• NEW! LOWEST RATES EVER -- SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE VERY BEST PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+, eight years young! For a low subscription fee, you can download the ad-free version of The Paracast and the exclusive, member-only, After The Paracast bonus podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, the continuation of interviews that began on the main episode of The Paracast. We also offer lifetime memberships! Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! You can sign up right here!

    Subscribe to The Paracast Newsletter!

Pentagon UFO Study - Media Monitoring


I just copied your reply above and posted it there, but in true Uninformant fashion, I did not identify you and may not even know who I am anyway, so no laws were broken.

Don't see it, so maybe they removed it immediately? For what I understand, they have the tendency of removing most material that doesn't happen to be posted by their regular members or that has any wider context than the details of a video clip. I have seen several posts there that had some interesting new insight, only to find out they have been removed soon after.
 
I just copied your reply above and posted it there

Actually, if you want to link any of my content there, I think you should link this message (as you can't directly link the picture, it shows only if you are logged in) with these small pics from the video:

Pentagon UFO Study - Media Monitoring

I think that would be the kind of visual content they would like to process, and I would also like to see them look at that in more detail, as I'm not that interested in trying to enhance those signals from that low quality video.
 
Well, TTSA is beginning to fight back against the Big Bird Theory (not to be confused with the Big Bang Theory).

I was reading Facebook group that was discussing the video and trying to debunk Metabunk. Someone reported that Gary Nolan, the Chief Geneticist at TTSA stated the following on the AATIP FB page (which I could not access)

Gary Nolan wrote:
I am getting some of the other background information that 'debunks' West's silly reply. First bit of information... the speed of the object was 300-400 knots (about 350 to 460 miles per hour). As measured by radar.. So goddess help that "bird" should it ever hit the water at such a speed! The wind drag alone would rip off it's feathers! LOL."

In the immortal words of both Groucho Marx and Bugs Bunny:
Of course you know this means war!”

SO LET THE MUD-WRESTLING BEGIN! YEEEEEE-HAWWW!!!

This is the kind of thing that I would expect, as I mentioned in my previous post in this thread - it's perfectly possible that this object was seen to move at significantly higher velocities at other times during the encounter, and I wouldn't be surprised if it exhibited dramatic accelerations as well. But Mick West's math looked fine to me - I'm assuming that it's correct, but if there's a significant challenge to it I'll check for myself. So I presume that in this extremely brief and de-rezzed video clip, the object was only moving around 70mph and essentially in a straight line.

So, once again, the DoD has chosen to declassify only the most worthless video clip of this event, and so we yet again have to wait on additional information to understand what was exotic about it.

The TTSA isn't doing this to us, the DoD is - they have everything, and yet they're choosing to release close to nothing.
 
Actually, if you want to link any of my content there, I think you should link this message (as you can't directly link the picture, it shows only if you are logged in) with these small pics from the video:

Pentagon UFO Study - Media Monitoring

I think that would be the kind of visual content they would like to process, and I would also like to see them look at that in more detail, as I'm not that interested in trying to enhance those signals from that low quality video.
I gave the link and the quote. The comment is being held up in Moderation because I’m a Newbie Uninformant.
 
I gave the link and the quote. The comment is being held up in Moderation because I’m a Newbie Uninformant.

Okay, so they already restrict the content that gets to the page, and still apparently remove interesting stuff that passes that first stage.

Mick West (Username Metabunk) has answered here to those accusations by Nolan:
Can we all take a moment to enjoy Mick West's ABSURD "debunk" of the GO FAST video? • r/UFOs

He also states:
Ballon fits the observations a bit more than a bird, but there's many times more birds than large balloons, so "bird" rises to the top of the list.

Balloon could fit better to that small blob while it's being tracked, but those screenshots indicate that balloon would have to be shaped like a bird ;).
 
Leslie Kean comments this new video on her FB page:
This video was cleared for public release by the DOD at the same time as the two we provided in the New York Times in December .
It was cleared for release in August.
We at the Times were given DOD documents that show this and document the review process.
The source is the DOD, correct.

And two weeks ago she has said there:
We are working hard on trying to access information for another story
We are trying to access the third video.
(Note that she doesn't necessarily mean that third video was supposed to be part of their story, those might be responses to different questions.)

So it seems TTSA has sat on this video for more than half a year. And apparently, during all that time, none of them could do basic trigonometry. Sounds like they showed those documents of this third video to Kean/NYT back then, but didn't actually give the video. I guess they wanted to save this humiliating experience for later, which again seems like a good indicator how little they actually have.

