UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RECORDSENSOR FOOTAGE

The GOFAST UFO Video (2015)

GOFAST is an infrared clip recorded by a U.S. Navy F/A-18 aircrew from the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group during training off the U.S. East Coast. The Pentagon dates it to January 2015. Like GIMBAL, it was filmed with the jet’s forward-looking infrared targeting camera, and the official file is held in the Naval Air Systems Command FOIA reading room.

The camera points down toward the ocean. Once it locks on, a small, bright object sits in the center of the frame while the dark sea appears to rush past behind it, giving the impression of something skimming the waves at great speed. Onscreen numbers show the camera’s angles, the range to the target, the jet’s altitude and its airspeed — the data that later allowed analysts to check what the footage actually shows.

The Navy said in September 2019 that it considered the phenomena in GOFAST ‘unidentified’, and the Department of Defense formally released the video on April 27, 2020. In November 2024, retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet testified that he received GOFAST attached to a January 2015 Fleet Forces Command email headed ‘URGENT SAFETY OF FLIGHT ISSUE’, and that the email disappeared from recipients’ accounts the next day.

NASA’s independent UAP study team examined GOFAST in its September 2023 report. Using the onscreen angle, range and altitude figures, it calculated the object was at about 13,000 feet, not near the sea, and moved about 390 meters in 22 seconds — roughly 40 mph, ‘a typical wind speed at 13,000 feet’. It attributed the impression of speed partly to the jet’s own motion ‘coupled with the parallax effect’.

NASA added that the object appeared colder than the ocean, so there was ‘no evidence of heat produced by a propulsion system’, supporting the idea that it was ‘most likely drifting with the wind’, while noting uncertainty because wind effects on the jet were left out. GOFAST is now often cited as an example of how sensor geometry can create the illusion of extreme speed, and of how much can be learned when onscreen data is preserved.