The Pentagon's 3 Confirmed UAP Videos: What They Actually Show -

In April 2020, the Pentagon did something it had never done before: it officially released infrared footage from military aircraft showing objects it could not identify. The three videos, known as FLIR1, Gimbal, and Go Fast, had been leaked years earlier and confirmed as authentic by the Navy. The official declassification marked the first time the U.S. government publicly acknowledged that military sensor footage of UAP was genuine. Two of the three videos remain unexplained as of March 2026.

All three Pentagon-confirmed UAP videos (FLIR1, Gimbal, and Go Fast) shown side by side with analysis.

TL;DR: In April 2020, the Pentagon officially released three Navy videos showing unidentified aerial phenomena: FLIR1 (2004), Gimbal (2015), and Go Fast (2015). The videos, originally captured by military infrared targeting pods, had circulated publicly since 2017 after being released by To The Stars Academy and reported by the New York Times. The Pentagon confirmed the videos are authentic but said the objects remain classified as unidentified. In November 2024, AARO resolved the Go Fast case, attributing it to a balloon and parallax. FLIR1 and Gimbal remain unresolved. Sources linked below.

Timeline

November 14, 2004 Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich, flying F/A-18F Super Hornets from the USS Nimitz, have a close visual encounter with a white, Tic Tac-shaped object off the coast of San Diego. Lieutenant Chad Underwood records the FLIR1 video from his F/A-18’s ATFLIR targeting pod minutes later.
January 21, 2015 A Navy F/A-18 pilot records the Gimbal video during training operations off the U.S. East Coast. The video shows a dark, oblong object tracked by the AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR targeting pod. Pilots react with surprise on the audio recording.
Early 2015 A Navy F/A-18 pilot records the Go Fast video during a training exercise. The video shows a small object moving rapidly across the surface of the ocean, tracked by the aircraft’s infrared targeting pod.
January 2015 The operations officer of Fleet Forces Command sends an email containing the Go Fast video to a group of commanders, including retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet. According to Gallaudet’s later testimony, the email disappeared from all recipients’ accounts the following day without explanation.
December 16, 2017 The New York Times publishes a report revealing the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a Pentagon program that investigated UAP. The report includes the FLIR1 and Gimbal videos, released through To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science, a company co-founded by former Blink-182 musician Tom DeLonge.
March 2018 To The Stars Academy releases the Go Fast video, completing the public release of all three Navy videos.
September 2019 The U.S. Navy confirms the three videos are authentic and depict what the military officially calls “unidentified aerial phenomena,” as reported by CNN.
April 27, 2020 The Pentagon officially declassifies and releases all three videos. Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough states the videos were released “in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real,” according to USA Today.
July 20, 2022 AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) is established within the Department of Defense to investigate UAP reports, replacing the earlier Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.
November 19, 2024 AARO presents its analysis of the Go Fast video during a Senate hearing, concluding with “high confidence” that the object is a balloon at approximately 13,000 feet altitude, with its apparent speed created by the parallax effect of the fast-moving jet.

FLIR1: The Tic Tac (2004)

The FLIR1 video, also known as the “Tic Tac” video, is the oldest and most discussed of the three Pentagon-confirmed recordings. It was captured on November 14, 2004, during a training exercise involving the USS Nimitz carrier strike group off the coast of southern California.

The Pentagon’s three declassified UFO videos taken by U.S. Navy pilots, released April 2020.

The incident began when two radar operators aboard the USS Princeton, a guided missile cruiser serving as part of the Nimitz strike group, detected multiple unknown objects on their AEGIS radar system at an altitude of approximately 80,000 feet, descending rapidly to near sea level, according to testimony later provided to Congress.

Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich, both flying F/A-18F Super Hornets, were diverted to investigate. Fravor has described, in multiple public interviews and in the New York Times, seeing a white, oblong object approximately 40 feet long with no visible wings, tail, exhaust, or propulsion system. He said the object was hovering over a disturbed area of water, creating a frothy disturbance on the surface.

Fravor said he descended toward the object, which then accelerated rapidly and disappeared. “It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Fravor told the New York Times in 2017. Minutes later, Lieutenant Chad Underwood, another pilot from the same carrier group, recorded the FLIR1 video using his F/A-18’s AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR infrared targeting pod. The video shows an oblong object tracked by the pod before it appears to accelerate out of the frame.

The FLIR1 video has not been resolved by any official investigation. AARO listed it as “unresolved” on its website as of 2023, according to reporting by multiple outlets.

Gimbal: The Rotating Object (2015)

The Gimbal video was recorded on January 21, 2015, during a training exercise off the U.S. East Coast. The footage, captured by a Navy F/A-18’s AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR targeting pod, shows a dark, oblong object against a cloud background. The object appears to rotate as the camera tracks it. Pilots can be heard on the audio reacting with surprise: “Look at that thing, dude. It’s rotating,” one says.

The video is notable for the apparent rotation of the object, which some analysts have argued is not the object itself rotating but rather the gimbal-mounted camera system producing a visual artifact. The object’s shape and behavior have been debated extensively in both scientific and skeptical communities.

According to the video analysis published by To The Stars Academy when they first released the footage, the object was one of a group of smaller objects visible on the radar display, flying in a “Racetrack” pattern. The lead object, shown in the video, appeared to be the largest of the group.

AARO has not published a resolution for the Gimbal video. It was listed as “unresolved” on the AARO website as of 2023.

