The Shootdown Bench: Visualisation · Signals from the Periphery

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THE INTERCEPT

Subject

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Value

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State

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THE SHOOTDOWN BENCH
12 February 2023 · Lake Huron
a confirmed shootdown is not a confirmed mystery
the filter, not the sky, made February 2023
two Planck curves are the seeker's whole world
the first shot missed; the record never said why
run the shots · open the gates · read the file

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Evidence

fact ⇄ what kind of claim · live

12 Feb 2023: an octagon at 20,000 ft, two AIM-9X, the first missed

unit, altitude, sequence and the miss all confirmed in press briefings

REPORTED

Planck band radiance, integrated live and checked against σT⁴

the seeker bench's entire subject; air at altitude from the ISA, exact

EXACT

Doppler blind fraction f = 2/π · asin(gate/v), closed form

a 16 kt drifter is 100% blind to an 80 kt gate, from every heading

EXACT

Mie series: a metallised 32-inch sphere bounds at ~0.5 m² on radar

brighter than a bird; the gate hid the hobby fleet, not invisibility

EXACT

One lock constant, calibrated and printed; fly-out and sizes staged

object size, launch ranges and the miss distance were never published

MODELLED

VanHerck: velocity gates opened after 4 Feb; most raw returns unanalysed

the commander's own account of why three objects appeared in three days

REPORTED

K9YO: last heard 11 Feb off Alaska, projected over Yukon that day

never confirmed; the club claimed nothing; nothing was ever recovered

REPORTED

PR071: an uploader's title, a chain-of-custody caveat, a public event

what "UAP" in a filename is and is not entitled to mean

READING

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The object

Size3.00 m

Never published, so it is a dial. The pico is the exception: a known 32-inch (0.81 m) sphere, held exact.

The intercept

TimelineT+0.0 s

Shot 1 at T+8, the miss at T+13, shot 2 at T+24, impact at T+29. The minutes between the two passes are compressed and labelled.

The seeker

Skin vs air ΔT+12.0 K

Sunlit envelopes ride a little above ambient; at night the offset goes negative and so can the contrast.

Emissivity ε0.75

Plastics near 0.9; bare metallised mylar near 0.1, which mostly reflects the cold sky instead of glowing.

Sky behind it230 K

The MWIR horizon background, modelled as one temperature. Colder sky means more contrast for a warm target.

Altitude20,000 ft

Sets ambient air by the standard atmosphere, exactly. Huron was 20,000 ft; Alaska and Yukon were 40,000.

The gate

Speed gate80 kt

Returns slower than this are rejected as clutter. The Huron object never exceeded it from any heading.

Sensitivity gate-10 dBsm

Returns weaker than this are not promoted to tracks. Note where the pico-balloon cloud sits.

Open the gatesthe 11 February 2023 setting

Display

White hotclip polarity

Missile trailssmoke and plume

Labels

Readout · live

IR contrast J

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Lock, imaging

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Lock, legacy

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Air at altitude

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Pico on radar (L)

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Tracks kept

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What is exact vs modelled here

Exact: the Planck band integrals (checked against σT⁴ to a tenth of a percent), the standard atmosphere, the Doppler blind-heading fraction, and the Mie series bounding the metallised pico balloon on radar. Reported: the entire February 2023 timeline, every altitude and description in it, the first-shot miss, the VanHerck filter account, K9YO's last contact, and the 1998 gun run. Modelled: the seeker's one calibrated lock constant (printed), the sky and reflected background temperatures, the sky census counts, the missile fly-out, and every unpublished dimension, carried as dials.

The model, in full

The seeker bench integrates the Planck function over 3-5 µm for the target skin (emission plus reflected surroundings, ε·B(T_skin) + (1-ε)·B(T_refl)) and for the sky behind it; contrast intensity is area times the difference, and lock range is R = √(|J|/E_min). E_min is fixed once: a legacy reticle locks a 600 K, 0.3 m² tailpipe at 10 km, and the imaging array is carried at 30× that sensitivity, both printed on the face. The gate bench draws a labelled census and applies two thresholds; its one exact result is the rejected-heading fraction 2/π·asin(g/v). The intercept is a scripted reconstruction of the reported two-shot sequence at true scale. Every anchor is checked in scripts/lake-huron-tune.mjs.

Where this instrument takes liberties

The object's size, the launch ranges, the miss distance and the drift speed were never published: all are dials or labelled class figures. The miss is reproduced because the record says it happened; no cause is animated because none was given. Sky background and reflected temperature are single modelled numbers, not a radiative transfer solution. The census counts are order-of-magnitude. The 3D bodies are staging. The reconstruction of PR071 is drawn from its published description, not from the pixels of the clip itself.

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