A Formal Answer, Two Years in the Making
On February 6, 2025, AARO (the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Pentagon body responsible for investigating unidentified aerial and other phenomena) published a written technical analysis of the “Go Fast” footage. The document was unclassified. An updated version appeared on February 20, 2025. No case number appears on the released materials.
The report was not the first time these conclusions had entered the record. AARO Director Dr. Jon Kosloski had testified before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on November 19, 2024, laying out the core analytical findings the written report would later formalize.
January 2015, and the Long Route to Disclosure
AARO’s methodology document places the recording in January 2015, when a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet crew operating off the east coast of Florida captured infrared footage of an unidentified airborne object using an AN/ASQ sensor pod. The specific aircrew members are not named in AARO’s released materials.
One caveat attaches to that date. The slides Dr. Kosloski presented to Congress on November 19, 2024, state the event occurred in January 2016. Both documents originate from AARO. The record does not resolve the discrepancy.
The footage did not reach public circulation until March 2018, when To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science released it. The Department of Defense formally acknowledged and released the video in April 2020, making it one of three officially authenticated Navy UAP clips alongside “Gimbal” and “FLIR1.” The record does not state why the footage remained outside public circulation for the intervening years.
13,000 Feet, a Wind Speed, and a Parallax Effect
AARO’s analysis placed the object at approximately 13,000 feet (3,960 meters) above sea level, directly contradicting the impression many viewers had formed since 2018: that the object was skimming just above the ocean surface at extraordinary speed. The report attributes both impressions to an optical effect rather than to the actual position or motion of the object.
The effect is motion parallax. When a sensor platform is moving quickly and tracks an object at a different altitude, that object can appear to streak across the frame even if it is traveling slowly or drifting passively. AARO applied trigonometry to the F/A-18F’s sensor geometry to derive the object’s estimated position and compute its actual velocity.
The resulting speed estimate runs from 5 mph to 92 mph (roughly 8 km/h to 148 km/h); the spread reflects the historical wind-condition data available for the time and location, together with the range of aircraft headings the analysts had to model in the absence of recorded telemetry. A central estimate came in at approximately 45 mph (72 km/h). Historical weather data indicated winds of roughly 69 mph (111 km/h) from the west at 13,000 feet. AARO assessed the object as moving with those prevailing winds, with no indication of independent propulsion or unusual maneuverability. Pixel analysis by an Intelligence Community partner placed the object’s size at one meter or less. The report stated high confidence: the object showed no anomalous flight characteristics, consistent with a small, passively drifting object such as a balloon or drone.
The Analysis Ran on a Compressed Copy
AARO conducted its analysis on a publicly available compressed copy of the footage. The original file no longer exists. Its metadata, which would have included sensor angles, precise timestamps, and georeferenced position and heading data, is gone with it. The report states this plainly. It does not explain when or how the original was lost, or whether any recovery effort was attempted.
The absence of the original file has a direct consequence for the heading range. Without a precise recorded value for the F/A-18F’s heading at the moment of the encounter, the analysts modeled a range of possible headings, and that modeling, combined with the uncertainty in historical wind data, is what produces the wide 5-to-92 mph window. Published commentary has argued that without the original metadata, the heading range AARO used cannot be independently verified or narrowed. The report acknowledges the limitation but does not quantify the resulting margin of error.
AARO was also unable to obtain accounts from the aircrew who recorded the footage. The report notes that the agency sought those accounts but does not say why they were unavailable. Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot and founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace, stated publicly around the time of the November 2024 Senate testimony that AARO had not spoken with the Weapons Systems Officer who operated the sensor. That statement was made outside the report; AARO’s released documents do not address it.
Independent analyst Mick West had reached substantially the same conclusion as AARO before the report was published, working from the same publicly available compressed footage. The report characterizes their findings as consistent.
No Object Identified
AARO’s report concluded that the object’s flight characteristics were not anomalous. It did not conclude what the object was. The report’s language is “consistent with a balloon or drone.” No follow-up effort to identify the specific object appears in the released materials. The finding that the observed behavior was ordinary, and the open question of what concretely was being observed, are two distinct things. The record settles the first and leaves the second untouched. The original file is gone, and the released documents do not account for its absence.