USS Theodore Roosevelt encounters (2014–2015) phenomenologically-open
Aircrew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group reported
near-daily encounters with unidentified objects across more than a
year of East Coast training operations — objects that held station in
high winds with no visible propulsion, were tracked on the newly
upgraded APG-79 AESA radar, and on at least one occasion passed
between two F/A-18s close enough to be called a near-miss. The episode
produced the Gimbal and GoFast ATFLIR videos and the testimony of
Lt. Ryan Graves.
The Roosevelt episode is the corpus's strongest case for *persistence*
rather than fleeting anomaly. Where most cases are single events
reconstructed after the fact, this is a population of objects observed
repeatedly, by rotating aircrews, on instrumented sensors, in the same
airspace, for more than a year — and the encounters were contemporaneously
logged as a flight-safety problem (hazard reports were filed) rather than
surfaced later as a UFO claim. It is the documentary bridge between the
2004 Nimitz event and the modern disclosure era: the same ATFLIR sensor
family, the same Super Hornet airframe, and the witness (Graves) who would
later carry the case into a congressional hearing room in 2023.
Timeline
2013-2014_approx
VFA-11 'Red Rippers' and other squadrons of Carrier Air Wing One
receive the AN/APG-79 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA)
radar as part of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet upgrade cycle. Aircrew
begin noticing radar tracks they cannot reconcile with known
traffic. Lt. Ryan Graves and colleagues initially assume the
tracks are sensor artifacts from the new equipment.
witnesses: Lt. Ryan Graves (VFA-11 'Red Rippers', pilot)
primary source: Graves 60 Minutes interview (2021) and congressional testimony (2023)
2014_approx
As aircrews accumulate flight hours with the upgraded radar, the
tracks correlate with objects that are also acquired on the ATFLIR
(Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared) pod and, in some cases,
seen visually. The objects are described as holding position against
hurricane-force upper-altitude winds, exhibiting no visible exhaust,
wings, or control surfaces, and appearing day after day in the same
restricted operating areas. The aircrew conclude the returns are real
objects, not equipment faults.
witnesses: Lt. Ryan Graves · Lt. Danny Accoin (VFA-11, pilot) · other Carrier Air Wing One aircrew (some named in later reporting)
primary source: New York Times reporting (2019); Graves testimony (2023)
2014_approx
A near-miss occurs: an object passes between two F/A-18 Super Hornets
flying in formation, close enough that one aircrew filed a hazard
report. Graves has described the object as resembling 'a dark gray or
black cube inside of a clear sphere.' The near-miss is the event that,
in Graves's account, moved the squadron from curiosity to treating the
objects as a flight-safety hazard.
witnesses: two F/A-18 aircrews (one filed the safety report)
primary source: Graves 60 Minutes (2021); Fighter Pilot Podcast and 2023 testimony
2015-01-21
The ATFLIR recording later released as 'Gimbal' is captured off the
East Coast. The video shows an object the aircrew track on radar; the
object appears to rotate as the targeting pod's gimbal mechanism
tracks it, and excited aircrew voices on the recording remark on a
'whole fleet' of objects visible on the Situational Awareness page.
witnesses: F/A-18F aircrew (names not in the public record)
primary source: Gimbal video; To The Stars Academy release (2017); Pentagon confirmation (2020)
2015_approx
The ATFLIR recording later released as 'GoFast' is captured in the
same period. The video shows aircrew acquiring and locking a small
fast-moving object low over the ocean; the apparent low altitude and
high speed are the recording's most-discussed features (and the focus
of the later parallax dispute).
primary source: GoFast video; To The Stars Academy release (2017); Pentagon confirmation (2020)
2017-12-16
The New York Times publishes 'Glowing Auras and Black Money,'
releasing the Gimbal and GoFast videos (alongside the 2004 Nimitz
FLIR1) and disclosing the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification
Program (AATIP). The Roosevelt aircrew's encounters are not yet
attributed to named witnesses in this article.
primary source: New York Times, 16 December 2017
2019-05-26
The New York Times publishes '"Wow, What Is That?" Navy Pilots Report
Unexplained Flying Objects,' in which Lt. Ryan Graves and Lt. Danny
Accoin go on record by name describing the 2014–2015 encounters. The
article reports that the Navy had begun drafting new formal guidelines
for pilots to report such encounters.