Kean's comments also reveal how difficult it is to get access to these videos, even for the NYT. I think John Greenewald from Black Vault was guessing that it might even take a year or two before the current FOIA requests result in responses. I recall him saying that the longest he has waited for some FOIA response was 14 years or something like that. And now so many have been filed that it most likely takes much longer, and some intermediate responses have clearly indicated so.

Is that the TTSA game plan? Are they just buying time to finish their money grab by not giving us the original videos and documents that might reveal details they don't want us to see?

A proper analysis of these videos would really require the original versions, as every re-compression can lose data and introduce new artifacts, which is already evident from how the WP and YouTube versions have differences when trying to see the details of those few pixels that show Albert. TTSA is just withholding important evidence from us, it's plain and simple. Instead, they just want us to trust their words, and their words on this third video have once again showed very clearly that their words cannot be trusted.
 
Gary Nolan wrote:
I am getting some of the other background information that 'debunks' West's silly reply. First bit of information... the speed of the object was 300-400 knots (about 350 to 460 miles per hour). As measured by radar.. So goddess help that "bird" should it ever hit the water at such a speed! The wind drag alone would rip off it's feathers! LOL."
Garry Nolan has kindly accepted my friend request and I can now confirm this statement. He goes on to say that the telemetry data that we need to properly estimate the velocity of the object is embedded in the instrumentation readings. Honestly I've been too lazy to delve into these display readings with any real depth of understanding, but now clearly I'll have to do so to see if Mick West's speed analysis is indeed accurate. I'll report back once I can set aside an hour or two to look into it properly.
 
Robert Sheaffer has apparently posted Bruce Maccabees calculations at Metabunk. He again confirms the object is high up, but I don't understand the values he has used. He uses an angle of 22 degrees and slant range of 4.1 nautical miles. At the beginning of the video the angle is 22 degrees, but since the target is not tracked yet, we don't know the distance. The angle is 26 degrees when tracking begins, at which point the range is 4.4 nautical miles. When the range is actually 4.1nm, the angle should be 28 degrees.

He also states the object was going in the same direction as the plane. It certainly looks like that due to the movement of the jet, but I'm not too confident we can see the direction of the actual movement that easily. That's why I only mentioned the speed towards the plane (as indicated by the rangefinder). The jet is banking quite heavily to left near the end, and at the same time the relative closing speed seems to decrease quite rapidly. It doesn't seem to fit that well to an object that was going to the same direction (at constant speed), but I haven't done any actual calculations on that.

If the video showed the compass heading of the plane, it would be easier to calculate how the object actually moves in relation to the plane, but now it would require a more labor-intensive calculation of plane positions based on the not so accurate attitude indicator, and that would still miss the effect of the winds.

If we could calculate the trajectory of the jet based on that banking, then we could actually calculate the relative locations of the object during that time. Question is, how many degrees does it turn between 236 and 254 seconds while it's banking heavily?

Another possibility would be to try to calculate how it moved while the plane was more or less level, but that lasted only for a few seconds, and the numbers are not accurate enough for such calculation.

I did a spreadsheet for calculating how the object coordinates actually changed during 236 and 254 seconds while the plane was banking towards the left. I think I would now know both the speed and direction if I can get an estimate of the total angle the jet turned during that time. The speed seems to be within a bird-like 70-120km/h = 43-75mph range for the angle range I would guess to be most likely.

Found a couple of pages that give a formula for rate of turn:
How to calculate angular velocity and radius of a turn?
What is the relation between airspeed and rate of turn?

255 knots and average banking of 14 degrees (measured from the video) seems to mean around 1 degree per second. Which means around 18 degrees during that 18 seconds I'm now interested in, maybe a bit less as it wasn't as heavily banked in the beginning.

If my calculations are correct (I haven't checked them yet), that would mean Albert was flying somewhere close to 22m/s=80km/h=50mph and he actually was flying close to the same direction as the jet in the beginning. If the total turn angle was within +-5 degrees of that estimate, the situation doesn't change much. Max speed would be within 70-100km/h and Albert's direction would change max 30 degrees.

Grey-headed albatross for example has a max speed of 127 km/h=78.9 mph
List of birds by flight speed - Wikipedia

And this albatross article states "recorded as flying at speeds as high as 67mph"
How the unflappable albatross can travel 10,000 miles in a single
 
Last edited:
I gave the link and the quote. The comment is being held up in Moderation because I’m a Newbie Uninformant.

Now I see your comment there, but you posted my radar comment but not those tiny pics of Albert? I believe they would be more interested in the latter.

Since the video quality is what it is, and it's re-compressed from the original, there is the risk that the shapes we see are some unlucky artifacts, but they sure look like birds.
 
Now I see your comment there, but you posted my radar comment but not those tiny pics of Albert? I believe they would be more interested in the latter.

