Roosevelt carrier group encounters (2014–2015)
LOOK CLOSER
The visual record
Illustrations, recordings and archival references — each with its own provenance. A documented source is a starting point for investigation, not a verdict on its explanation.
GIMBAL
GIMBAL, recorded from a Navy F/A-18 off the US East Coast in January 2015 and released by the Department of Defense in 2020. Official sensor recording; the rotation of the object is disputed as a camera artefact.
US military / DVIDS ↗Public domain — US government work; DVIDS usage terms applyLicence terms ↗Resized and WebP-converted for display; content unchanged.GOFAST
GOFAST, recorded from a Navy F/A-18 off the East Coast in January 2015. Official sensor recording; analysts differ on the object's true speed once parallax is taken into account.
US military / DVIDS ↗Public domain — US government work; DVIDS usage terms applyLicence terms ↗Resized and WebP-converted for display; content unchanged.Crew on the flight deck of USS Theodore Roosevelt, May 2015
The commanding officer addresses the crew on the flight deck of USS Theodore Roosevelt during the 2015 deployment — the carrier whose air wing, including Ryan Graves's squadron, reported the 2014–2015 encounters. Official Navy photograph · context.
May 24, 2015 · 2015 ↗Public domainLicence terms ↗AARO unresolved report, eastern United States, 2015
Twenty-one seconds of infrared footage from a US military platform over the eastern United States in 2015, released by AARO in 2026 as an unresolved case. AARO does not link it to the Roosevelt encounters; shown as the only other official 2015 East Coast recording.
US military / DVIDS ↗Public domain — US government work; DVIDS usage terms applyLicence terms ↗Ryan Graves · 0:11:28
Open the source at the cited time. The episode thumbnail is video packaging, not a photograph of the reported subject.
American Alchemy / Jesse Michels ↗YouTube-hosted preview and player; not relicensedAmerican Alchemy · 1:41:12
Open the source at the cited time. The episode thumbnail is video packaging, not a photograph of the reported subject.
American Alchemy / Jesse Michels ↗YouTube-hosted preview and player; not relicensedFrom 2014, pilots of the USS Theodore Roosevelt air wing off Virginia Beach reported radar tracks and visual sightings of objects in their training airspace almost daily, including a near-collision in 2014; two ATFLIR clips, GIMBAL and GOFAST, were recorded in January 2015 off Jacksonville. Lt Ryan Graves has led the pilots' public account and testifies in the corpus.
Read the full account
What was reported. After a radar upgrade in 2014, VFA-11 pilots training in the W-72 area east of Virginia Beach began seeing tracks of objects at altitudes from sea level to 30,000 feet, stationary in high winds or moving at speed. Some were seen visually as a dark cube inside a translucent sphere. One passed between two jets in formation, prompting a safety report. (FACT about the testimony.)
What followed. Two ATFLIR clips recorded in January 2015 became GIMBAL and GOFAST, published by To The Stars in 2017–2018 and released by the Pentagon in 2020. Graves went public in 2019 and testified to the House on 26 July 2023, saying such sightings were routine. (FACT.)
What the corpus adds. Graves describes the cube of airspace off Virginia Beach and the radar detections in his episode, and the episode reproduces his opening statement to Congress. Mick West explains the origin of the GIMBAL name and argues the rotation is glare. (FACT about testimony.)
Explanations offered. West attributes GIMBAL to a distant jet's glare rotating with the pod and GOFAST to parallax on a slow object; Graves responds that the videos are a small part of a pattern of radar and visual data the public has not seen. (INFERENCE.)
The event
| Date | (year) |
|---|---|
| Place | 36.5000, -75.0000 region · United States |
| Official response | The Department of Defense released GIMBAL and GOFAST on 27 April 2020 as videos of unidentified aerial phenomena; the Navy said in 2019 that the objects in the videos were UAP. No identification has been published. |
Reported by
- Ryan Graves military Lieutenant, VFA-11 F/A-18F pilot
- vfa 11 pilots military squadron pilots filing safety reports
Investigated by
- uap task force government
- Mick West researcher
Who spoke about it later
- Ryan Graves 0:11:28 US Fighter Pilots Witness UFO (ft. Ryan Graves) ▶ 2024
- Ryan Graves 0:34:16 US Fighter Pilots Witness UFO (ft. Ryan Graves) ▶ 2024
- Mick West 1:41:12 UFO Skeptic Mick West Challenged To A Debate ▶ 2025
Mentioned in the corpus
Passages this record cites, with the stamp of the block each quote sits in.
US Fighter Pilots Witness UFO (ft. Ryan Graves) 6 December 2024
- 0:00:01 ▶ Ryan Graves
As we convene here, UAP are in our airspace. These sightings are not rare or isolated. They are
- 0:11:28 ▶ Ryan Graves
we're flying in this big cube off the coast of Virginia Beach. Um that there were objects in a working area that we were detecting with the newer radars. Um and older radars could have errors. um not
- 0:11:28 ▶ interview
- 0:34:16 ▶ Ryan Graves
My name is Ryan Fobs Graves and I'm a former F-18 pilot with a decade of service in the US Navy. I have
- 0:34:16 ▶ interview
- 0:00:01 ▶ Ryan Graves
UFO Skeptic Mick West Challenged To A Debate 26 January 2025
On the map
Roosevelt carrier group encounters (2014–2015), Nimitz "Tic Tac" encounter, New York Times reveals AATIP and releases Navy videos, Pentagon formally releases FLIR1, GIMBAL and GOFAST, House Oversight UAP hearing (26 July 2023), GIMBAL (Roosevelt ATFLIR video)… Open the full map filtered to this record.
Sources on this record
- 0:11:28 US Fighter Pilots Witness UFO (ft. Ryan Graves) · Ryan Graves ▶
we're flying in this big cube off the coast of Virginia Beach. Um that there were objects in a working area that we were detecting with the newer radars. Um and older radars could have errors. um not
- 0:34:16 US Fighter Pilots Witness UFO (ft. Ryan Graves) · Ryan Graves ▶
My name is Ryan Fobs Graves and I'm a former F-18 pilot with a decade of service in the US Navy. I have
- 0:00:01 US Fighter Pilots Witness UFO (ft. Ryan Graves) · Ryan Graves ▶
As we convene here, UAP are in our airspace. These sightings are not rare or isolated. They are
- 1:41:12 UFO Skeptic Mick West Challenged To A Debate ▶
that's what's why it's called the gimbal, right? You see it sort of rotating in this interesting way. look, go f look go who named go fast. Clearly the name wasn't correct, right? The air crew didn't name it. Some
- Statement by the Department of Defense on the Release of Historical Navy Videos
- Pentagon UFO videos
Built from graph nodes N-SWEEP_B-0013, N-SWEEP_B-0012, N-SWEEP_B-0022.