3 ms·

Explained: New Navy UFO Videos

27 points by trott 5y ago

tiahura 5y ago
Made me think of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26778406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26778406
monkeydreams 5y ago
Can you put [2020] in the title? These are not related to the new UFO videos from 2021, which appear to relate to different optical anomalies.
dtx1 5y ago
On FLIR: Here's a peer reviewed paper proving mick wests wrong: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336062892_Estimating_Flight_Characteristics_of_Anomalous_Unidentified_Aerial_Vehicles https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336062892_Estimatin... His explanation is "it only looks like it's moving, due to the zoom". This paper, as well as the pilot that took that video disagrees. Interview with Chad Underwood, the pilot that took the FLIR Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPXFcFyZma0&t=262s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPXFcFyZma0&t=262s Mick West never answered to this critique, nor did he publish any detailed analysis beyond "it only looks like it's moving". While he is correct more often then not, his knee-jerk approach to debunking without actually looking at the facts is tiring.
- helloworld11 5y ago
  Thank you for this link. I truly don't understand why everybody keeps referencing Mick West's debunking video of the Nimitz UFO footage. I actually corresponded on the guy about inconsistencies in his own claims and he gave no satisfactory justification for his extremely superficial arguments, which essentially focus on his own perceptions of inconsistencies in the footage itself and simply disregard weeks of repeated sightings, radar tracking and up-close eye-witness encounters between trained, professional pilots and the objects themselves in the air. These are pilots who on at least a couple of these occasions observed the objects from fairly close range, in broad daylight and had their observations at least partially confirmed at the same time by also professional operators of sophisticated tracking systems (radar etc) onboard the Navy's ships. Mick West mostly disregards all of this Debunking with a critical eye is good and necessary but sometimes one gets the feeling that certain debunkers feel a need to do so at all costs because that's their label, even if their own "rational" interpretations make leaps of logic much worse than simply admitting that something inexplicable was observed.
- trott 5y ago
  > His explanation is "it only looks like it's moving, due to the zoom". This paper, as well as the pilot that took that video disagrees. Interview with Chad Underwood, the pilot that took the FLIR Video Mick West's claim is that the object appears to be moving erratically because the camera keeps losing track of it. He specifically addresses the Underwood interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqq4AsQch6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqq4AsQch6g
  - dtx1 5y ago
    Thank you, yes but he does not address the peer reviewed paper, which is much more convincing in my opinion. And he does not do so because it's conclusions are not trivially debunked. The majority of movement happens in the last few seconds of the video which the paper analyses. The tracker may have lost track, but as a reference the non-moving bars are still valid and we get heading information from the video as well, so a movement of the plane cannot be ruled completely but we know that if any movement happened it was within known bounds of less then a few degrees of angle at most. If you take the time to read the paper you will see that they estimate the lowest possible acceleration of the object which ranges from 50% above what a tomahawk missile can endure to something insane like 5000g of acceleration. This is all still non-conclusive but to state that the object isn't moving at all after the careful statistical analysis of the paper requires a lot more then just a few vague hypothesis without any math to back it up to be convincing. Again, i can only recommend reading the paper it's much more detailed then i could be in a comment. Besides, i don't mind his analysis he's right about the new "pyramid ufos" beyond any reasonable doubt. He is also right about the gofast video, his math is trivial to validate, though no one who made the video has ever claimed the object actually went fast. It's just the video title. As for the gimbal video, we don't know much about the events surrounding it, and while it does look like an exhaust rotating due to the camera system, there's still a lot unexplained there. The comments of the pilot on tape "it's going a 140 knots against the wind" and "look at the ASA there's a whole fleet of them" are interesting. Again nothing conclusive but without detailed sensor data and context, his explanation is no more or less convincing then no explanation at all. We simply don't know. On the other hand, we do know a lot about the flir video and the context it happened in and as far as i'm concerned a peer reviewed paper trumps a science commentators vague hypothesis until we have either more data to confirm one hypothesis or the other or an error is spotted in either hypothesis.