Since the video quality is what it is, and it's re-compressed from the original, there is the risk that the shapes we see are some unlucky artifacts, but they sure look like birds.
Well, I didn’t see the pics of Mr. Ross (Albert’s last name. Nyuk!) with your comment blurb. However, this new nimrod at Metabunk just did his calculations, displaying them with a nice 3-D Cartesian graph which actually “albuttresses” the argument that the object is moving at bird speed, not warp speed.
"GO FAST" Footage from Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy. Bird?
 
Well, I didn’t see the pics of Mr. Ross (Albert’s last name. Nyuk!) with your comment blurb. However, this new nimrod at Metabunk just did his calculations, displaying them with a nice 3-D Cartesian graph which actually “albuttresses” the argument that the object is moving at bird speed, not warp speed.
"GO FAST" Footage from Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy. Bird?

He doesn't seem to take into account how the jet turns, which is also quite significant. Look at my message above. If my calculations are correct, I believe I already know how Albert was flying.
 
Can anyone explain why there are two numbers for the aircraft's speed (~250 knots and MACH 0.61) that are in disagreement? MACH 0.61 should be 406.7 knots. One of these two speeds is not the aircraft's absolute linear velocity, but rather, the speed relative to the air mass.

The TTSA video describes the speed in knots as the Calibrated Air Speed -- any idea if this is technically accurate?

According to Wikipedia, "If there is no wind, [Calibrated Air Speed] is also the same as ground speed (GS)." -- the F-18 remains at 25,000 feet, so the air speed we care about for our calculations should be equal to the ground speed. If there is wind, however, the CAS will not tell us the actual speed of the F-18; it'll report a lower speed if the plane is being carried by the wind, but a higher speed if the plane is meeting air resistance.

This is critically important, as a lower hypothetical speed for the F-18 will give us bird-like velocities for the object, while MACH 0.61 gives us speeds that are not "biologically sustainable," as Garry Nolan suggested.

Then again, I'm sure if the object is found to exceed bird speeds, someone will call it a drone, and we won't be much closer to any kind of useful conclusion.
 
Can anyone explain why there are two numbers for the aircraft's speed (~250 knots and MACH 0.61) that are in disagreement?

MACH depends on altitude. Here's a calculator:
Aviation Calculator

Input Altitude=25000 and CAS=255 in CAS/Mach/TAS/EAS Conversions, and it results MACH 0.61.

The TTSA video describes the speed in knots as the Calibrated Air Speed -- any idea if this is technically accurate?

Most likely yes, as evidenced by the above matching calculation as well.

Wikipedia actually seems to indicate CAS (without wind) equals to ground speed only at sea level, so it seems we should actually use TAS, which does take altitude into account (but again not wind), and seems to be a better match for ground speed (without wind).

So according to that calculator, TAS would have been 370-374knots=190-192m/s. With that my earlier calculations would result the plane heading towards the target 123-83m/s and the target speed towards the jet would be only 6-10m/s.

Does anyone know what that small rectangle is on that display? It's close to the top left corner initially, but moves over time and especially when the plane turns.

I tried to check my earlier more detailed calculations that take jet turning into account, but there seems to be something I'm missing in how the horizontal angle changes should be calculated or how the indicators should be read. That's why I would like to know if that small rectangle could also indicate something significant, for example if those indicated angles are somehow relative to some target lock positions or something.

Edit: I think I found the main problem with those angles. Now I get sensible results again, still showing birdlike speeds between 60-120km/h, but either Albert was turning a bit, or there's still some adjustments to be made.

It's also noteworthy that the results differ quite a lot when changing the angles or rangefinder estimates with a single digit, as they are have only a few digits of precision in the video. I tried to compensate some of that by using interpolated values.

As for the CAS/TAS/ground speeds, it doesn't matter too much that we don't know the actual ground speeds, as we are calculating relative speeds of objects at flight, assuming none of the instrument values we use utilize ground/GPS positions. It also doesn't matter that much what the absolute wind speeds are, but what matters is how much the direction and speed of winds differs between the altitudes of the jet at 7600 meters and Albert at 4000 meters. I guess we just have to assume they are pretty much the same.
 
Last edited:
Dear colleagues.