witnesses: Lt. Ryan Graves · Lt. Danny Accoin
primary source: New York Times, 26 May 2019
2019-04
The U.S. Navy confirms it is updating its procedures for reporting
'unidentified aircraft' in military airspace, in response to a series
of encounters by Navy aircrew — a direct institutional consequence of
the Roosevelt-era and Nimitz-era reports.
primary source: U.S. Navy statements to Politico and The Washington Post, April 2019
2020-04-27
The Pentagon formally releases FLIR1 (Nimitz), Gimbal, and GoFast,
characterizing the objects as 'unidentified aerial phenomena.' Two of
the three officially-released videos are from the Roosevelt period.
primary source: DoD official statement, 27 April 2020
2021-05-16
Ryan Graves, David Fravor, and Alex Dietrich appear on CBS's
60 Minutes; Graves describes the near-daily nature of the Roosevelt
encounters and the near-miss to a mass audience.
primary source: CBS 60 Minutes, 16 May 2021
2023-07-26
Ryan Graves testifies before the House Oversight Subcommittee on
National Security alongside David Grusch and David Fravor. Graves
frames the Roosevelt encounters as a flight-safety and national-security
issue and announces the founding of Americans for Safe Aerospace, an
organization for aircrew reporting of UAP. (See the grusch-testimony-2023
deep dive for the full hearing.)
witnesses: Lt. Ryan Graves (ret.)
primary source: House Oversight Subcommittee hearing transcript, 26 July 2023
Named personnel
- Lt. Ryan Graves — F/A-18F pilot, VFA-11 'Red Rippers', Carrier Air Wing One rank at time: Lieutenant · later: Founder, Americans for Safe Aerospace (2021); congressional witness (2023); the corpus's most-quoted living aircrew witness primary witness to: near-daily radar/visual encounters and the near-miss between two F/A-18s
- Lt. Danny Accoin — F/A-18F pilot, VFA-11 'Red Rippers' rank at time: Lieutenant · later: On-record witness in the 2019 New York Times article primary witness to: radar and ATFLIR acquisition of the objects; attempted intercepts
- Unnamed Gimbal aircrew — F/A-18F aircrew who recorded the Gimbal video rank at time: primary witness to: the rotating object and the 'whole fleet' of objects on the SA page
- Christopher Mellon — Conduit for the videos to the public record rank at time: Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence role: Helped surface the Gimbal/GoFast videos via the 2017 NYT article and To The Stars Academy
- Luis Elizondo — Former AATIP director rank at time: role: Surfaced the program that had handled the Navy videos
Sensor record
- AN/APG-79 AESA radar on F/A-18E/F Super Hornets of Carrier Air Wing One the radar upgrade that, in the aircrew's account, first made the objects routinely detectable; objects appeared as discrete tracks holding position or maneuvering inconsistently with known aircraft documentation: Aircrew testimony; raw radar data not publicly released
- AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR (Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared) on F/A-18F Super Hornets infrared lock recorded in the Gimbal and GoFast videos; the Gimbal recording shows an object that appears to rotate, the GoFast an object low over the water documentation: The publicly-released Gimbal and GoFast footage
- Mark 1 eyeballs on F/A-18 cockpits direct visual acquisition of objects, including the 'dark cube inside a clear sphere' near-miss object documentation: On-record aircrew testimony (Graves, Accoin)
Object — reported
shape
varied; small, smooth, no visible wings or exhaust. Near-miss object reported as a dark cube within a transparent sphere; Gimbal object rounded with a rotating appearance
size
small, generally estimated under ~15 feet (witness estimates vary; many encounters had no close visual reference)
surface features
no visible propulsion, exhaust plume, wings, or control surfaces
observed behaviors
- station-keeping against high-altitude winds reported at over 100 knots
- presence in the same restricted training airspace day after day for more than a year
- the Gimbal object's apparent rotation as the ATFLIR tracked it
- the GoFast object's apparent low, fast transit over the ocean
- the near-miss: passing between two F/A-18s in formation, prompting a hazard report
- appearing to launch from sea level and climb to high altitude on some radar tracks
Theories that invoke this case (6)
The standard ETH reading: a sustained presence of objects whose
performance envelope (station-keeping in high winds with no visible
propulsion) is inconsistent with known terrestrial aerospace.
