The Raytheon video actually has a useful image that I'd missed:

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I made that clip into an animation...



The yellow path seems to be the complex path of input thermal data before being output to the pilot's monitor. It's easy to lose sight of the yellow path where it overlaps the blue path, but in fact the yellow path runs from the front to the back of this array of components. This animation sure could imply there are de facto two cameras in the system!

I hoped the nifty term "continuous auto-boresight alignment" would find the source of that cool animation, but at least not right away. It seems to refer to a synchronous co-alignment of sensors (presumably FLIR) with the laser, almost certainly reflected where we see the two paths overlap:

“Because its sensors and laser share a common optical path with continuous auto-boresight alignment, only ATFLIR assures pinpoint targeting accuracy that minimizes collateral damage.” source​

"The U.S. Navy's targeting pod of record, ATFLIR has been fully integrated and flight-tested on all F/A-18 aircraft models. ATFLIR offers a common optical path and continuous auto-boresight technology that generates the most precise target coordinates available, allowing the warfighter to respond quickly to enemy threats." source​

On @Tom Churchill's point, it's true that the F18's monitor doesn't keep the horizon level and so doesn't have 5th-axis stabilization, but it is keeping the horizon user-oriented, and I'd think that would be the ideal output. To a pilot left banking, their spine (ie, their vertical alignment) is tilting to the left relative to the horizon. The tilt of the clouds in the Gimbal footage reflects that, and so is exactly what the pilot should expect to see wrt the horizon. I'm not disagreeing with anything, just underscoring that there's reason to believe there is a user-orientation function taking place prior to the output monitor image, which is key to the two-camera modeling I propose above.

 

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Thanks to one & all for keeping at the video and associated kit like a swarm of terriers. Fascinating and informative. But I have some questions about the audio on this bit of 'film' that bug me...

1. Is it usual, normal, common practice or what to marry crew conversations with FLIR, radar or TV footage? If it's not (and it's signally missing fro FLIR-1) then how are we to know that it's not lifted from some other event?

2. One of the crew mentions either "LoS" or "L&S", which I interpret as "line of sight" or "lock & steering". Which is more likely or, perhaps more critical, more pertinent as a query from one to the other? My own vague uncomfortable feeling about this, as the radar and FLIR are clearly not synced, is that something odd is going on. Does the question refer to an eyeball sighting? And/or is it a clue that this is a test of the Raytheon kit?

All very frustrating, and partly unanswerable as yet, but a few knowledgable flyboys round here may be able to assist. Some such may also be able to comment on a remark I read somewhere else from a former Signal Corpsman that this exchange sounds remarkably unprofessional for military fliers.

 

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Bit of a long one. I went through most comments...

Certainly interested in this idea that the rotation of the object as seen in the clip could simply be due to the window of the AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR. It has been a good read.

It's irrelevant to debunking the Gimbal (or Nimitz) clip. The Gimbal clip isn't made any less credible with Kean reporting on it, is it. All this means is that Kean is gullible and possibly gambles with her reputation when acronyms and titles get large enough. That and the CEFAA did a poor job not congruent with their positions.

The DoD confirmed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program which Elizondo managed didn't they? Sen. Harry Reid has confirmed that he got the funding together for it at least and put a contract out to tender which Bigelow won.

Does anybody have a link to the chain-of-custody documentation regarding these clips? I've seen this referenced on TTSA website under heading 'Implications', but no actual links to PDF's are provided to verify the authenticity of the footage. Exact same issue for Nimitz. A written report is not chain-of-custody documentation for either clip, either.

Absolutely.

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BA was a contractor. DOD owns the material.

 

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Hi all, 

I too have a question regarding the audio. 

Firstly I want to fess up to being nothing more than an interested observer here, but seeing as some folks here seem to have true knowledge/experience with this topic, I am curious: 

The camera rotation/glass/glare optics explanation is compelling, and I am willing to concede that as a plausible scenario here. My lingering doubt however has to do with the pilot/crew speaking as they witness this event. (I Peter B suggested the audio could have been edited etc, but assuming the audio is authentic...) Would the pilots have been watching this object through the IR Camera live (as we are when we watch this video?) Or is it possible that they were actually seeing the object with the naked eye when making these comments? The obvious implication being that in the former, the pilots are also susceptible to the explanation put forth in this thread, but if the latter, then there is an additional data point that requires some consideration here... (ie: they are seeing the physical object rotate, thus their commentary cannot be explained by the Camera Rotation). 

I think it unlikely that an object of this size would be visible at a distance of >10 miles, but as discussed, I don't pretend to be an expert! 

Thank you for any thoughts/answers.

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It's too small to see rotation with the naked eye. See:

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See earlier post. 

The clouds moving simply means they are behind the object.

 

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https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/...y-reid.html?referer=https://outlook.live.com/
 

is it possible that these 2 pilots are looking at SA monitors set a different range - magnification? one pilots might be seeing 4 jets engine FLIR and the other the single blur ?

