The USS Nimitz UFO incident - weather balloons?

I have spent a decent amount of time investigating the Nimitz UFO incident and made several posts about it here. My thoughts have converged to what I called my best guess hypothesis. In short, I believe the incident is explained by:

1. Balloons seen on radar
   
2. Submarine launched balloon(s) seen visually
3. Distant Super Hornet seen on ATFLIR video
   

As I stated in the post linked above:

the main questions in my mind have really been "What kind of a balloon was it?" and "Where can I find evidence for it?"

This post is about one such candidate, and where the evidence of it might be found.

It should be noted though that another more concrete candidate has emerged while this post has been waiting in draft state due to lack of time to finish it. Mike Turber has brought the X-43A launch back to the center stage in a way that goes very much along the same lines as is being proposed below, at least as far as I understand it, and is working on a video for detailing his thoughts. There's a very good chance that event initiated this all. But if nothing else, this post should at least show how our ideas have converged towards the same kind of direction. And there's also a chance these candidates are connected somehow.

What kind of a balloon was it?

There are many potential candidates for balloons that could be at play here. Their possible uses include:

1. Testing the radars
2. Surveillance
3. Communication
4. Weapon targets
   
5. Weather measurements
   

Radar testing has probably been the most commonly proposed alternative. It seems to make sense considering they had new radar tech that needed to be tested, and it has historical precedent and possible more recent cases. However, if the statement Kevin Day gave in a recent interview is accurate, they had "highest system track quality and contacts the entire time", at least for the other than the visually observed target. I would expect test targets to pose much more of a challenge for the radar.

Surveillance is another possibility I have considered, mostly based on this curious quote from "the CSG-11 Senior Intelligence Officer (N2)" in the Executive report:

When asked what he thought the AAV was he replied he believed it was part of a counterdrug operation based on the area of operations.

I have long wondered if that was just a wild guess, considering the area only, or something more. It sounds like an odd comment if one assumes there was some supersonic tic-tac. But not so much if one for example happens to know there are subs deploying surveillance balloons for such purposes. But that would only explain the one visually observed balloon. Those groups of balloons would have to be something else.

The same applies for communications. Submarine launched balloons can provide long range communication means for submarines, but now in the satellite age and all that, there are probably better options for that. Although apparently submarine "High Data Rate" antenna bandwidth may only be 256kb/s.

Then there's the possibility of some kind of weapon target balloons. There larger groups could make more sense. But if those targets traveled several hundred miles, as described by Kevin Day, and ended up over area used for unrelated air defense exercises, that explanation also doesn't quite work.

Then there's perhaps the most mundane of all the alternatives. Weather balloons. That's what this post focuses on.

Silent Hammer

So who would launch weather balloons in the middle of a military exercise in November 2004, and why? Or from a sub?

Let's look back a little further. All the way to October 2004, so only a month before those events. The Southern California navy training area was hosting another large exercise, called Trident Warrior. It involved a number of vessels, submarines etc. and of potential interest here is that they did some testing also on submarine launched canisters, but apparently their contents was only "inert test shape simulating a UAV" in that instance.

In addition to Trident Warrior, or somewhat nested within it, there was also Silent Hammer Limited Objective Experiment, which was conducted on October 4 to 13 around San Clemente Island. Its mission was to "demonstrate the ability of a submarine to act as a Joint Operations platform for intelligence collection and time-sensitive strikes."

They were running a war on terror scenario where a "Red Team" was occupying various sites on San Clemente Island. "Red Team" also included a small research vessel R/V Acoustic Explorer, which simulated maritime threats while remaining within the vicinity of that island.

That event and that boat also provided a field-based opportunity for personnel from the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC), Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), and Naval Research Labs (NRL) to collect and analyze meteorological data and prediction models. We know about that thanks to a Master's Thesis by Richard M. Murphy.

COAMPS

Murphy begins the abstract of his thesis with the following sentence.

Current U.S. Navy Special Warfare and submarine concepts of operations (CONOPS) dictate that in-situ environmental data collection is limited or not possible.

So basically he is saying subs don't launch weather balloons. This doesn't start well, does it? But weather data is important in many ways so what do they use instead? Murphy continues:

Therefore, predicted data from operational models, such as the Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS), are essential to estimate the impacts of environmental conditions on the detection of enemy targets and counter-detection by radar and optical sensors.

So when the measured data is limited, they use computational prediction models to fill the gaps. And the people on that boat were working to evaluate and improve those models, so that subs would have even less need to launch weather balloons.

This study compares the use of high-resolution COAMPS data and in-situ shipboard and rawinsonde measurements for detection prediction purposes. The evaluation is based on data from Fleet Exercise SILENT HAMMER conducted off the Southern California coast near San Clemente Island in October 2004. An instrumented vessel was used for continuous surface layer data collection and frequent rawinsonde launches. COAMPS meteorological predictions were obtained at 3- and 9-km resolutions.

So essentially they were launching weather balloons from that boat and doing other measuments and evaluated measured data against predictions given by their models.

Numerous rawinsondes were launched and continuous surface layer measurements were made from a small vessel, and atmospheric features and variations were compared with and matched against the U.S. Navy’s Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS®)

Rawinsondes

Rawinsondes are radiosondes, measurement instruments carried by weather balloons, whose position is tracked to collect wind speed and direction information. They were launched by METOC and Naval Special Warfare personnel. They launched a total of 21 of them over the period of five days, from the locations shown on the map below.

