EDITORIAL GUIDE
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USS Theodore Roosevelt UAP Encounters 2014–2015 — Gimbal, GoFast, and the Atlantic Cases
While the 2004 USS Nimitz Tic Tac encounter off the coast of San Diego is the most widely discussed Navy UAP case, a second major series of encounters occurred on the opposite coast — in the Atlantic Fleet's operating area off the eastern seaboard — between 2014 and 2015. The USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) carrier strike group documented near-daily UAP encounters over an extended period: objects operating in restricted U.S. military airspace without transponders, radar returns, or identifiable propulsion systems. These encounters produced the Gimbal and GoFast declassified videos and were the primary basis for Ryan Graves' July 2023 congressional testimony. Unlike the Nimitz case (a single day in 2004), the Theodore Roosevelt encounters represent a sustained, multi-month pattern in active military airspace.
The Atlantic Fleet UAP Pattern — 2014 to 2015
The USS Theodore Roosevelt UAP encounters began as Navy pilots flying F/A-18 Super Hornets in the Atlantic Fleet's Virginia-to-Florida operating corridor began noticing unidentified objects in their training airspace. The objects appeared regularly — initially a few times per month, then with increasing frequency until, according to Ryan Graves' congressional testimony, they were appearing 'every day, sometimes multiple times per day.' This happened in restricted airspace — Military Operating Areas (MOAs) that are reserved exclusively for U.S. military aircraft and are actively monitored by both air traffic control and the ships' combat systems radar.
The objects had consistent observable characteristics: they operated between 24,000 and 30,000 feet (roughly the same altitude band as the F/A-18s conducting training), they had no visible propulsion (no exhaust plume or contrail), they registered on the ships' radar and on the F/A-18 pods, and they were capable of remaining stationary against the strong Atlantic winds that would instantly carry an uncontrolled balloon off course. Unlike the Nimitz case, which involved a relatively brief observation window, the Theodore Roosevelt pattern gave pilots repeated opportunities to observe and document the objects over months — and produced formal safety reports through the Navy's hazard-of-flight reporting system.
The Gimbal and GoFast Videos — What They Show
Two of the three declassified Pentagon UAP videos were produced during the USS Theodore Roosevelt encounters: Gimbal (filmed by a Super Hornet AWG-9 FLIR pod) and GoFast (also FLIR footage from the Theodore Roosevelt operating area). Both were filmed in 2015 and declassified for public release in 2020.
The Gimbal video shows an oblong, dark object moving across the horizon as the FLIR camera tracks it. The object appears to rotate — the behavior that prompted the 'Gimbal' designation from the Navy aviators (they initially thought the rotation was a gimbal artifact in the camera, but analysis indicated it was actual object rotation). The off-camera audio captures the pilots' commentary including 'look at that thing' and 'it's rotating.' The AARO assessment of Gimbal acknowledges the rotation but has not provided a definitive conventional explanation. The GoFast video shows a fast-moving object near the ocean surface, with pilots calculating its speed against the ocean background. AARO's analysis noted the object may be moving slower than it appears due to parallax, but the case remains open. Both videos are officially listed as unresolved by AARO.
Ryan Graves' Congressional Testimony and Near-Miss Report
Lt. Commander Ryan Graves (Ret.) flew F/A-18 Super Hornets from USS Theodore Roosevelt during the 2014–2015 UAP encounter period and testified before the House Oversight Committee on July 26, 2023. His testimony was among the most operationally specific in the history of congressional UAP hearings: he described a 'cube in a sphere' near-collision incident in which a spherical UAP flew between two F/A-18s during a training exercise, with separation of less than 50 feet — an event that would normally trigger a Hazard of Flight report and a formal safety investigation.
Graves testified that the safety reports were filed but the UAP incidents did not receive the institutional response that a conventional near-miss would have generated. He also testified that the stigma surrounding UAP reporting discouraged pilots from officially documenting encounters — meaning the official record almost certainly undercounts the frequency of the 2014–2015 Theodore Roosevelt encounters. Graves went on to found Americans for Safe Aerospace (ASA), a nonprofit organization that facilitates pilot UAP reporting outside of the standard military chain of command, specifically because the official reporting pathway was demonstrably inadequate. ASA has compiled hundreds of pilot reports since 2022.
The Official Record and What Distinguishes TR from the Nimitz Case
The USS Theodore Roosevelt encounters differ from the USS Nimitz Tic Tac encounter in several ways that are significant for the archive record. First, duration: the Nimitz case was a single day (November 14, 2004); the Theodore Roosevelt cases span approximately 14 months of sustained encounters. Second, sensor corroboration: both cases involve FLIR video and multiple aircrew witnesses, but the Theodore Roosevelt encounters also include ship-based SPY-1 radar returns from the carrier group's Aegis combat system, providing a ground-truth sensor baseline from a platform not subject to FLIR interpretation ambiguity. Third, the Theodore Roosevelt encounters occurred in the aircraft's own assigned training airspace — the objects were not transients passing through; they appeared repeatedly in the specific geographic area where the carrier group operated.
As of the 2026 PURSUE releases, neither the Gimbal nor the GoFast video has been further elaborated in the public PURSUE material. The Theodore Roosevelt encounters are cited in AARO's unresolved case database. AARO has stated that both Gimbal and GoFast remain open cases. Ryan Graves' Americans for Safe Aerospace database, cross-referenced with the PURSUE index, represents the most comprehensive public record of the Atlantic Fleet UAP pattern available in 2026.