On 4 March 2019, the backseater of an F-18 Fighter took photos of three unidentified objects off the coast of Virginia. Four images have so far leaked to the public.
Susan Gough, the Pentagon spokesperson, confirmed that the photos “were taken by Navy personnel.
The Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations.”
The images were taken in Warning Area 72, or “whiskey-72.” of the east coast of Virginia Beach, a headquarters for US Navy Fighter pilots.
Whiskey 72 is the same area that Lt. Ryan Graves said his squadron of F-18s was seeing strange phenomena on a near-daily basis back in 2015.
The famous Gimbal and GoFast videos were filmed there.
Lt. Ryan Graves related one account of a near-miss between an F-18 and one of the objects.
The pilot clearly saw a “cube inside a sphere” flying against the wind without any signs of propulsion.
Little details were released of the 4 March event. What we do have is the metadata of the photos confirmed they were taken by an iPhone 8 camera.
The first photo of a “sphere” was taken at 2:44 pm. The next two photos of the “acorn” were taken at 3:02 pm.
And the final photo of the “metallic blimp” object was taken at 3:14 pm.
We also learned from Navy personnel that the objects were stationary in relatively high winds.
Leaked photos
Luckily there were two photographs of the Acorn leaked online. Having two photos in such quick succession to each other allowed me to use some old-school fighter pilot techniques and some guesstimation to estimate the size of the object.
Unfortunately, no other information is being disclosed to the public.
If you notice, there is a bit of land in the lower left hand of the photo.
Using google earth and overlaying the photos over possible places in W-72 turns up to be a location 15 nautical miles off the coast of Virginia beach.
Based on the Google Earth overlay, we can estimate they were at 28,000’ but potentially down closer to 20,000’.
If the fighters are flying 0.6mach, which is their general loiter speed in all the other engagements, and the objects are stationary, then using the two photos, we can estimate their distance.
Then, using the camera information for an iPhone 8, and measured the angular size of the objects to estimate their physical size.
We find the Acorn to be a 2-meter by 2-meter object.
Are the photos of the same object?
The only information we have is the photos were taken 18 and 12 minutes apart in the same general location.
The timing and location showed that the fighter was practicing fighting with other fighters toward the southeast.
Whenever they returned back to their practice base or home plate, they would see the objects with their radar or eyes and investigate.
If the images are of the same object, separated in time, then we see a progression from a sphere to an acorn to a blimp.
Although these events develop names over time, such as the sphere, Acorn, and tic-tac, it is important to try and remain unbiased.
The sphere looks like a circular cloud of moisture lit by the sun. The sun on that day was 32 degrees high out of the southwest.
The sphere, in fact, does look spherical to me and partially transparent.
The Acorn, on the other hand, appears to me as a hard geometric structure.
You can clearly see a line of shadow along the left side of the Acorn.
The common debunker joke in the US is this is a runaway batman balloon. At 2 meters across, the acorn balloon would take Timmy for a local balloon tour.
Finally, we have the most mind-blowing image, the metallic blimp. The shape appears to resemble the beginning of the famous FLIR1 video of the tic-tac.
Does it look like a tic-tac to you? Could it be possible this is a derivative of the same object seen by Navy personnel off the coast of San Diego in 2004?