Interestingly this is pretty much exactly where Kevin Day has stated those 100 knot 28,000 feet radar contacts appeared on their radar during the Nimitz encounter. But this was a different month, and probably different type of balloons, as there's no indication these would have been altitude controlled.

Nevertheless, it's at least an interesting coincidence that numerous weather balloons were launched from that same location during another exercise just a month before. And significantly this was part of work on the COAMPS model that continues to this day. So chances are they have done something similar during other exercises as well, without anybody writing a thesis about it.

What about that submarine then?

So could this have anything to do with submarines launching balloons, which they aren't really expected to do? I haven't found any evidence of it (and there's little evidence of anything that's done by those secretive subs). But I think it's conceivable they could have done something similar with a sub that they did with that boat. That is, evaluating prediction models by performing balloon based measurements on the same location for comparison.

It doesn't have to be a common thing subs do. It could be just a rare instance where they do the research so that they don't have the need to do it more often.

X-43A

I don't want the steal Mike Turber's thunder, but I can't help speculating if what is being presented here might have some connection to his proposal.

X-43A was a NASA experimental unmanned hypersonic aircraft, which flew the third time on November 16, 2004, so only a couple of days after Fravor's visual UFO encounter. Understandably that hypersonic aircraft was proposed to explain Fravor's hypersonic tic tac. But that explanation didn't really work. Date was close, but wrong. Location was close, but wrong. And the observed hypersonic speed was most likely a false lead caused by visual illusions. So that explanation was relatively quickly all but forgotten. But it was certainly quite a coincidence that such event happened there so close in time and space.

When Robert Sheaffer wrote about that idea, he noted:

Michael Huntington posted something concerning the Tic Tac video to the Black Vault that was almost completely overlooked but could turn out to be extremely important

It now seems that's exactly what happened, but for the second time. That explanation was already rejected, so there has been little consideration whether it could still have something to do with the Nimitz incident. Including by myself. After writing my analysis regarding the radar contacts, and concluding how the core of it is most likely real targets that were carried by the wind, I have tried to find sources and reasons for multiple altitude controlled weather balloons in that area. Mike has looked at what I have overlooked. When he reminded me about X-43A, I basically heard "Bingo!" in my ears.

It's all about the balloons

Airborne experiments like the X-43A are obviously sensitive to weather, so they had to collect wind data. And they didn't collect it just on the exact location (or even couldn't collect it from there), but nearby.

The independent atmosphere reconstruction used balloon data from various locations on and around the test range. Atmospheric and wind data along the actual flight path of the X-43A were not available, so the BET data has increasing uncertainty as the missions progress.

And they even collected some after the actual test.

The atmosphere reconstruction for the third flight of the Hyper-X vehicle is based on weather balloon data acquired both before and after the actual test flight.

Note that they didn't just need to find out what the wind speed was at some location, but were doing more detailed analysis over a wider area. It makes sense that they may have collected such data with altitude controlled balloons, perhaps from multiple altitudes. X-43A flew high, all the way to 110,000ft, so other balloon data collection altitudes may have been outside Kevin Day's radar view, as he stated:

And for several days, I've been watching these weird contexts off the off the coast of Catalina Island. And the reason why I say they were weird, is because our Ballistic Missile Defense guys was tracking these things coming down from outer space, I found out later, that wasn't the view that I had on my radar, I was I'm more concerned with 30,000 feet and below. And then we go from 80,000 feet then suddenly dropped to 28,000 feet.

And they could even provide an explanation for those contacts "from outer space" (like balloons bursting there and dropping their payload).

Their anchor point for the atmosphere reference was 33.45°,  -121.0667°. Coincidentally I had just gone through some old Kevin Day interviews, and wrote that their radar contacts:

Depending on the interview, they have been described as appearing either close to Catalina Island or San Clemente Island or up in the Channel Islands area off to LA, moving south 100-120 knots at 28,000 feet (with some variance)

Well, what do you know, that's not far off, is it?

An earlier flight in March 2004 used 4 weather balloon launch locations, each launching 4 balloons:

Those at least were a very good fit with locations mentioned by Kevin Day, and if those were somewhat simultaneous, they would also account for targets flying in formation.

X-43A COAMPS connection?

Considering the COAMPS related data collection mentioned before happened during a fleet exercise, seemingly dual using resources, it seems possible that such work was continuing and they might have decided to dual use resources again by cooperating with the weather data collection and data sharing with the X-43A launch. Which could increase the odds that some of that data was gathered close to the navy exercises, and used some of their assets. Perhaps even a submarine, as it could provide a platform that could launch weather balloons from the X-43A danger zone where ships shouldn't go, and dive to safety whereas it would take some time for any ship to clear the area. And in any case it could have been an asset that was in suitable area to provide another launch point for the weather data collection, while also possibly testing the previously mentioned canister launch mechanisms that were under active development at the time.

In any case, these weather data collection scenarios have the benefit that at least much of it is probably unclassified, so there's probably sufficient data available (perhaps already publicly or through FOIA) for evaluating if they can explain what was observed.