Thoughts about Nimitz radar: tracking and smoothing

[Robert Webb]

After watching Mick West's interview with Kevin Day, who was on radar during the Nimitz event, I had some thoughts. Sorry if anyone has suggested this before.

Fravor's plane approached one of the UFOs on radar. The two then coincided on the display. Day says the UFO then travelled quickly to another point on the display, and eventually travelled quickly back to where it was.

I used to work on software to track markers on a face (motion capture for games). There are two things I can imagine might be happening here.

First, when the two objects on the radar coincide, the software will have trouble tracking both of them. It may find one, in this case Fravor's plane, but may look further out in an attempt to find the other one. Maybe it just failed to track both objects when they met, and found something else instead, presuming it to be the same object. From the user's perspective, the object would appear to jump to a new place. It may also be that once the objects separated on the display, the UFO tracking jumped back to where it started, now that it could be distinguished again. Not sure why it would jump back though if there was still something on the radar at the new location though. Maybe the radar can track up to a certain number of objects at once?

Second, do radars use any kind of smoothing? Hopefully someone can answer that. If they do smooth the tracking data, then it would explain why the object would appear to move quickly to the new location rather than jumping instantly. For example, a very simple way to smooth data would be to average out data over N frames, so if an objects suddenly jumps, it would instead appear to move rapidly over N frames, rather than instantly in 1 frame. Their smoothing may be more advanced, but probably still have similar results.

I don't suppose we know anything about the wind direction? Would be interesting to know whether the slowly moving objects were going the same way (but tricky because wind at different altitude may be going different directions).

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv9iKw_Q9xQ

 

[Mick West]

First, when the two objects on the radar coincide, the software will have trouble tracking both of them. It may find one, in this case Fravor's plane, but may look further out in an attempt to find the other one. Maybe it just failed to track both objects when they met, and found something else instead, presuming it to be the same object. From the user's perspective, the object would appear to jump to a new place. It may also be that once the objects separated on the display, the UFO tracking jumped back to where it started, now that it could be distinguished again. Not sure why it would jump back though if there was still something on the radar at the new location though. Maybe the radar can track up to a certain number of objects at once?

Something like that sounds plausible, however it's exactly the type of thing the military would not want revealed.

 

[Robert Webb]

Something like that sounds plausible, however it's exactly the type of thing the military would not want revealed.

You mean because it gives away secrets of how their system works? Or because admitting to such a simple error would make them look bad?

It's kind of the nature of all tracking systems like this. That sometimes tracked points jump, and that smoothing can sometimes misrepresent the data (and at other times improve it). No secret.

At least Day doesn't seem to have thought of this explanation and doesn't appear to be trying to hide anything like this.

 

[Mick West]

You mean because it gives away secrets of how their system works? Or because admitting to such a simple error would make them look bad?

Both.

 

[Harabeck]

Philip J Klass wrote an article in 1985 about UFOs and radar technology. His point was basically that improvements in software filtering and operator experience drastically reduced sightings of UFOs via radar. It's not super in depth or anything, but it does serve as a decent intro to the topic.

https://skepticalinquirer.org/1985/04/radar-ufos-where-have-they-gone/

 

[Mendel]

Philip J Klass wrote an article in 1985 about UFOs and radar technology. His point was basically that improvements in software filtering and operator experience drastically reduced sightings of UFOs via radar. It's not super in depth or anything, but it does serve as a decent intro to the topic.

https://skepticalinquirer.org/1985/04/radar-ufos-where-have-they-gone/

It's Metabunk policy that content from sources needs to be quoted alongside the link—too many conspiracy theorists would love to just drop a link to the page of their choice and leave the debunkers to do the work, I guess.

In this case, I'd excerpt the article like so:

Content from External Source

 

[Domzh]

honestly I have troubles to understand how this could happen with a radar.

motion tracking is tracking a grouping of pixels i guess? i can see how during an optical track something like this could happen.

a radar on the other hand shoots energy and interprets the reflection afaik. the less sophisticated the tech is, the harder it is too focus the beam and make out different objects that are near together. they would be registered as a single one until they are far enough apart.

i believe its far more likely that the initial ping had no connection to the tic tac sighting.

iirc they spotted the uap several miles off of the original vectors.