https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs
Turns out we like to spend gobs of money even when we're just chasing our shadow.
While some of the videos have explanation, I would kindly encourage you to look at this with more curiosity.
He covers the "Tic-Tac" and "Go Fast" videos too, just not in that specific video. Like in this one, where he explains how the "Go Fast" video isn't actually even a fast object zipping just above the water, but rather an object flying at roughly wind-speed at about 12000 feet.
The lens flare was caused by the camera looking at the ass end of another jet. The radar saw the other jet.
For even one of these videos to have a mundane explanation that should have been obvious to the Navy upon investigation, I think that discredits the lot. Either the Navy couldn't figure it out themselves (which seems highly improbable), or for some reason the Navy is deliberately misleading the public, or at the very least allowing some of their personnel to mislead the public and playing coy about it. I think this is what's happening.
But why?
My guess is that there's an internal report describing the FLIR system and how the FLIR system works and how the internal workings of the FLIR system caused the visual phenomena. But that's all classified.
So they did the absolute minimum the Executive branch required them to do and left it up to the White House Press Secretary to explain it to the American public.
To me it reeks of the brass not wanting to have any more of their time wasted. There's a great scene in The Wire where the metro police, the harbor police, the state police, and the county sheriff arguing that a string of murders don't fall under their jurisdiction; it's your problem you deal with it etc, subverting the trope of the local cops fighting with the federal/state police (usually the FBI) that "this is my jurisdiction" or whatever. I think this is the same. The Executive branch (I'm 80% sure it was Trump, coulda been Obama, too lazy to look it up) demanded that they do a thing they didn't want to do, and then they dragged their feet and did the bare minimum, and in the process made a mess that now the Office of the White House now needs to clean up. (which they didn't, because they don't want to explain a classified sensor system in a public briefing either)
My assumption is that sensationalized UAPs are illusions, but the reason the military keeps putting out press releases about them is not because they're aliens. The first reason is that there are unidentified aircraft entering US airspace. They're likely cheap attempts at both intelligence collecting and psychological warfare on behalf of US adversaries. Drones are easily mass produced and a nation flying a handful of drones in US airspace can easily send hundreds/thousands/millions because of how cheap and easy they are to make and deploy.
Since drones can vary in size and be flown in a ton of different conditions/patterns/scenarios/etc, they might be hard to detect. The mainstreaming of the "UAP mystery" narrative encourages civilians to look for, record and massively platform adversarial drones should they be seen by people, but go undetected by systems that are looking for them. The narrative also neuters whatever attempt at intimidation or psyops adversaries are waging against the public/military/etc. "Our militaries can send whatever we want into your airspace and there's nothing you can do about it" can be a powerful message that was effectively neutered with "maybe they're aliens lol".
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/05/11/us-nav...
Regardless, liminal warfare will continue to give rise to this kind of scenario so we should try not to outsmart ourselves in a desperate bid to be right
Depends on the domain. Underestimation could lead to perceptions of weakness and opportunity for attack. Even if you are prepared for attack, not getting attacked in the first place is better than getting attacked at all.
Same goes for positioning in negotiation.
e.g. The video that got debunked as Bokeh (accurately) is still someone on that ship attempting to video a craft that they see nearby them. It's only viewers of the video who get confused and believe that the bokeh effect is what they are supposed to be seeing in the video.
He also completely ignores the eyewitness testimony and radar data.
He’s one of the least credible debunkers you can find.
I have never seen a counter-analysis. Can you explain why you think this? It's not common knowledge that the observations of Mick West has been "debunked"...at least not as commonly known or easy to find as the Mick West analysis or the source videos.
Regardless I think the simplest counter argument is that if that were really the case, you'd see these damn things on every flight facing the sun and people would know to ignore them. Lens flares also don't show up on radar and on pilot's eyes. No crazy analysis needed.