Go Fast: The Fast-Moving Object (2015)

The Go Fast video was also recorded in early 2015 during a naval exercise. It shows a small object moving rapidly across the surface of the ocean, tracked by the aircraft’s infrared targeting pod. The pilots on the audio react with excitement: “Whoa! What is that, dude? Look at it fly!”

For nearly a decade, the Go Fast video was one of the most discussed UAP recordings. Its apparent speed and proximity to the water’s surface led many to conclude the object was moving at extraordinary velocity.

On November 19, 2024, AARO Director Dr. Jon Kosloski presented the agency’s analysis of the Go Fast video during a Senate hearing. According to The Black Vault, AARO concluded with “high confidence” that the object is not close to the water’s surface, but is instead at approximately 13,000 feet altitude. The agency attributed the object’s apparent rapid motion to the parallax effect: when viewed from a fast-moving jet, objects at different distances appear to move at different speeds.

Kosloski stated: “Through a very careful geospatial intelligence analysis and using trigonometry, we assess with high confidence that the object is not actually close to the water, but is rather closer to 13,000 feet.” AARO’s analysis suggested the object was likely a balloon or similar object drifting at wind level, with a ground speed of approximately 45 miles per hour.

The Go Fast resolution is notable because it represents one of the first cases where AARO has provided a detailed technical analysis of one of the Pentagon-confirmed videos, offering a prosaic explanation for what appeared to be extraordinary behavior.

The Pentagon’s Official Position

The Pentagon’s April 2020 statement was carefully worded. Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough said the videos were released “in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real,” according to CNN.

The statement did not conclude what the objects in the videos are. It confirmed the videos depict “unidentified aerial phenomena” but did not suggest the objects are extraterrestrial, foreign technology, or any other specific explanation. The Pentagon has consistently maintained this position.

As of March 2026, the Pentagon’s official position remains that the objects in FLIR1 and Gimbal are unidentified. The Go Fast object has been resolved by AARO as a probable balloon. The Pentagon has not released additional declassified UAP video footage beyond these three videos and a separate set of images from 2019 that were also confirmed as authentic.

How the Videos Became Public

The path from classified military footage to public record was unusual. The videos were first released publicly in December 2017 and March 2018 by To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science, a company co-founded by former Blink-182 musician Tom DeLonge and former CIA official Jim Semivan. The releases coincided with a New York Times report, published on December 16, 2017, that revealed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a Pentagon program funded with $22 million that investigated UAP from 2007 to 2012.

The New York Times reported that the FLIR1 and Gimbal videos had been circulated internally among military and intelligence officials before being provided to To The Stars Academy by individuals within the Defense Department. The circumstances of the leak have not been fully disclosed.

At the time of the initial release, the Pentagon did not confirm or deny the videos’ authenticity. It was not until September 2019 that the Navy officially confirmed the three videos were authentic, as reported by CNN. The Navy’s confirmation stopped short of saying what the objects were, only confirming that the videos depicted events that the military could not explain.

The official declassification in April 2020 came after a Freedom of Information Act request. The Pentagon released the videos in their original form, without editing or redaction, marking an unprecedented level of transparency regarding military UAP encounters.

Opposing Perspectives

The three Pentagon-confirmed videos have been the subject of extensive analysis by both proponents and skeptics of extraordinary explanations.

Skeptical analysis of Gimbal. Independent investigator Mick West, who runs the website Metabunk, has argued that the rotating object in the Gimbal video is not actually rotating. In a series of analyses, West demonstrated that the apparent rotation of the object corresponds with the rotation of the gimbal-mounted camera system. He proposed that the object is likely the infrared signature of a distant jet engine, with the rotation and shape changes produced by the camera’s optics, according to his YouTube analysis.

Skeptical analysis of Go Fast. West and other analysts, including a NASA independent study team, argued before AARO’s resolution that the Go Fast object was moving far more slowly than it appeared. The NASA team, in a September 2023 analysis published on Metabunk, concluded that “the impression of rapid motion is at least partly due to the high velocity of the sensor, coupled with the parallax effect.” AARO’s November 2024 analysis confirmed this assessment with detailed geospatial intelligence analysis.

FLIR1 remains contested. The FLIR1 video is harder to explain away. Commander Fravor’s account of a close visual encounter with a physical object, corroborated by Lieutenant Commander Dietrich and by radar operators aboard the USS Princeton, makes it difficult to dismiss as a sensor artifact. Skeptics have proposed explanations ranging from a misidentified aircraft to a classified U.S. drone, but none of these explanations have been confirmed by official sources. AARO has not published a resolution for this case.

The counter-narrative. Proponents of extraordinary explanations argue that the Pentagon’s careful language, the objects’ behavior as described by eyewitnesses, and the government’s ongoing interest in UAP (through AARO and congressional hearings) suggest that at least some UAP incidents involve technology that is not publicly understood. They note that AARO’s resolution of Go Fast does not address the other two videos or the broader pattern of UAP reports from military personnel.

The evidence gap. The core challenge is that the three videos, on their own, are ambiguous. They show objects tracked by infrared sensors, but the resolution and range of the footage make definitive identification difficult. The eyewitness testimony adds context, but eyewitness accounts are subject to perceptual errors. Without additional data (radar logs, sensor fusion data, or physical evidence), the videos alone cannot resolve what the objects are.

GO FAST: Official U.S. government footage of UAP, released by the Department of Defense.

YouTube Videos

GO FAST: Official U.S. government footage of UAP, released by the Department of Defense.

The Pentagon’s 3 Confirmed UAP Videos: What They Actually Show