The videos in the article are Gimbal[1] and Go Fast[2]. The incident that occured in 2004 is FLIR1[3].
This[4] analysis of Go Fast is pretty good, and sounds plausible, the author concludes that it's most likely a bird. He also analyzes FLIR1[5] and takes a look at Gimbal[6]. To me, it seems like FLIR1 might just be another jet moving away, and the "Tic-Tac" shape is just the IR-cone of a jet exhaust. As to Gimbal, Parabunk has yet to offer an analysis...
Yep, none of these are new, and the thing about the navy making it standard operating procedure to report these things to get around the stigma of ufo sightings was a story from a month or two ago.
The real reason why this article is newsworthy is about halfway down:
> Lieutenants Graves and Accoin, along with former American intelligence officials, appear in a six-part History Channel series, “Unidentified: Inside America’s U.F.O. Investigation,” to air beginning Friday. The Times conducted separate interviews with key participants.
When you start knowing to look for it, it’s amazing how many “news articles” are well-disguised PR exercises. I first started realizing this when simultaneously I noticed many articles, in many outlets, about Amelia Earhart. Then I recognized that almost all of them included a remark about an upcoming tv series on the subject...
Honestly my first thought after watching Go Fast was a bird. I've never flown as fast as these guys, but it looked a lot like when you see a bird underneath you. Seeing the analysis and that the pilots thought it was much closer to the ocean I can see the confusion. But I think the author put it well, that if you realize that it is not low flying, end of story.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were a ton of stories like this. Flying is stressful and hard on the brain. It is easy to think something is at a different altitude or speed than it really is. If I made that misjudgement I'd be certain I saw a UFO too.
It always strikes me when these stories mention the UFO’s speed and altitude, usually presented as confirmation that the object is beyond known technology.
You cannot determine the speed or altitude of an unknown object visually! Close and slow looks just like distant and fast. Unless you have some other way to determine one of those variables (being able to judge the distance because you know the size of the object, for example), any claim of a UFO’s performance is bound to be bogus.
AFAIK the rangefinder on the targeting system is pretty good, with that data and the data of the plane (direction, altitude, velocity, etc...) getting the speed of an object is pretty trivial.
If this is indeed a bird, then you can definitely trust the sensor's data. If it's a smoke plume, something ethereal, ball lighting or anything not quite solid, the rangefinder will give false values.
Can't be. Only 3 albatross species exist in the northern pacific and none of them fit the length: Short-tailed albatross, Black-footed albatross, Laysan albatross. None of which are long enough head to tail.
The only other explanation is a Brown Pelican, which is too slow average 25 mph.
The question was about if. So average speeds aren't great. We actually need to consider two different speeds. The obvious is maximum horizontal speed. The other isn't so obvious, maximum dive speed. We don't really know if the bird is flying horizontal to the ocean or it is diving. It could be flying somewhere in between. I did find a mention of a brown pelican diving at 41mph (which seemed like an average number). Consider that it might be higher than normal, better winds, just a stronger bird, or slight radar errors tracking such a small object, and that extra 9mph doesn't seem unreasonable. Or... it could not be specifically a brown pelican and just some other bird that fits the parameters. There are quite a lot that have diving speeds WELL over 50mph.
It's appropriate that the first video is called "gimbal", because that's exactly what it is.
Watch the angle readout at the top of the video. The rotation of the object happens exactly around the time that the angle passes 0°. Why is this?
Have you ever watched a PTZ security camera rotate up and over the vertical axis and down the other side? It will tilt up until it nears the vertical axis, at which point it will rotate around that axis, and then tilt back down, now facing the other way. It does this to avoid gimbal lock [1], a state in which it would lose a degree of freedom of rotation. (In this case, it's not the vertical axis, but the forward axis.)
Why doesn't the image rotate then? [shallow speculation] The video software keeps it oriented so that it matches the plane's orientation. (Note that the feed is square, making it easier to make full use of the sensor regardless of rotation.)
Why does the object rotate? This should give you a clue where the object is. If the background is not rotating while the camera is rotating, but the object is, the object is on the camera. It will appear to rotate as the video software rotates the image to compensate for the camera rotation about the forward axis.
So why is the object moving? Well, it's not moving, not if it's on the camera. But whenever the camera moves, it would look like it's moving relative to the background.
