GoFast — F/A-18 ATFLIR encounter, 2015

ATFLIR video from a 2015 USS Theodore Roosevelt training cruise shows a small, fast-moving object skimming above the ocean surface. The Department of Defense has confirmed the recording's authenticity; debate centers on whether the object's apparent speed is real or a parallax effect.

The clip widely known as “GoFast” was captured by the ATFLIR pod of an F/A-18F Super Hornet on the same 2015 USS Theodore Roosevelt deployment that produced the Gimbal video (Case #00033). The 35-second recording shows the targeting pod tracking a small, fast-moving contact at low altitude above the Atlantic. The aircrew can be heard reacting in real time to the lock-on.

What is on the record

• The ATFLIR video, declassified through Navy channels in 2017 and authenticated by the U.S. Department of Defense in April 2020.
• Telemetry overlaid on the public clip — including range, slant angle, and target altitude — sufficient for independent kinematic analysis.
• Inclusion in the 2021 ODNI Preliminary Assessment as one of the Roosevelt-era encounters under U.S. Intelligence Community review.
• Aircrew testimony, including Lt. Ryan Graves’s 2023 House Oversight statements describing daily UAP contacts during the deployment.

Mundane explanations considered

1. Parallax illusion of speed. Independent analysts using the on-screen telemetry have argued the object’s true ground speed is roughly 30–40 knots — consistent with a wind-borne balloon — and the apparent high-speed track is a parallax effect of the moving aircraft. This analysis is widely cited and is one of the more rigorous skeptical reads in the modern UAP record.
2. Bird or marine animal. Possible but inconsistent with the sustained infrared signature against a cold-ocean background.
3. Untethered weather balloon. The most-cited mundane candidate. A balloon at the calculated true speed would match the observed track.

Open questions

• Whether the contact was simultaneously tracked on the F/A-18’s APG-79 radar; if so, the data is not public.
• Whether the object recovered, persisted, or descended — the clip ends with the lock still active.
• Whether the same deployment produced additional GoFast-class clips that remain classified.

The Council’s verdict

Inconclusive. GoFast is the Roosevelt-era video for which the strongest mundane explanation — a wind-borne balloon imaged with a parallax illusion of speed — is best supported by the on-screen telemetry. The Council does not, however, treat “consistent with a balloon” as equivalent to “is a balloon” without supporting recovery, secondary radar, or coordinated observation. The case remains open in our archive precisely because the underlying classified data could resolve it in either direction.

For amateur observers wanting to record their own ATFLIR-style infrared signatures against a cold sky, the consumer-grade reference is the Pulsar Helion 2 XP50 thermal monocular. Civilian field reports recorded with the SiOnyx Aurora Pro — which geotags every frame — are scored higher in the Council’s verdict engine because the parallax problem is partially solvable when location is known.