Go Fast video

The Go Fast video is a infrared video recorded in 2015 by a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet operating off the East Coast of the United States, showing an unidentified object skimming low over the ocean at apparent high speed. The video was published in December 2017 by The New York Times alongside the FLIR1 and Gimbal video clips as part of the To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science disclosure campaign, and was officially confirmed as authentic by the Pentagon in April 2020.

Recording context

The Go Fast video was recorded during the same 2014–2015 deployment of Carrier Air Wing 1 (CVW-1) aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt that produced the Gimbal video. Commander David Fravor, who spoke with the pilots who filmed both clips, stated that the same back-seater is believed to have operated the targeting pod for both the Go Fast and Gimbal recordings. The footage was recorded in daylight over open ocean in the Virginia Capes Warning Areas, part of a pattern of anomalous contacts that Fravor and Ryan Graves described as being observed by 60 to 70 personnel during this deployment period.

Relationship to the Gimbal video

Graves confirmed in a 2024 interview that the Gimbal and Go Fast videos were filmed within minutes of each other during the same engagement. At the time both clips were recorded, approximately 10 to 12 objects were operating simultaneously in the same area — 300 miles east of the ship. The objects visible in the Go Fast footage were part of a line-abreast formation of four objects flying roughly a mile apart; the crew struggled to lock on to the formation before one pilot redirected attention to the distinct object at co-altitude that became the Gimbal recording.

Description of footage

The clip shows an ATFLIR infrared track of a small object appearing to move rapidly at very low altitude — described visually as resembling a Tic Tac — close to the ocean surface. The jet's HUD data visible in the footage records altitude, airspeed, and targeting information.

Speed analysis

The apparent speed of the object as seen in the video became one of the most contested points of analysis. Fravor acknowledged having heard the skeptical interpretation: "There's been some debunks that say, well, it's really not going that fast. It's just the way the airplane is and how the mechanics of the pod are working."

The principal skeptical analysis, advanced by Mick West and others, demonstrates that the object's apparent surface speed is largely an optical artifact created by the geometry of the targeting pod's line-of-sight rate relative to the jet's altitude and velocity. In this model, the object's true ground speed is consistent with an ordinary low-speed object; the dramatic visual motion results from the pod rotating rapidly to keep the object in frame as the jet overflies it at high altitude. The object's altitude, derivable from the HUD data and the pod's depression angle, is estimated at approximately 13,000 feet below the aircraft — rather than skimming the ocean surface as it visually appears.

Counter-analysts dispute this calculation, noting that the pilot crew's reaction — and the broader pattern of East Coast contacts during the same deployment — suggests genuine anomaly rather than sensor artifact.

Aircrew observations

Fravor reported that when he discussed the Go Fast video with the crew who filmed it, their account was consistent with genuine high-speed flight at low altitude. The same crew had also observed multiple unidentified contacts on their Situational Awareness Page during this period, consistent with the pattern Graves described across the deployment.

Pentagon release

The Go Fast video was among the three clips published by The New York Times in December 2017, in the investigation that also broke the stories of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) and the Tic Tac UAP encounter. The Department of Defense officially acknowledged and confirmed all three videos in April 2020, releasing them as declassified U.S. Navy recordings. Former AATIP director Luis Elizondo described Go Fast, Gimbal, and FLIR1 as "the least compelling" footage in government possession — unclassified material released as the least sensitive tier of what he characterized as a much larger body of evidence.

Disclosure pathway

The Go Fast and Gimbal videos were brought to public attention through the combined efforts of Luis Elizondo and Christopher Mellon. Both clips were attached to the package that Mellon and Elizondo assembled for The New York Times in 2017 as part of the TTSA disclosure campaign. Graves described seeing the videos on the front page of the Times after they had been effectively "smuggled out" and characterized the publication as "a cry for help" from within the military aviation community — a signal that others were still encountering these objects and that the phenomenon had not been contained or resolved.

Fleet behavior during the Theodore Roosevelt deployment

During the deployment that produced the Go Fast recording, the objects were operating in numbers. Graves described the broader picture: up to 10–12 objects were operating simultaneously in the Virginia Capes working area during the Gimbal/Go Fast engagement, flying in a "line abreast" formation of four objects approximately a mile apart. The objects were observed at speeds ranging from stationary to supersonic (1.1–2 Mach) and were tracked only over open water, never inland. At least one near-miss had already occurred — a dark-gray or black cube inside a clear sphere passing between two F/A-18s — before the videos were captured, and the Navy had considered canceling the entire training exercise on safety grounds.

References

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