AARO Resolves Go Fast as Parallax, 2025

Brief

In January 2015, a Navy F/A-18F pilot filmed what appeared to be an object streaking at extraordinary speed just above the Atlantic Ocean off Florida's eastern coast. AARO's geometric reconstruction, performed on a publicly available compressed .wmv because the original file and metadata were lost, placed the object at roughly 13,000 feet, moving between 5 and 92 mph after wind compensation. The apparent speed was attributed to motion parallax induced by the aircraft's own velocity at 25,000 feet. An Intelligence Community pixel analysis estimated the object at one meter or less in size, consistent with a small drone or bird.

Metadata

Agency

All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), U.S. Department of Defense

Release

2025-02-06

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

26 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED

Tags

spherical/oblate-ellipsoid, FLIR, Atlantic Ocean off Florida, 2015, Go Fast, USS Theodore Roosevelt, motion parallax

Key points

• AARO cannot definitively identify the object but found it displayed no anomalous performance characteristics.p.1
• The object's actual altitude was approximately 13,000 feet, directly contradicting the witness impression that it was near the ocean surface.p.1
• Wind-compensated intrinsic speed ranged from 5 to 92 mph; the object did not move against the wind in any of the 360-heading simulations.p.1
• Historical wind data at 13,000 feet showed 30.9 m/s (69 mph) from the west (265°); at 25,000 feet, 52 m/s (116 mph) from the west-southwest (255°).p.2
• The object's heading deviated at most 32.1° from wind direction across all simulations, consistent with passive drift.p.3
• The apparent high speed is attributed to motion parallax, an optical effect amplified by the F/A-18's own velocity at 25,000 feet.p.3
• The original FLIR file and its accompanying metadata are no longer available; the entire analysis rests on the publicly released compressed .wmv.p.4
• IC partner pixel analysis placed the object at one meter or less in size, comparable to a small drone or bird.p.4
• Because the aircraft's exact heading is unknown, AARO modeled all 360 possible headings to derive a range of speeds and headings rather than a single value.p.4
• The F/A-18 flew a banked, curving path at roughly 190 m/s during the 13-second analysis window; AARO used rotation matrices and polynomial curve-fitting to reconstruct both the aircraft and object trajectories frame-by-frame.p.13

Verbatim

• AARO assesses with high confidence that the object did not move at anomalous speeds.

  p.1

• The object's speed ranged from about 32 m/s (72 mph) to 72 m/s (161 mph) depending on its heading relative to the wind. Compensating for the wind's contribution to the object's speed, its approximate speed range is 2 m/s (5 mph) to 41.3 m/s (92 mph).

  p.1

• The object's apparent high speed is attributable to motion parallax.

  p.3

• The object's performance characteristics are consistent with historical wind conditions in each scenario. AARO assesses the object did not demonstrate anomalous performance characteristics.

  p.3

• The more quickly an observer moves relative to an observed object, the more pronounced this effect is.

  p.4

• AARO analyzed the publicly available 34-second FLIR video, because the original file and its accompanying metadata are no longer available.

  p.4

• However, pixel analysis (a method of measuring an object's size based on pixels relative to an object known dimensions) by AARO's Intelligence Community partner suggested the object was one meter or less in size - comparable to a small drone or bird.

  p.4

• The aircraft's exact location and heading (compass direction) during the recording are unknown.

  p.4

Most interesting

• The DoD released the 'Go Fast' video in 2020, five years after the January 2015 event, by which point the original sensor file and all accompanying metadata had already been lost.
• The object appeared to skim the ocean at hypersonic speed, but AARO's geometric reconstruction placed it at 13,000 feet, a misperception of roughly 2.5 miles of altitude.
• AARO's entire analysis was performed on the same publicly available compressed Windows Media File (.wmv) accessible to any civilian researcher, not a classified or higher-fidelity copy.
• Sensor display values were stored as integers, limiting precision; AARO recovered sub-integer fidelity by identifying 'change frames' across the 30 Hz video and fitting second-order polynomial curves to reconstruct continuous sensor angle and range data.
• In the headwind scenario, the object moved only 2.0 m/s (5 mph) faster than the ambient wind, within the envelope of a free-floating balloon.
• The F/A-18 was flying at roughly 190 m/s (~370 knots) while banking at 14° during the analysis window; the aircraft's own speed is the primary driver of the parallax illusion, not any motion of the object itself.
• The object's point-estimate speed, derived from the 265-meter displacement over 13 seconds, was approximately 20 m/s (45 mph), moving in roughly the same direction as the F/A-18 but about nine times slower.