In January 2015, an aircraft targeting pod flying with the USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group recorded a small object skimming low over the Atlantic off Jacksonville. On 27 April 2020 the Department of Defense released and authenticated the clip as one of three genuine Navy UAP videos. This is the record of what was filmed and released, not a verdict on what the object was.
EVENT DATE
January 2015
LOCATION
300 miles off coast of Jacksonville, USS Roosevelt · USA
INDEPENDENCE
L4 · AUTHENTICATED VIDEO
SOURCES
1 distinct
CLAIMANTS
1
STATUS
Government-authenticated sensor video
In January 2015, an ATFLIR targeting pod aboard an aircraft flying with the Theodore Roosevelt strike group recorded a small object low over the ocean, about 300 miles off the coast of Jacksonville. The footage, now known as the GoFast video, shows the object skimming the water's surface while the pod's automated tracking follows it. In the account on file it was recorded roughly ten minutes before the separate encounter known as Gimbal, and described as one of a claimed line-abreast formation of four objects.
What is on the record
What carries this case is not its testimony, which is thin: one telling, from a single channel, and one named person, Ryan Graves, attached in a squadron capacity rather than as the operator who filmed it. What carries it is the video itself. On 27 April 2020 the Department of Defense formally released GoFast alongside the Gimbal and Nimitz FLIR1 clips and confirmed all three are genuine, and that the objects remain unidentified.
The file also holds the sceptical reading, and it is a serious one. An analyst identified as Mick argues from parallax that the object is a slow, wind-blown balloon travelling at perhaps sixty to ninety knots, and only appears fast because of the geometry — that the "GoFast" is not going fast at all. The authentication vouches for the recording, not for any interpretation of it.
Why it sits where it does
GoFast grades L4. In this archive a government-authenticated video is an official record, the same evidential class as a declassified primary document, because it is verified provenance the testimony layer can't supply on its own. That is what lifts the case above the single thin telling attached to it. What the video shows — an anomalous craft, or a balloon read wrong by the camera — is not resolved here.
◆ CORROBORATION
✓DoD-authenticated sensor video
◆ SOURCES
Everything this file draws on, in the open — reports, not reality. Check us.
Watch — the tellings
Each opens the source video at the exact moment this case is covered.
How this case is reported elsewhere — encyclopedias, press, independents. Not evidence we rely on, and it counts toward no grade. We show the full spread, bias and all, so you can judge the framing yourself.