The cautious reading. Real material objects with not-yet-understood
physics; the recurring, instrumented nature of the episode makes it a
data-collection opportunity rather than a confirmed exotic event.
The institutional reading. The Roosevelt encounters produced two of
the three officially-released Navy videos and drove the Navy's 2019
reporting-guideline change — a concrete instance of the U.S.
government building formal machinery around the phenomenon.
The non-biological reading. The objects' indifference to weather and
their persistent station-keeping with no life-support-implying features
are consistent with autonomous, unmanned operation.
The mundane-but-classified reading. Some have argued the objects were
U.S. or adversary drones or sensor-confusing platforms; counter-argument
is that no known drone holds station for a full day against 100-knot
winds in restricted military airspace without being claimed or
intercepted.
The institutional-handling reading. The chain from hazard report to
AATIP file to NYT release to congressional testimony is itself the
object of study — how the documentary record was produced and routed.
Theories that do NOT invoke this case — and why
no associated phenomenology (witness disorientation, missing time, poltergeist effects) of the kind the interdimensional framing usually invokes
no time-displacement or causality narrative reported
pure aerial-phenomenon case; no entity sighting
multi-sensor, multi-aircrew, multi-month instrumented record across rotating crews makes a mass-psychology reading difficult to sustain
Conventional explanations advanced — and their status
Parallax / camera-artifact (GoFast specifically)
proponents: Mick West
West's geometric analysis argues the GoFast object is higher and slower than it appears, consistent with a bird or balloon seen against the moving ocean background. The corpus treats this as a credible partial accounting for GoFast specifically; it does not address the radar tracks, the station-keeping reports, or the near-miss.
Gimbal 'rotation' is the ATFLIR gimbal mechanism, not the object
proponents: Mick West · various analysts
Plausible for the rotation artifact specifically — the targeting pod's roll near a gimbal limit can produce apparent rotation. Does not address why an object was being tracked at all, nor the aircrew's report of multiple objects on the SA page.
Drones / balloons / conventional traffic in the operating area
proponents: various skeptics
Does not account for the duration (objects present daily for over a year), the station-keeping in high winds, or the absence of any claimant for objects flying in restricted U.S. military training airspace.
Sensor artifact of the new APG-79 radar
proponents: initial aircrew assumption, later rejected by them
This was the aircrew's own first hypothesis; they abandoned it once radar tracks correlated with ATFLIR locks and direct visual acquisition. A pure radar artifact does not produce a correlated infrared lock and an eyeball sighting at the same coordinates.
Where further investigation has leverage
- Release of the raw APG-79 radar data from the 2014–2015 work-up period, which would let independent analysts test the station-keeping and velocity claims.
- The original hazard / safety reports filed by Carrier Air Wing One aircrew, which would establish the contemporaneous (pre-2017) documentary record.
- On-record testimony from the unnamed Gimbal aircrew about what they saw on the Situational Awareness page ('a whole fleet of them').
- Independent optical-physics analysis of GoFast resolving the parallax dispute with the actual ATFLIR metadata (range, look angle) rather than estimates.
- Cross-correlation with FAA and range-control records for the W-72 / W-122 warning areas during the period.
Corpus status
phenomenologically-open
Held phenomenologically-open — but the 2026 re-audit pins WHERE the openness now lives.
Both named videos are largely accounted for: GoFast is effectively resolved (AARO's
Feb-2025 Case Resolution Card AND Mick West independently back-solve it to a slow object
at ~13,000 ft, the 'fast-and-low' look being parallax from the jet), and Gimbal's
apparent rotation is probably an ATFLIR glare/de-rotation artifact (West's contested-but-
serious hypothesis; AARO has issued no Gimbal resolution). So the case's open status does
NOT rest on the two clips — it rests almost entirely on the un-released radar tracks and
the recurring multi-aircrew testimony (daily station-keeping in restricted airspace, the
near-miss 'cube-in-a-sphere,' the radar 'fleet'), anchored by living witness Ryan Graves.
Honest framing: the parent case stays open while both of its named video children are
disputed-optical-artifact — defensible, because the whole is more than the clips, but the
openness is now a bet on the unreleased radar data, the single highest-leverage item.
status history (1)
2026-06-09 · unannotated → phenomenologically-open
— initial annotation sweep (Epic J.F4)
Threads of evidence
This case is one node in the connections that run across the record. It appears in 2 threads: