Mick West
Mick West is an independent UAP-skeptic researcher, debunker, and founder of the Metabunk discussion forum (metabunk.org). Author of Escaping the Rabbit Hole (2018). His analytic frame emphasizes prosaic explanations rooted in sensor physics — parallax, lens flare, thermal blooming, and similar IR-imagery artifacts — and he is a recurring critical voice on viral UAP videos.
Role in the May 2026 PURSUE rollout
On the day of pursue Release 01 (May 8, 2026), West opened a Metabunk thread coordinating community frame-by-frame analysis of the 162-file tranche (src-metabunk-pursue-analysis-2026-05). Same-day findings credited to West and contributors:
- Release dominated by thermal IR videos from Reaper-type UAS platforms with strong parallax and limited context.
- PR-19 = Baghdad Phantom, previously leaked unredacted by jeremy-corbell in 2023 — PURSUE adds nothing new for that case.
- PR-48 likely shows offshore wind turbines with sensor floaters/lens artifacts.
- FBI lab-rendered “bronze metallic object” overlay (in fbi-case-file-62-hq-83894) is a graphic reconstruction, not raw evidence.
In the same news cycle, src-sciam-pursue-skeptics-2026-05 quoted West summarily characterizing the videos as “more dots, more parallax.”
Role in the June 2026 PURSUE Release 03 analysis
On the day of pursue Release 03 (June 12, 2026), West opened a new Metabunk thread (src-metabunk-pursue-release03-analysis-2026-06) for community frame-by-frame analysis of the third tranche. Key findings:
- Colorado Springs “potato” object (Feb 2022, Fort Carson/Cheyenne Mountain): IC partner gave only a low-confidence “sunlight backscatter off mountain snow” explanation; independent weather records showed partly-to-mostly cloudy conditions on that date, contradicting the witness testimony of clear skies.
- FBI northeastern orb series (PR001–PR006): At least one clip identified as “obvious sky lanterns” with “excessive deference to the witness.”
- Robertson Panel primary document: Confirmed as a genuine “institutional suppression policy” record — West’s thread noted this is historically significant regardless of exotic UAP interpretations of other Release 03 cases.
- aaro self-assessment: AARO itself rated only ~60% of the October 2023 western-U.S. multi-witness event as correlated with military IR-countermeasure flare exercises; the remaining 40% is classified “Unresolved Technology (Pending)” with no physical evidence.
The thread’s consensus: Release 03 adds no compelling evidence for extraordinary phenomena, with prosaic misidentification and institutional credulity accounting for most cases.
Methodology
- Frame-by-frame public analysis on Metabunk, often crowdsourced.
- Comparison of UAP imagery against publicly available satellite imagery, AIS data, and known optical artifacts.
- Distinction between “object” (3D morphology presupposed) and “area of contrast” (the sensor-faithful descriptor for IR features).
Related
- parallax · lens-flare-explanations · infrared-imagery · reaper-uas
- sean-kirkpatrick · avi-loeb · jeremy-corbell
- pursue · pursue-release-01-catalog
Outside citations
aravindan-neelakandan’s May 16, 2026 Swarajya essay (src-swarajya-disclosure-distraction-2026-05) explicitly credits West / Metabunk with already replicating the sensor artifacts behind several flagship PURSUE clips — using West’s debunking as the foundation for a broader psychological-uap-framing pivot.
Critique of AARO’s lighting-balloon hypothesis (May 2026)
In comments to The Debrief previewing pursue Release 02 (src-debrief-pursue-next-batch-preview-2026-05), West directly criticized aaro’s preferred prosaic explanation for the January 26, 2023 Eglin AFB diamond-formation incident:
“The lighting balloon hypothesis always felt like something someone at AARO liked, but wasn’t really supported by much evidence.”
This pushes back against the lighting-balloon-hypothesis pattern in AARO case resolutions — a notable instance of a leading skeptic critiquing an AARO explanation as under-supported (rather than the more common reverse).