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Correct, but either can produce a plasma field in the atmosphere.
That's the thing about proton beams - the accelerated particles will lose velocity and at a certain point they will release their remaining energy. If you're using the proton beam for cancer treatment, it releases that energy into the cancer cells. If you aim it at the sky, it will create an ionized patch of plasma. Tom Mahood goes into the numbers here.
Yes, this is exactly the sort of tech I'm thinking of. Look, if you're telling me you don't think this sort of tech was sufficient to create a Tic-Tac event, I am not going to argue with you! I'm not convinced that it was responsible. I just find it interesting that the tech exists, if even in a modest form, and that the US military has been doing research on particle beams and radar decoys for decades (and thus might be ahead of civilian technology in this area) and that they started putting lasers on submarines at a time which would make sense if the Tic-Tac was an IOC/prototype test. Am I convinced? No. Do I think it makes a certain amount of sense? Sure.
I think this makes sense, but wouldn't account for the eyewitness reports unless there was something visible to the naked eye. (Obviously ECM could account for the radar detection.)
Fravor, the pilot who reported the water disturbance, wasn't able to capture any footage of the Tic Tac as I understand it. That was captured by a subsequent jet.
To expand on this a bit, I'll add that I don't think this is a good assumption, nor do I think it tracks how the military uses its sensors. The military prefers IR sensors, and the Tic-Tac footage was from an ATFLIR pod (YMMV on whether this counts as visible-light). But as far as I know, the F-18 has no feature to continuously record all of its surroundings. The ATFLIR pod would need to be pointed at a specific target (in this case, the Tic-Tac), and not all aircraft carry ATFLIR pods, nor does the ATFLIR pod necessarily always function. I believe the F-18 also has a "gun camera" that captures, essentially, the view of the HUD - very far from a 360 degree recording, and I do not know if those are even routinely turned on. Likewise for any other in-cockpit cameras, cell phone cameras, etc. In short, as far as I know, there's no particular reason to believe that any given event would be captured visually on any equipment besides the HUD camera by a Navy fighter unless it was especially equipped with a reconnaissance/sensor pod. And to catch something in the HUD, you'd need to "pull it into the HUD" (point your aircraft at it) and have the HUD recorder on.
From what I've seen of the accounts, the water was what Fravor noticed first - then the Tic-Tac. I doubt the adrenaline kicked in just from seeing an ocean disturbance. But as long as we're postulating extra details manifesting from stress, I'd say that cuts towards the "plasma holography" theory, as one could just as easily assume that the pilot's brain "filled in" a blobby shape with solid details, and then contaminated other aircrew's perceptions by describing it, causing them to report the same thing. Not saying I think this is what happened, but I think it's more parsimonious an explanation than Fravor stress-hallucinating an ambiguous water feature.
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