some talk of the amazing coincidence of the object rotating as it turns. But it really isn't. Consider what is supposed to happen physically or even in some Lazarian physics.

For an object to change velocity, it needs a force acting on it. Lazar and others postulate flying saucers have that force along their vertical axis, and so to move, they tilt - like they have a rocket pointing straight down. Horizontal = hover, tilted = flying sideways (and this obviously requires the amount of "thrust" can be modified, as the less you point down, the more you need to counteract gravity)

So, looking at the motion, is there any correlation between tilt angle and acceleration? No. Acceleration is essentially CONSTANT through the curve, with a sudden drop at the apex. [EDIT: that's not actually a drop, it's a change in sign, just indicating a change in the direction - i.e. a change from near constant slowing to near constant speeding up]
2022-10-01_08-55-04.jpg
 
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But you're comparing the rotation of the object to the curve of the ground track, correct? What matters for intrinsic rotation is the curve of the air track (blue).

Setting up Sitrec so that Gimbal is facing the wind, with heading that gives an increase in size of ~20% (both parameters that match the video/audio), we get a ground track that stops ~5-6 seconds before the rotation on screen (stop on the SA), and an air track that matches the rotation of the object (the object stops and reverse speed when the rotation happens around frame 900). See below.



That's the coincidence between rotation and U-turn that has been pointed out.
 
What matters for intrinsic rotation is the curve of the air track (blue).
What matters is acceleration, which is independent of wind speed. Here's a graph of the net G-Force on the object in the nearby straight-line, vertical u-turn scenario. This graph is in the current version.

2022-10-01_16-28-32.jpg
Red arrows indicate the rotations, with the longer arrow being the longer rotation.

The g-force here is nearly all horizontal (blue is the vertical component, related to the slight change in altitude)

It's between 2 and 4g, constantly, for the full 35 seconds of the video.

There's no relationship between the changes in acceleration and the rotations.

Code used to calculate accelerations - simply takes difference in the difference between two consecutive movement steps.
JavaScript:
getValueFrame(f) {
    // can't do the last two frames, and ignore the one before that
    // as final frames are often corrupt
    if (f > this.frames - 4)
        f = this.frames - 4;
    // get three points where the timestep between then is t = 1/fps
    var p0 = this.in.source.v(f)
    assert(p0.position !== undefined, "CNodeGForce needs a position track")
    p0 = p0.position
    var p1 = this.in.source.v(f+1).position
    var p2 = this.in.source.v(f+2).position
    // get two distance vectors
    var s1 = p1.clone().sub(p0)
    var s2 = p2.clone().sub(p1)
    // and one acceleration vector
    var a = s2.clone().sub(s1)
    // Equations of motion say
    // v = u + at
    // so a = (v-u)/t
    //
    // s1 = ut + 0.5at^2
    // v = u + at
    // s2 = vt + 0.5at^2
    // s2 = ut + at^2 + 0.5at^2
    // (s2-s1) = ut + at^2 + 0.5at^2 - ut - 0.5at^2
    // s2-s1 = at^2
    // here we've got a vector, so the actual g force is the length of this vector
    //
    // For sanity checks, use https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/acceleration
    // e.g 1000 knots to 0 over 26 seconds is about -2g

    // isolate some components
    a.x *= this.components[0]
    a.y *= this.components[1]
    a.z *= this.components[2]

    // it's m/sec/sec so we need to divide this length by the square of the time step
    // and see above, s2-s1 = at^2
    // t = 1/fps  to multiply by the square of fps, same as dividing
    var g = a.length() * this.fps * this.fps / 9.81
    return g

}
 
You have quite an extreme scenario by default. The object speed is very high, and the apparent size decreases by 25%, which is not what we see in the vid.

Speed starts at ~400 Knots, and acceleration stays under 1.2G, in the scenario I describe above (Gimbal facing the wind, heading so that size increases by ~10-20%). Not sure what to make of that, but there are two sharp drops in acceleration, one when the long rotation happens, one around the last sudden rotation.

It's funny that when setting things so that :
- the range matches what the aviators report (6-8 Nm at the end)
- the apparent size is consistent with what we see in the vid (a 10-20% increase)
- the wind direction matches what we hear in the audio (facing the object's trajectory)

we retrieve, among other things :
- a stop on SA (green curve) preceding the rotation (as in Graves' quote above)
- a stop in the air when the long slow rotation happens (blue curve going to 0), and a reverse of direction

Pilots locking by error on a random distant plane could have made for completely inconsistent parameters when looking at close trajectories that the pilots think they had on radar. But things intriguingly check out with what is reported. I only see spoofing (deceiving the radar to underestimate the real distance to the object) as an alternate scenario to the object actually being within 10Nm.

1664773684590.png
 
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