The Pentagon Navy UAP Videos: FLIR, Gimbal, and GoFast Explained
A neutral explainer of the three U.S. Navy videos — FLIR (the 2004 Nimitz 'Tic Tac'), Gimbal, and GoFast (2015) — that the Department of Defense officially released in 2020, including how they became public and where the official records are held.
Three short infrared cockpit videos recorded by U.S. Navy aircraft — known as FLIR (or FLIR1), Gimbal, and GoFast — are among the most widely circulated pieces of U.S. government UAP footage. This guide explains what each video is, how it became public, and what the U.S. government has officially said about it, with links to the official records.
The three videos
- FLIR (FLIR1) — Recorded on November 14, 2004 during a training exercise involving the USS Nimitz carrier strike group off the coast of Southern California. Navy aviators described a white, oblong object later nicknamed the “Tic Tac.”
- Gimbal — Recorded in 2015 by aircraft from the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group operating off the U.S. East Coast.
- GoFast — Also recorded in 2015 during the USS Theodore Roosevelt deployment, showing an object tracked low over the water.
How the videos became public
The videos first reached a wide audience in December 2017, when The New York Times published the FLIR and Gimbal clips alongside reporting on the Navy encounters; the GoFast clip circulated shortly afterward. On April 27, 2020, the Department of Defense officially released all three videos through the Naval Air Systems Command, authorizing them for public distribution.
What the U.S. government has said
In its April 2020 statement, the Department of Defense said it released the videos to “clear up any misconceptions” about whether the circulating footage was real, and stated that the phenomena observed in the videos “remain characterized as ‘unidentified.’”
The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), established in 2022 to investigate UAP, later published a case resolution for GoFast. AARO assessed that the object’s apparent high speed was largely an effect of parallax — the viewing geometry between the sensor and the object — consistent with a slower-moving object. The case resolution report and AARO’s official imagery page are linked below.
Where to find the official records
This archive indexes the official sources rather than hosting the footage. See the linked records for AARO’s official UAP imagery, the GoFast case resolution report, AARO’s UAP case collection, and AARO’s report on the historical record — each of which points to its government source.