Assistance needed from our Aircraft experts on the TTSA “Go Fast” FA-18 Super Hornet footage

Gimbal was not part of the Nimitz incident, it was somewhere on the East coast.

CNN is quoting Mr. Elizondo as follows:

On Monday, Elizondo also noted "eerie similarities" between the new video and the ones released last year, including the location in US airspace, the presence of US Navy pilots, the "Tic Tac" shape of the object and other signatures he said the videos shared in common.

Full article on CNN

So, while I suppose he might know that the three videos are from only two separate incidents, he is not very effective in making that clear.

BT

a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

What you always need to keep in mind is imagery is something that is sensed, including what you witness with your own eyes. Glen Campbell's "Area 51 Viewers Guide" explains some phenomenon that makes stars appear to move. I've often encountered aircraft in Orion's Belt formation.

The "rods" phenomenon of the 90s turned out to be some sort of digital camera artifact.

When it comes to these aircraft displays, I'm a bit skeptical only because it is instrumentation I've never used. Before you try to analyze the unknown, you need to understand the imagery via the sensor on known objects. This is the baseline measurement.

A classic problem with RF SIGINT is detection of some signal that is just an artifact of the radio. Your best bet as an amateur RF sniffer is to have two different radios. If you detect some weird signal on two different radios, it probably isn't a sensor artifact.

About two or three years ago it was discovered that the software used in "functional MRI" was buggy. Fortunately this imagery was used in research and not diagnosis.

Can anyone shed any light on the "ASA" mentioned in "Gimbal" video?

The statement is "There is a whole fleet of them. Look on the ASA." I've read about an Aircraft Situational Awareness System (somewhere). Is that what the ASA stands for? So I'm guessing this is a display that feeds information about threats, friendlies and unknowns from various sensor systems aboard the aircraft and plots them on a screen relative to the aircraft? Perhaps it can receive tracks positional data from outer aircraft and sources too?

If anyone that can link to any useful information about this ASA, that would be much appreciated, or explain a little about the kind of sensors and capabilities of this piece of equipment.

Cheers,

BT

For what it's worth:

Brother wasa crew chief on those very same Rhinos and the Tomcats that preceded them and he has no recollection of ever meeting the supposed CO of the earlier video. Says he thinks it's a hoax and phony.

a reply to: Caughtlurking

I assume you are referring to the Nimitz incident in 2004? Because we have not been given any location or unit for the 2015 encounter.

If you are referring to the 2004 Nimitz incident I think it is pretty certain Dave Fravor flew F-18s from the Nimitz at that time. He even appears on a 10 part PBS documentary called "Carrier". It was shot from May through November 2005 aboard the USS Nimitz.

Could your brother have mixed them up?

Cheers,
BT

a reply to: beetee

I am referring to the 04 video. Should have been more concise but have been working too much for too little. My brother was with the Black Aces through 2003 or 4 in my memory. Was lucky enough to be there for the transition from 14-18. He went to and did some interesting things with the squadron and says he thinks the guy is full of #. He also says he doesn't recognize him which to me is interesting. Squadrons are not huge and someone with my brothers job would have been familiar with the all of the pilots at the very least.

a reply to: beetee

I think SA (Situational Awareness) is how the Link 16 data display called in the Super Hornet.

a reply to: Caughtlurking

Ok. Thank you for clarifying.
I think that is very curious. In the 2005 documentary Fravor is commanding officer of the Black Aces, and his callsign is also pretty memorable, so it is very weird your brother has no memory of him.

I have also seen some alleged crew members stating the whole ship went to general quarters, but this might be people embellishing and making things up.

One small detail also is that Fravor is listed as a member of VMFA-232 (Red Devils) in the PBS "crew" listing, but in the text beneath is clearly stated to be commanding officer of VFA-41 (Black Aces).
This seems like a copy/paste error from the website designer though.

I don't know what to make of your brothers information, though. Very strange, if the timeframe is correct.

BT

a reply to: moebius

Ok. Thanks. That is what I had arrived at myself.
After much pouring through technical information :-)

Cheers,
BT