FLIR1: Tic Tac Encounter, December 2017 Release
To The Stars Academy / New York Times UAP Video Release, FLIR1, GIMBAL, GOFAST, FLIR1_Official_UAP_Footage_from_the_USG_for_Public_Release.webm
FLIR1 is the first of three declassified U.S. Navy FLIR videos released publicly on 2017-12-16 alongside the New York Times exposé on the Pentagon's secret AATIP program, depicting an unidentified aerial object encountered by naval aviators in 2004.
Brief
On December 16, 2017, the New York Times published an investigation into the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a classified Pentagon initiative, and simultaneously released three Navy forward-looking infrared videos designated FLIR1, GIMBAL, and GOFAST. The footage was authorized for public release by the Department of Defense through To The Stars Academy. FLIR1 captures a 2004 encounter; GIMBAL and GOFAST document 2015 encounters. The source asset is a .webm video file; no text extraction is possible, and all contextual content in this record derives from the war.gov listing description.
Metadata
- Agency
- U.S. Navy (DoD authorization via To The Stars Academy)
- Release
- 2017-12-16
- Type
- VIDEO • .webm
- Length
- 4.8 M
- Classification
- UNCLASSIFIED
- Programs
- AATIP
- Tags
- FLIR video, tic-tac / oblong shape, FLIR infrared sensor, Pacific Ocean off southern California, 2004, AATIP, Nimitz encounter, GIMBAL, GOFAST
Key points
- Three distinct videos were released together: FLIR1 (2004 naval encounter) and GIMBAL and GOFAST (both 2015 encounters), all recorded on U.S. Navy aircraft FLIR systems.
- Release was coordinated through To The Stars Academy with DoD authorization, representing the first official U.S. government public acknowledgment of the footage.
- The New York Times exposé simultaneously revealed the existence of AATIP, a secret Pentagon UAP research program previously unknown to the public.
- The source file is a .webm video; no OCR or text extraction is available for this asset, and no internal document pages exist.
Most interesting
- FLIR1, commonly called the 'Nimitz footage' or 'tic-tac video', depicts an encounter from November 2004 off the coast of southern California involving pilots from the USS Nimitz carrier strike group.
- The 2017 New York Times article, co-bylined by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean, was the first major mainstream press account to name AATIP by name and publish authenticated UAP footage.
- To The Stars Academy was founded by Tom DeLonge in 2017 and served as the civilian conduit through which the DoD authorized public release of all three videos.
- This December 2017 news cycle is widely regarded as the catalytic event for modern U.S. government UAP disclosure, directly precipitating the Navy's 2019 formal UAP policy acknowledgment and the 2021 ODNI Preliminary Assessment to Congress.
- On April 27, 2020, the Pentagon formally and explicitly declassified all three videos, confirming their authenticity and that they had been reviewed and approved for public release by the Navy, in a separate official action distinct from the 2017 TTSA release.
- The object in FLIR1 exhibits no visible means of propulsion, no exhaust plume, and maintains a stable orientation while the recording aircraft maneuvers; the Navy's own 2020 statement declined to characterize what the object is.