GIMBAL AND GOFAST

Opening

Gimbal and GoFast are two infrared videos filmed by US Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet crews from the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt off the US East Coast in January 2015. In Gimbal, a dark shape with a glowing outline seems to rotate as it moves against the wind, while an aviator on the audio says there's "a whole fleet of them." In GoFast, the camera locks onto a small object that seems to race low over the ocean. The videos leaked in 2017 and 2018, and the Pentagon officially released them, along with the 2004 Nimitz "FLIR" video, in April 2020. They're the backbone of the modern UAP debate, and they've also been analysed in more detail than almost any UFO footage. That analysis has settled one of them and left the other argued over.

Timeline

2014. The Theodore Roosevelt's F/A-18 squadrons, training off Virginia and Florida before deployment, receive upgraded radar. Soon afterwards, aircrews begin reporting unknown objects on radar and on their infrared cameras, often daily.

2014 to 2015. Pilots describe objects that stay airborne all day at altitudes up to about 30,000 feet, with no visible engines or exhaust. After one near miss between a Super Hornet and an object, the squadron files a safety report.

January 2015. The Gimbal and GoFast videos are recorded by the ATFLIR targeting pods on two F/A-18Fs.

16 December 2017. The New York Times publishes Gimbal, alongside the Nimitz video and a story on the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

March 2018. GoFast is released by To The Stars Academy, a group co-founded by musician Tom DeLonge.

2019. The Navy issues new guidelines for pilots to report UAP, and confirms the videos are genuine and show unidentified phenomena.

27 April 2020. The Pentagon formally releases all three videos.

31 May 2023. At a public meeting of NASA's independent UAP study team, analysts use the on-screen data from GoFast to show the object was at about 13,000 feet and moving at about 40 mph, roughly the speed of the wind. The fast skim over the sea was an effect of the jet's own speed and angle.

26 July 2023. Former Lieutenant Ryan Graves, an F/A-18F pilot in the same squadron, testifies to a House Oversight subcommittee alongside former Navy commander David Fravor. He describes near-daily sightings off Virginia Beach, and a dark grey or black cube inside a clear sphere passing within about 50 feet of two jets flying in formation.

Key figures

The Theodore Roosevelt aircrews recorded the videos. Their names aren't on the released footage.

Ryan Graves has become the best-known public witness from the squadron and has founded a group encouraging commercial and military pilots to report UAP.

Mick West, an analyst and writer, argued early that both videos show ordinary effects: parallax in GoFast, and camera glare rotating with the pod's gimbal mechanism in Gimbal. His GoFast reading was later matched by NASA's analysis.

Supporters of the Gimbal anomaly, including some Navy aviators, argue that the object's motion and the radar picture of a "fleet" can't be explained by glare alone.

Physical and documentary trail

On the paper: the official videos with their on-screen data (altitude, range, angles, and zoom), Navy statements and reporting guidelines, the squadron's safety report as described by Graves, Graves's written and spoken congressional testimony, and NASA's 2023 briefing.

The on-screen data is what makes these videos testable. Analysts can work out the geometry, which is how GoFast was slowed from a fast skimmer to a slow drifting object. The radar data that showed Gimbal's "fleet" hasn't been released.

There's a whole fleet of them.

Competing explanations

Unknown objects. The aircrews were trained observers who reported many objects over months, with radar, infrared, and sometimes eyes all agreeing. A near miss was serious enough to file a safety report. Gimbal's rotation and apparent stop and reversal against the wind have been argued as signs of something unusual.

Ordinary objects distorted by the camera. GoFast's object is slow and high, consistent with a balloon. Gimbal's rotation matches the moments the camera pod rotates to keep tracking, which turns glare around a distant, hot object, possibly a jet's engines. Neither needs unusual flight. Balloons and drones could also account for many of the daily radar sightings, especially in busy training airspace.

Later life of the case

The videos kick-started the modern era of government UAP reports, congressional hearings, and the creation of AARO, the Pentagon's UAP office. They remain the most-watched official UAP footage, and GoFast has become the main test case in the argument over how much a camera's own numbers can tell you.

Finding

Neither video has been closed. NASA's reading of GoFast, built from the numbers on the screen, makes it slow and high, but that analysis works from one video and one camera. It can't say what the object was, and it can't rule out that the crews saw something the footage doesn't capture. Gimbal's rotation may be the camera, but its path and the "fleet" on radar are still argued. And the videos sit inside something larger: trained Navy crews reporting objects day after day for months, with radar, infrared, and their own eyes, and a near miss serious enough for a safety report. That pattern hasn't been explained by any analysis of two clips.

What still will not resolve: the full radar and sensor data from the Theodore Roosevelt's jets in 2014 and 2015, which would show what the crews were tracking and how fast it was moving. None of it has been released.