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This little clip from the Raytheon video shows the type of rotation I'm talking about. There's an axial rotation of the entire "tube", then a panning rotation using just the "ball". The axial rotation would be corrected for internally, so the glass is essentially rotating in front of the non-rotating camera.

 

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I agree with everybody else that all the pieces of your FLIR pod window glare hypothesis answer the questions of the Gimbal video elegantly. Chapeau, Mr. West!

Now if we can just figure out how we can monetize your debunking expertise, we could beat TTS AAS at their own game!

I'm thinking a Myth Busters type deal on Discovery Science where you and Robert Sheaffer debunk 70 years worth of UFO hooey in bi-weekly episodes.

I'd buy shares in that enterprise! ;¬)

 

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Watching the Raytheon footage it seems possible, or perhaps most likely, that the housing window and camera (and thus camera lens) move together. If the window is panning say left to right, surely that's because the camera is panning left to right. And this may hold for circular rotations as well. In that case the window does not rotate relative to the camera lens directly behind it. However, either way, rotations of the housing window or any lens along the LoS of the 'first camera' could produce a flare that rotates independently of the scene by way of 'second-camera processing'.

 

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Not sure if someone mentioned this already, but when the large glass window is pointing straight forward it must rotate a lot in order to align the side to side motion of the glass with the motion of the object/aircraft. And if you look at the video, the apparent rotation happens when it is pointing approximately straight forward, i.e. the same time you would expect the glass to rotate the most.

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I'm not sure you can really say that, as the rotation of the inner camera is somewhat independent of the outer housing. However the outer housing clearly has to rotate at some points. The computer's decision to rotate the outer housing may be based on a number of factors - for example it might try to avoid it when doing fine tracking of a target. So you'd expect to see rotations more around the time of loss of target lock when the system takes the opportunity to move the outer housing so the inner camera has a wider range of motion.

 

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Actually, that was me. I'm the loud, hairy American dude over in the badufos comments ;¬) I served in the U.S. Army's 7th Signal Brigade a few years ago. I don't know about the Navy and Air Force. But you'd be seriously reprimanded in the Army if you'd talked on the radio like you were "still back on the block" (as they say in the Army).

There's a certain standard way of communication that I expect to hear from real life U.S. Navy pilots communicating on radio.

There would be the standard, recurring use of "Roger" throughout the comms. Also, I would expect the pilots to use words like, "Bogies", "starboard", "port" in their vocabulary. Things you just don't hear in the everyday civilian conversation.

Professional military people are trained to speak with a certain cadence when communicating over radio. The term "official-sounding" is a good description. They're also trained to speak clearly and to repeat stuff twice or three times in a row, to make sure the other person understood what you said. We've all heard that very distinguishable military-speak I'm talking about.

So it's suspicious to me that all those tell-tale "military-speak" features are absent from the Gimbal video audio. Also suspicious in the Gimbal video dialog is they use the word "drone". If there's one thing I know about the way all military people communicate, they never miss an opportunity to use a code word or an obfuscating acronym for stuff. A real military person would have used, something like "UAV" (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) or maybe "UAS" (Unmanned Aerial System). But not "drone".

So in my opinion either the Gimbal video was overdubbed by civilian voice actors with zero real military experience, or the voices are from newbie "recruits" with absolutely zero comms training and zero experience with military jargon. 

Whether they're real Navy pilots fresh outta boot camp or civilian voice actors hired by TTS AAS, either way they're clearly very young and very immature. In my opinion, that might be another clue that would support the Gimbal vid likely being recorded during a training flight.

I wouldn't be surprised if, in DeLonge's official capacity as "award-winning storyteller" for TTS AAS, he's allowed to embellish mundane artifacts to make them more woo-tastic for the sake of a good story. As Paul Weller of The Jam would put it, That's entertainment!"

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I don't think they even say "drone". That clip sounds more like "...ing going on bro"

 

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Could be. To be honest, personally I can't make out what is actually being said myself. My comment on the use of "drone" was based on believing these two things from the NYT vid...

​

​

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Could it be an intercom between the pilot and the weapon systems operator? Maybe that would be less professional sounding?

 

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In the Raytheon ATFLIR pod video, from about 0:55 to 1:01, there is an animation that shows the outer pod housing rotating completely 180 degrees as it negotiates the limits of it's range of motion.

This seems most likely to occur mostly when the lens is aiming forward, and small rotational adjustments would be made to maintain any slight angular shift away from the previous axial position. (I am not a scientist!)

Another thing I noticed is that the pod aperture (or lens) appears to be elliptical, and I'm wondering if that could explain the roughly elliptical shape of the glare/flare/bloom effect.

 

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I don't think so, it's essentially a window through which both the IR and Visible light cameras are pointed.

Quelle: Mick West / Metabunk