Gimbal

The 2015 ATFLIR video captured by an F/A-18 from the USS Theodore Roosevelt, showing a smooth oblong object that appears to rotate. The Department of Defense confirmed the footage's authenticity in 2020.

Gimbal is the colloquial name for one of three U.S. Navy ATFLIR videos officially authenticated by the Department of Defense in April 2020. The 34-second clip was captured in January 2015 by an F/A-18F Super Hornet operating from the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group during a training cruise off the U.S. East Coast.

The clip is documented in the Council’s archive as Case #00033.

What the video shows

The ATFLIR pod’s infrared image displays a smooth, lozenge-shaped object against a cold-sky background. As the aircraft tracks the object, the object appears to rotate on its centerline while maintaining position. The audio captures the aircrew’s reactions, including the now-famous lines: “Look at that thing, dude. It’s rotating.” and “There’s a whole fleet of them.”

Why “Gimbal”

The name refers to the gimbal mechanism inside the ATFLIR pod that allows the camera to track moving targets. The name became attached to the video because of the central interpretive debate around it: whether the apparent rotation of the object is a real characteristic of the object, or an artifact of the gimbal’s own motion as it tracks the target across the sky.

Status

DoD-authenticated as legitimate Navy footage (April 2020).
Included in the 2021 ODNI Preliminary Assessment as one of the cases examined.
The aircrews’ subsequent testimony to congressional committees and 60 Minutes (2021) describes the encounter as part of a sustained pattern of UAP contacts during the Roosevelt deployment.

Interpretive debate

Independent analysts including Mick West have argued the rotation is the gimbal artifact, with the object itself being conventional (possibly a distant aircraft seen in unusual atmospheric conditions). Other analysts dispute this and note that the surrounding pilot testimony describes radar tracks consistent with the visual interpretation.

The Council’s verdict on Gimbal (Case #00033) is Inconclusive: the video is authentic, the witnesses are credible, the rotation interpretation is contested, and the underlying telemetry is not public.

Related entries

UAP

Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (formerly Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) — the U.S. government's preferred term for what was historically called UFOs, deliberately broader to include maritime, space, and transmedium objects.

FLIR

Forward Looking Infrared — a class of thermal-imaging sensor mounted on military aircraft and other platforms, used to detect heat signatures of objects against background. Many of the most-cited modern UAP videos are FLIR captures.

Tic Tac

Colloquial name for the oblong, white object reported by USS Nimitz F/A-18 aircrews during the November 2004 encounter off Baja California — and, by extension, the case itself (Council Case #00041).

AARO

All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office — the U.S. Department of Defense entity established in 2022 to detect, identify, and attribute unidentified anomalous phenomena across air, sea, space, and transmedium domains.