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This is a case resolution report from the U.S. Department of Defense's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), dated February 6, 2025. It covers the January 2015 "Go Fast" infrared video that a Navy F/A-18F recorded off Florida. AARO worked only from the public video and found the object was at about 13,000 feet, not near the ocean surface, and moved at roughly 5 to 92 mph. The report attributes the apparent high speed to motion parallax and states with high confidence that the object showed no anomalous performance.
UNCLASSIFIED 11 UNCLASSIFIED Inserting vFA18 = 190 m/s, the acceleration of gravity g = 9.81 m/s2, and θB = 14° into (6), the radius of curvature Rc was found to be 14,759 m. These values are shown in Figure 4 with the radius of curvature and position of the F/A-18 at t2. Figure 6: The F/A-18 traveled in a curved path from its position at t1 to reach its position at t2. To find yaw the angle φ at t2, note that the two φ’s in Figure 4 are equal. The total distance traveled in the partial circle by the F/A-18 moving at 190 m/s over 13 seconds is 2,470 m. Had the aircraft kept flying to complete a circle, it would have traveled 2·π·Rc or 92,736 m. Therefore, only 2.66% of a 360° circle was completed thus φ = 9.6°. Since the yaw is counterclockwise, away from the positive y-axis, it is a negative value, or φ = -9.6°. To find the F/A-18’s position at t2, the Δx and Δy change in position from the location at t1 must be found. Equations (7) and (8) use a cylindrical coordinate transformation [ref 8] to do this. ∆𝑦 = 𝑅𝑐 − 𝑅𝑐 ∙ cos(𝜑) = 14,759 ∙ (1 − cos(9.6°)) = 207 𝑚 (7) ∆𝑥 = 𝑟 ∙ sin(𝜑) = 14,759 ∙ sin(9.6°) = 2461 𝑚 (8) Thus, at t2, the aircraft’s displacement was [2,461, -207, 0] m, or 2,461 meters ahead and 207 meters left2 of its t1 position. This will be used momentarily to find the UAP’s location at t2. At t2 the UAP was at a range of 6,279 m from the F/A-18 such that the pointing vector, v2, is given by m. As with t1, the LOS vector was defined as pointed in the direction of +x-axis, not the heading of the aircraft.3 At t2 the sensor elevation and azimuth angles were β = - 35° and γ = -57°, respectively. The additional yaw of the F/A-18 of -9.6° required one additional rotation.4 The rotation by -35° about the y-axis to the sensor elevation is given in (7a-7b).5 2 The negative is applied here to conform with our coordinate system. 3 This is not the direction the F/A-18 was pointed, otherwise there would be a y-component of the vector. The additional yaw angle will be handled in the rotation matrices. 4 The sensor azimuth and F/A-18 yaw could be added and performed in a single rotation. In general, the aircraft would have roll and pitch and adding the platform angle to the sensor angle may give an incorrect result. 5 The written-out step depicting the multiplication of the matrices is skipped here.
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