GIMBAL: 'First Official UAP Footage,' 2017
To The Stars Academy / New York Times UAP Video Release, FLIR1, GIMBAL, GOFAST, Gimbal_The_First_Official_UAP_Footage_from_the_USG_for_Public_Release.webm
The GIMBAL video is the second of three declassified U.S. Navy FLIR recordings released publicly on 2017-12-16, showing an unidentified rotating aerial object tracked by naval aviators in 2015 and described by the DoD as the first official UAP footage authorized for public release.
Brief
On 16 December 2017, To The Stars Academy coordinated with the New York Times to publish an exposé on the Pentagon's secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) alongside three declassified Navy forward-looking infrared videos, FLIR1, GIMBAL, and GOFAST, capturing UAP encounters in 2004 and 2015. GIMBAL, whose filename explicitly designates it 'The First Official UAP Footage from the USG for Public Release,' depicts a dark, rotating object against a grey sky, tracked on FLIR by a weapons system officer aboard a U.S. Navy aircraft. The simultaneous disclosure of a classified Pentagon program and authenticated sensor footage represented the first coordinated, government-authorized UAP media event in the modern era.
Metadata
- Agency
- U.S. Navy (DoD authorization via To The Stars Academy)
- Release
- 2017-12-16
- Type
- VIDEO • .webm
- Length
- 16.5 M
- Classification
- UNCLASSIFIED
- Programs
- AATIP, AAWSAP
- Tags
- rotating object, no visible propulsion, FLIR sensor, East Coast Atlantic, 2015, USS Theodore Roosevelt, AATIP, GIMBAL
Key points
- GIMBAL is one of three Navy FLIR recordings (alongside FLIR1 and GOFAST) declassified and released through To The Stars Academy on 2017-12-16.
- The release accompanied a New York Times exposé revealing the existence of AATIP, a previously secret Pentagon program dedicated to investigating UAP.
- The encounters documented across the three videos span 2004 (FLIR1, USS Nimitz) and 2015 (GIMBAL and GOFAST, USS Theodore Roosevelt battle group).
- The authorizing chain runs from the Department of Defense through To The Stars Academy, making GIMBAL the first UAP video with an unambiguous official declassification provenance.
- The object in GIMBAL exhibits apparent rotation in flight, the characteristic that gives the video its name, with no visible propulsion signature captured on the FLIR sensor.
- The DoD formally confirmed the videos' authenticity in April 2020, a subsequent action that retroactively validated the 2017 release.
Most interesting
- The filename itself, 'Gimbal_The_First_Official_UAP_Footage_from_the_USG_for_Public_Release', is a DoD-sanctioned marketing designation, not an informal label, embedding a historical claim directly in the file's metadata.
- AATIP operated inside the Defense Intelligence Agency budget under a program called AAWSAP and was funded at $22 million over five years beginning in 2007, all of which remained unknown to the public until this release.
- To The Stars Academy, co-founded by former Blink-182 musician Tom DeLonge alongside former intelligence and DoD officials, acted as the civilian conduit for the government-authorized release, an unusual public-private disclosure mechanism.
- The GIMBAL object's apparent rotation with no aerodynamic control surfaces visible on FLIR was the detail that most interested Navy analysts; no conventional explanation for the rotation was publicly offered.
- The 2017 NYT article ('Glowing Auras and Black Money') was co-authored by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean, the same Kean who had investigated UAP independently for over a decade prior to the disclosure.
- Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough confirmed in 2020 that all three FLIR videos were released 'to clear up any misconceptions by the public', implying the DoD was aware of, and comfortable with, the public debate the 2017 release had generated.