GIMBAL · 2015 [DOW · IR SENSOR]
WATCH IN UMBRA — PURSUE sensor footage, native playback
WHAT THE FOOTAGE SHOWS
The Gimbal video was captured in January 2015 by an F/A-18 from the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group during workups off the Atlantic coast. Filmed through the jet's ATFLIR infrared targeting pod, it shows a dark, oblong object wrapped in a bright thermal glow. Near the end of the clip the object appears to rotate — pivoting in place — as it moves. The aircrew audio is part of why the clip became famous: one voice says "Look at that thing, dude," and another reacts to a formation with "There's a whole fleet of them."
SENSOR, NOT SPECULATION
What makes Gimbal notable is that it is an instrument recording, not an eyewitness drawing — infrared data from a calibrated military sensor. Analysts continue to debate whether the apparent "rotation" is the object itself maneuvering or an artifact of the gimbaled camera mechanism rotating to keep the target in frame. The Department of Defense confirmed the footage is genuine; the UAP Task Force and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) classify the object as unidentified. Umbra preserves that neutral posture: the record shows what the sensor saw, and stops there.
WHERE IT SITS IN THE RECORD
Gimbal belongs to the same class of military infrared and electro-optical footage that forms the Department of War collection in the PURSUE release — sensor video from CENTCOM, INDOPACOM, and EUCOM, carried with AARO's assessments. Alongside the Tic Tac and GoFast clips, it is one of the three videos most people mean when they say "the Navy UFO videos." Umbra renders this footage natively, with its source markings intact, so you read it on the record.
> The rotating-object clip — and the rest of the Navy footage — read on the record, on your iPhone.
