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Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

> The Nimitz Incident of 2004(?).

The Tic Tac UFO? That's probably one of the best explained events (debunked). Short answer is that there was sense misreading and a gimbal lock. Some people even simulated it[0]. I wouldn't call this an elaborate hoax, but an optical illusion and an event that took some expertise to understand. Expertise that a pilot wouldn't have.

I should add that finding that link was nontrivial. Faster through Google but searching through YouTube just came up with UFO videos and no debunking. This is probably part of the problem.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

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The Nimitz event is far from “debunked”.

We have multiple naval aviator eye witnesses of the physical object, with testimony (fravor and the female wingman, I forget her name)

We have testimony of the Princeton’s AEGIS radar operator that these things were “popping in at 80k feet and dropping to sea level in a few seconds”, that “they disappear on radar and the sub would get a ping in the same area tracking 200+ knots underwater”

We have the intentionally degraded video of the same object from another intercept (the people who went out after fravor, his jet didn’t have recording capability). This is the video a certain washed up video game developer claims to have debunked by pointing a flashlight at a webcam.

This operation was testing a new version of the navy’s most advanced radar/integrated tracking system at that time (2004) that was substantially more powerful/sensitive than anything that came before it. Make of that what you will.

> the female wingman, I forget her name

Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich

That’s it, thanks!

> The Nimitz event is far from “debunked”.

But he googled $Event + Debunked and watched 2 minutes of the first explanation that came up. Mick West said it's debunked so it must be so, after all, any good skeptic will click the first link and believe any debunk instantly because that's the science way^tm

It is rather ironic

Before speaking authoritatively as a debunker, you should be careful about accuracy. The video you linked is not of the alleged Tic Tac, it is a completely separate incident known as GIMBAL. The only public data on the Tic Tac UFO is the FLIR video.

And how does a gimbal lock simultaneously show up on multiple sensor systems across warships?

Your retort is phrased poorly, but I don’t understand the downvotes here - the footage from this episode was made by fighter jets who were dispatched to investigate a radar signal, and the pilot said they had visual contact. That’s three distinct records and/or a whole lot of marines fucking with us.

I mean there is no denial that SOMETHING was out there. The debunking refers to the performance of the target which is being shown to be safely within the capabilities of contemporary human technology and not requiring "aliens" or "unknown technology" to achieve.

This is the guy who headed up the AATIP (UAP) task force for the Pentagon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtMbBPzqHY

He lists some pretty amazing capabilities around 2:10.

Mick West is a layman; a former software engineer. Not sure why you would trust his "expertise" over one of America's top pilots. Also I strongly question West's biases. His whole schtick is saying everything is a hoax and heres why; this leads to confirmation bias when your conclusion is that it is an optical illusion from the onset of the investigation.

i love military footage debunk videos, where the debunker makes layman assumptions about how a particular highly classified sensor works and the idiot pilots just don't know how to use it properly

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