Here is the latest batch:

Main Media Index Page Updated:
Pentagon UFO Study

2018-03-12 - FOX News - Tucker Carlson Tonight:
Interview with Luis Elizondo on the 3rd AATIP Video & the Pentagon UFO Study


2018-03-12 - HRT (Croatian Television) -
Segments of Giuliano Marinkovic's Interview with Luis Elizondo

(Thanks to Dave C. Beaty for the USS Nimitz UFO Animation)
HRT Annoucement: https://app.box.com/s/r3p40fbi4adq1r9drj7cke407o06pxbu

2018-03-13 - CNN - News Segment the 3rd AATIP Video

2018-03-13 - ABC News - News Segment the 3rd AATIP Video

2018-03-12 - USA Today: News Presentation of the 3rd AATIP Video with Subtitles

2018-03-13 - CNN - News Representation of the 3rd AATIP Video (wrongly playing Gimbal Video)
2018-03-13 - News Representation of the 3rd AATIP Video (wrongly playing Gimbal Video)

Some Leftovers:

2018-02-22 - Kens5: Astronomer Bryan Tobias & Father Pat O'Brien comment the Pentagon UFO Study
2018-02-22 - Astronomer Bryan Tobias & Father Pat O’Brien comment the Pentagon UFO Study

2018-02-22 - 10 KTEN: News Segment on the Pentagon UFO Study with Gary Neitzel & Arkle Dennis Williams
2018-02-22 - News Segment on the Pentagon UFO Study with Gary Neitzel & Arkle Dennis Williams

Best wishes,
UFORadio
 
Here's what my spreadsheet just spit out:
Albert.png

I haven't had the time to check the calculations properly yet, but at least it seems to pass some basic sanity checks, and seems to be a pretty good match to the earlier more coarse calculations that were done differently. The axes show distances in meters, as measured from the location and direction of the plane at 233 second mark of the video.

I collected all the available data from the video from 233s to 254s, so basically for all that time the rangefinder gave distance estimates. The problem was that the angles and distances shown in the video do not have enough precision for calculating the exact positions of Albert, who is moving too slowly and too far away relative to the rounding errors. When I did this with those raw numbers, Albert was moving within that same area, but zigzagging around due to the precision errors. I used several tricks to minimize those errors, but that still left Albert a bit jiggly path. That's just due to precision, my dear friend Albert is not a drunk flier!

The initial values I used varied Albert's flight altitude by close to a hundred meters or so, but that's unlikely to be real. I think it's reasonable to assume he was more likely to fly more or less level, so I put him at constant altitude, for which I believe I already had good estimates and reasoning in my original calculations on the first page. Those put him at 4020m. I fine-tuned that a bit and found that an altitude of 4039m resulted in correct rounded results for the calculated angles for all the steps as compared to the video. Even minor differences caused some of them to be rounded to the next number, so I think the altitude is actually pretty accurate (within instrument precision and actual altitude variations and so on). That way I could calculate the vertical camera angles from the altitude and rangefinder distances, which helped me to interpolate more accurate values for the distances (basically adding a digit or even two of precision), which is the most significant variable here.

In the video, the angles and distance estimates happen to change at a couple of points at more or less the exact same time the seconds change, meaning those values would most likely be just between the rounded numbers the display shows, and I used those between numbers moments as more accurate reference points for interpolating and fine-tuning the rest. I tweaked the numbers to higher precision so that they are all rounded correctly as compared to the video, and worked together so that there were no other similar rounding errors. I also used the rangefinder closing velocities to match the interpolated distance values, beginning with such reference points.

I calculated plane turn rates from the banking angles measured from the video according to the equation I mentioned before. I don't know how accurate they are for that type of jet, but hopefully close enough. I used the TAS speed for the jet, according to the calculator here:
Aviation Calculator

Remember that it also doesn't take winds into account. The absolute ground speeds or wind speeds relative to the ground do not really matter that much, but we basically just have to assume the winds were about the same for the altitudes of the jet and Albert, as I don't think we can get that information anywhere. If they weren't, the calculations would still be otherwise correct as they are measuring relative distances and speeds, but Albert just might have needed to do more or less work for achieving his relative speed than the figures indicate. If the winds were not too significant, it seems Albert wasn't flying close to his maximums but was just having a good time, cruising comfortably somewhere close to 60km/h=38mph, away from the nasty jet that was trailing behind, and then some creep hit his eye with a laser rangefinder :(.

Note for those who haven't read my earlier messages: that pic of Albert above in the chart is an actual enlarged screenshot of him from the Washington Post video here:
Perspective | The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care?
 
Last edited:
Meanwhile, Mick from metabunk is now saying the "true air speed" is the value we need and therefore the object couldn't have been a bird. Another user gave an estimate between 88 knots and 254 knots. I think I'm done listening to armchair mathematicians. We all agree the object isn't moving in a particularly interesting way, and the error margin for all calculations is something like +/- 100%.

Interesting new info: Apparently, the Go Fast footage comes from the same aircraft and pilot as the Gimbal: GIMBAL and GO FAST videos were taken in the same sortie, according to the PRF code in the display • r/UFOs
 
Back
Top