27 points by trott 5y ago

Made me think of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26778406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26778406

Can you put [2020] in the title? These are not related to the new UFO videos from 2021, which appear to relate to different optical anomalies.

dtx1 5y ago

On FLIR: Here's a peer reviewed paper proving mick wests wrong: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336062892_Estimating_Flight_Characteristics_of_Anomalous_Unidentified_Aerial_Vehicles https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336062892_Estimatin... His explanation is "it only looks like it's moving, due to the zoom". This paper, as well as the pilot that took that video disagrees. Interview with Chad Underwood, the pilot that took the FLIR Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPXFcFyZma0&t=262s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPXFcFyZma0&t=262s Mick West never answered to this critique, nor did he publish any detailed analysis beyond "it only looks like it's moving". While he is correct more often then not, his knee-jerk approach to debunking without actually looking at the facts is tiring.

helloworld11 5y ago
Thank you for this link. I truly don't understand why everybody keeps referencing Mick West's debunking video of the Nimitz UFO footage. I actually corresponded on the guy about inconsistencies in his own claims and he gave no satisfactory justification for his extremely superficial arguments, which essentially focus on his own perceptions of inconsistencies in the footage itself and simply disregard weeks of repeated sightings, radar tracking and up-close eye-witness encounters between trained, professional pilots and the objects themselves in the air. These are pilots who on at least a couple of these occasions observed the objects from fairly close range, in broad daylight and had their observations at least partially confirmed at the same time by also professional operators of sophisticated tracking systems (radar etc) onboard the Navy's ships. Mick West mostly disregards all of this Debunking with a critical eye is good and necessary but sometimes one gets the feeling that certain debunkers feel a need to do so at all costs because that's their label, even if their own "rational" interpretations make leaps of logic much worse than simply admitting that something inexplicable was observed.
trott 5y ago
> His explanation is "it only looks like it's moving, due to the zoom". This paper, as well as the pilot that took that video disagrees. Interview with Chad Underwood, the pilot that took the FLIR Video Mick West's claim is that the object appears to be moving erratically because the camera keeps losing track of it. He specifically addresses the Underwood interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqq4AsQch6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqq4AsQch6g
- dtx1 5y ago
  Thank you, yes but he does not address the peer reviewed paper, which is much more convincing in my opinion. And he does not do so because it's conclusions are not trivially debunked. The majority of movement happens in the last few seconds of the video which the paper analyses. The tracker may have lost track, but as a reference the non-moving bars are still valid and we get heading information from the video as well, so a movement of the plane cannot be ruled completely but we know that if any movement happened it was within known bounds of less then a few degrees of angle at most. If you take the time to read the paper you will see that they estimate the lowest possible acceleration of the object which ranges from 50% above what a tomahawk missile can endure to something insane like 5000g of acceleration. This is all still non-conclusive but to state that the object isn't moving at all after the careful statistical analysis of the paper requires a lot more then just a few vague hypothesis without any math to back it up to be convincing. Again, i can only recommend reading the paper it's much more detailed then i could be in a comment. Besides, i don't mind his analysis he's right about the new "pyramid ufos" beyond any reasonable doubt. He is also right about the gofast video, his math is trivial to validate, though no one who made the video has ever claimed the object actually went fast. It's just the video title. As for the gimbal video, we don't know much about the events surrounding it, and while it does look like an exhaust rotating due to the camera system, there's still a lot unexplained there. The comments of the pilot on tape "it's going a 140 knots against the wind" and "look at the ASA there's a whole fleet of them" are interesting. Again nothing conclusive but without detailed sensor data and context, his explanation is no more or less convincing then no explanation at all. We simply don't know. On the other hand, we do know a lot about the flir video and the context it happened in and as far as i'm concerned a peer reviewed paper trumps a science commentators vague hypothesis until we have either more data to confirm one hypothesis or the other or an error is spotted in either hypothesis.