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.”
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