The Day the Pentagon Stopped Denying the Tapes
FLIR, GIMBAL, GOFAST. The footage had leaked years earlier. In April 2020 the Department of Defense formally released it — mostly to stop people arguing about whether it was real.
On April 27, 2020, the Department of Defense authorised the public release of three videos recorded by U.S. Navy pilots during training flights in 2004 and 2015. 13 They are known by the labels burned into their filenames: FLIR, GIMBAL and GOFAST.
The footage was not new. It had leaked in 2007 and again in 2017, and had already been reported on by the New York Times. 4 What was new was the Pentagon putting its name to it.
The stated reason was almost bureaucratic. Spokesperson Sue Gough said the release was intended to clear up misconceptions about whether the circulating footage was real, or whether there was more to the videos. 12
What is actually visible
Airborne objects, imaged in infrared, with no visible wings, fuselage or exhaust. 1 The FLIR clip is associated with the 2004 USS Nimitz encounter off Southern California, in which pilots reported a small white object shaped like a Tic Tac. 8
The Pentagon released the clips and explicitly declined to say what the objects were. That has been the department's position, unbroken, for six years. 5
The pushback, immediately
Skeptics had explanations ready, and they have held up better than the coverage did. Analyst Mick West argued FLIR shows a distant aircraft, the apparent glow an infrared artefact; that GIMBAL's rotation is the signature of a gimbal-mounted camera system rather than the object; and that GOFAST's speed is parallax, resolvable using the telemetry on the screen. 67
AARO would formally adopt essentially the GOFAST analysis four years later.
The most famous UFO videos in the world were released by the U.S. government, and the strongest technical work on them has been done by an independent skeptic with a laptop. That is the actual state of this field.
Why it still mattered
Because it removed the escape hatch. Before April 2020 any discussion could be ended with *that footage isn't authenticated*. After it, the argument had to be about what the objects were — which is a harder, better argument, and the one that has run ever since. 4
Four months later the Pentagon stood up a task force to chase them.
SOURCES
This report was written by UFONN from the reporting and primary documents below. Numbers in the text correspond to this list. Every link goes to the original publisher.
- 1Pentagon officially releases UFO videosCNN
- 2Here's Why The Pentagon Officially Released UFO Video FootageForbes
- 3Pentagon declassifies three UFO videos taken by Navy pilotsCNBC
- 4The US military has officially published three UFO videos. Why doesn't anybody seem to care?The Conversation
- 5Pentagon declassifies three UFO videosGlobal News
- 6The Skeptic's Guide to the Pentagon's UFO VideosVICE
- 7Pentagon Releases Old 'UFO' Videos, with Expected ResultsSkeptical Inquirer
- 8When Top Gun Pilots Tangled with a Baffling Tic-Tac-Shaped UFOHISTORY
