I looked at the Tic Tac explanation in that article (section 2.4.3); I assert it's ... weak.

The object is tracking left with respect to the aircraft, as seen by the increasing left azimuth reported from the sensor. However, that azimuth is reported in units of whole degrees, with the sensor field-of-view being 0.7 degrees at 1x zoom or 0.35 degrees at 2x zoom.

The rate of azimuth change is about 0.3 degrees per second based on some simple stopwatch measurements.

In other words, if the sensor loses lock and ceases to track the target, you would expect the object to appear to accelerate left out of frame. At the 2x zoom, the angular distance across half the field-of-view (i.e. from the middle to the left edge) is 0.175 degrees; so you'd absolutely it to disappear in ~0.5 seconds.

You can see some "bobbling" of the lock as the operator switches between zoom levels in the video, and indeed the apparent sudden movement of the object occurs immediately after one increase in zoom level.

The data presented is equally consistent with this theory, but the article doesn't address that possibility at all - instead assuming that the explanation can only be due to kinematics of the object.

So, yeah, weak.

I also checked on the journal that published this analysis; it turns out that the principle author of the article is also the editor-in-chief of the journal... also the publisher of the journal (MDPI) has been on-and-off the lists of predatory journal publishers for some years.

That's good analysis. But by your standard of equally consistent your analysis also must be judged as weak. I don't think either theory are weak. They're just theories consistent with the evidence. So that's kind of strong.

Also I agree with you on the journal. Probably not the best example. I'd just rather people try to analyze than dismiss it irrationally so even a dodgy journal, with a comprehensive analysis is better. I don't think we should "default to trust" something just because it's in a journal. Likewise no default to distrust.

None of the radar data released recently about Omaha shows extraordinary speeds or Gs. So maybe nothing in the hard data shows any smoking gun evidence of super speeds. That might be deliberate by the Navy but such speculation doesn't change facts we have.

I dislike the "smearing of witnesses" and default to "explained" attitude brought to this, which is interesting and justifies curiosity. Witnesses are unreliable but Navy aviators are trained witnesses, experts in the domain of estimating speed, distance, aircraft type, maneuvering - and you have a handful of them who have come forward saying they saw dozens of these things over days. And people want to just pretend the Navy doesn't know the difference between a plane and a bird, or doesn't know how to read their sensors or calibrate them to remove artefacts.

I'm not saying you're disputing there is a real object detected, but some people say it's a fly on the glass or something ridiculous. I dislike these contemptuous dismissals of trained observers and supposedly best-in-class top-secret sensors. So I want to see more analysis and curious discussion ... less arrogant dismissal.

Even the points that are not in contention are extraordinary: no control surface, no heat signature, no propulsion signature, extended time-on-station, active jamming, foreknowledge of CAP point, apparent thermoptic/radar cloaking (or superspeed) re it can vanish and appear almost instantly.

They say the things dropped from space to sea-level in a second. That's amazing. I think a valid alternative is that they were able to hack/delude the radar into thinking they just appeared. Just like how they disappeared. It's seems possible a smooth white object could be covered in some sort of optical/thermal/radar distorting materials, that could make it vanish to sensors even if it was still there. That's not the explanation I believe, but I think it's a valid alternative in light of a lack of discriminating evidence.

I don't have any explanations for the violation of aerodynamics, lack of heat, wake, or extended "battery life". I would sure love to know how it did that. That's extraordinary. Until proven otherwise. I think you can question the data a bit, and the witnesses a lot, but when you start reaching hard to twist everything into an "explained away" narrative, you're missing the signal that's there. And it seems crazy, to do mental gymnastics that requires a coincidence of all the failures, repeated, over time: the Pentagon is lying or doesn't know it's a bird, or a stick of gum on the sensor, the aviators are hallucination, the sensors (across the entire battle group) are malfunctioning at the same time and erroneously reporting internally-consistent tracks, that then coincide with positions seen by aviators visually, this didn't just happen as a glitch in one moment, but consistently, over days, and months (according to some people). As these strange skythings have also happened to thousands of civilians and other servicepeople around the world over decades. It's crazy to paint it as "a coincidence of errors and hallucinations". I'm not saying anyone who says that is crazy, just the idea itself, because I guess to them it seems crazy to say it's aliens.

Maybe this thing is all a weird and elaborate way for the US govt to do a big reveal of some new exotic drone tech it has and make sure everyone in the world is watching. Could be truth of it, but I think the mileage attainable from running with the "we don't know / mystery" narrative is probably higher than tying it all up in a neat little bow right now. I don't think any of this will answer the question of aliens/not - it's entirely possible to be having a dealing with aliens in secret, and then do this "semi-public" reveal in parallel and keep the two things isolated, maybe deliberately, maybe to plunge the secret alien connection further into the depths of secrecy. I think the key thing is the big reveal is about control. Seems various factions have been coming forward over time to leak things out, now someone needs to get out in front of this, unified front, unified messaging, and recapture control of the narrative.