So why is the camera moving? It's tracking the object. But the object isn't moving! Well, the camera doesn't track movement. It tracks position. The object is slightly offset from the center of the frame, so the tracking software slightly moves the camera to compensate. This of course does not change the situation, so the tracking software repeats its compensation. This constant camera movement in a single direction gives the appearance that the object is moving.
Why does the object show up on an infrared camera in the first place? It must be warm.
So… what is this warm object, which is stuck on the camera, slightly off-center, causing the tracking software to follow it, through and around the camera's axis, giving the appearance that the object is moving and then rotating?
Well, it's the same thing as this article in the NY Times, which, in service of securing funding from the UFO & Hitler Channel (as @floatrock astutely noted), decided to lend its gravitas to an easily-explainable video glitch which has been paraded by conspiracy theorists as incontrovertible validation of their deepest-held beliefs that extraterrestrials, against all probability, regularly visit Earth.
Bird shit.
Why am I paying for a NY Times subscription again?
That was the first thing I looked at, the angle vs. the movement. It doesn't necessarily have to be something on the camera, it could be internal interreflections.
The entire optical system is shielded from the environment by a transparent cover, probably spherical for a large field of view. Optical systems usually have some degree of internal interreflection that you try to suppress with anti-reflection coatings on the internal lenses. Usually, these coatings are highly angle-dependent. Specifically for very shallow incidence, almost parallel to the optical surface, you can't do much, there will be reflection. Another source of interreflection is the housing of the optical system - you usually try and suppress that by making surfaces 'black' but a very broad spectrum, brilliant light source can still produce a significant amount of reflected radiance.
The system was probably made with some requirements on these artifacts but it's always possible that for a certain off-axis angle, light gets coupled into the external, curved cover and then through the imaging system. Some of it makes it through at an angle that actually hits the sensor, in this case a virtual image or just some caustic from an object way off-axis.
Maybe it's the reflection of the sun from the sea. It is pretty static in terms of global incoming angle and does turn just right in relation to a turning aircraft to still hit the sensor - especially if you turn to still track it and keep it in the optical system's field of view.
This incident is much larger than just the three FLIR videos, these objects were seen on multiple days, with both east and west coast incidents, at multiple vantage points. Forget TTSA as the source, are you really discounting these credible eyewitnesses testimonies from multiple vantage points? This goes well beyond just FLIR video, new radar technology was being deployed in both incidents and it flew by multiple aircraft at close proximity on multiple days. You'd think at some point an human eyeball would have recognized a bird.
Even if you buy these skeptical writ-ups which only focus on FLIR videos and not the accounts of the whole incidents on multiple occasions, exactly what bird would fly at 48 mph that far off the coast of CA and be that 2 meters large? Even at 4 ft in length, a brown pelican averages only ~25 mph. The only other likely species at that size is an Albatross, however only 3 albatross species exist in the northern pacific and none of them fit the length: Short-tailed albatross, Black-footed albatross, Laysan albatross. Plus, a pelican only reaches 10,000+ riding thermals, which you wont find that far out into the ocean. What kind of bird can fly instantly back to a CAP position or ascend from 50 ft to 20,000 ft instantly?
These things are not birds. To call them birds is insane, except if you're using the euphemism for "aircraft". Otherwise you and the other so-called "debunkers" with their convoluted logic are saying "I sitting at my computer am right, but all these government officials, scientific instruments, military personnel and civilians, they're wrong". Definition of crazy.
They're craft from unknown origins reported by multiple highly credible witnesses and systems and now being revealed to the public in a concerted way from the Navy, and former DoD and intelligence officials.
The narrative on this topic has changed, it's time to get up to date on the new perspective which is not ridicule but curiosity.
This[4] analysis of Go Fast is pretty good, and sounds plausible, the author concludes that it's most likely a bird. He also analyzes FLIR1[5] and takes a look at Gimbal[6]. To me, it seems like FLIR1 might just be another jet moving away, and the "Tic-Tac" shape is just the IR-cone of a jet exhaust. As to Gimbal, Parabunk has yet to offer an analysis...
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf1uLwUTDA0
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxVRg7LLaQA
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rWOtrke0HY
[4]: http://parabunk.blogspot.com/2018/04/analysis-of-ttsa-2015-g...
[5]: http://parabunk.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-2004-uss-nimitz-tic...
[6]: http://parabunk.blogspot.com/2018/04/ttsa-gimbal-and-go-fast...