The Navy UAP Videos (FLIR1, Gimbal, GoFast)

FLIR1, Gimbal, and GoFast are three infrared targeting pod videos recorded by U.S. Navy F/A-18 crews. FLIR1 was recorded during the November 14, 2004 Nimitz encounter off Southern California. Gimbal and GoFast were recorded in January 2015 off the U.S. East Coast by crews from the USS Theodore Roosevelt. They are the most widely seen UAP footage in history and the first the U.S. government ever formally acknowledged.

The videos originated on Navy aircraft sensor systems. FLIR1 leaked online as early as 2007. On December 16, 2017, The New York Times published FLIR1 and Gimbal alongside its story revealing the Pentagon's AATIP program. To The Stars Academy, the private company working with former program official Luis Elizondo, released the same videos and published GoFast in March 2018. In September 2019 a Navy spokesperson confirmed the videos were genuine Navy footage of "unidentified aerial phenomena" and said they had never been cleared for public release. On April 27, 2020, the Department of Defense officially released all three "to clear up any misconceptions" about their authenticity. They are now hosted in official government UAP records collections.

FLIR1 shows a small white oblong object that the sensor tracks and then loses as it moves off screen. Gimbal shows a saucer-like shape that appears to rotate against the wind, while aircrew are heard reacting on the intercom. GoFast shows an object appearing to race across the ocean surface while the crew celebrates locking it up. All three are short, low-resolution, and monochrome infrared. None shows structural detail.

The videos themselves are authentic. The Department of Defense confirmed they are genuine Navy recordings and that the phenomena in them remained characterized as unidentified. Authenticity of the footage and interpretation of the objects are separate questions.

The 2017 publication of these videos, with named military witnesses attached, moved UAP from tabloid subject to congressional agenda. Nearly everything that followed, including the UAP Task Force, AARO, the 2023 hearings, and the 2026 PURSUE records releases, is downstream of these three clips.

What the sensors captured is contested. Analyst Mick West has argued FLIR1's apparent movements track camera behavior, that Gimbal's rotation matches a known glare artifact of the ATFLIR gimbal system, and that GoFast's apparent speed is a parallax illusion. AARO director Jon Kosloski told a Senate subcommittee in November 2024 that AARO's analysis of GoFast supports the parallax reading, placing the object around 13,000 feet and moving far slower than it appears. Gimbal and FLIR1 have no equivalent official resolution. The aircrews involved have stood by their accounts. The videos remain unresolved in the public record.