The U.S. Navy has revealed new details regarding three previously released videos of Naval aviators investigating or pursuing Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAP’s — commonly referred to as UFOs outside of investigative circles. These videos, known online as “FLIR1,” “GIMBAL,” and “GoFast,” have all drawn headlines in the recent past alongside stories about the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) that was tasked with investigated such sightings, and Tom Delong’s “To the Stars Academy,” which is a private firm that employs a number of former defense and intelligence officials said to be pursuing government disclosure regarding the UFO phenomena.

John Greenewald, Jr, who runs the popular website The Black Vault, has made a name for himself through his pursuit of classified information via the systemic submission of Freedom of Information Act requests, or FOIAs, to various departments within Americans defense and intelligence apparatus. Greenewald’s work has resulted in the release of never-before-seen information pertaining to everything from classified intelligence programs to the FBI’s files on Bigfoot, but in the minds of many, it’s been in his pursuit of information regarding UFOs that he’s made some real headway.

Earlier this week, Greenewald was able to confirm with the Navy that, despite previous claims that the footage may have been drones, the Navy really does see these clips as “unexplained.”

“I truly thought the official word on these videos would be ‘drones’ or something similar; but explainable,” Greenewald told NEWSREP. “We have official documents that have surfaced through FOIA that state just that. However, for the Navy to contradict that, and say that this ‘phenomena’ represents something ‘unidentified’ – that’s pretty amazing to me and proves yet again why we can’t lock ourselves into any one way of thinking or assume anything.”

Greenewald also learned that the footage, which many believed was released by the Pentagon, had not actually been formally cleared for release, despite being published by the New York Times and To the Stars Academy.

“The videos were never officially released to the general public by the DoD and should still be withheld,” Pentagon Spokesperson Susan Gough told Greenewald. “The Navy has not released the videos to the general public.”

Greenewald was further able to get the Navy to disclose the dates of the events shown in each film, and it turns out two of them (“Gimbal” and “GoFast”) were actually captured on the same day, 21 January 2015, suggesting that it’s possible that both pieces of footage were produced during the same unusual event.

“The idea has been floated by some researchers that the videos were related, due to critical analysis of the on-screen displays, and the fact that the voices within the videos sound similar, but the fact was not officially confirmed, until now,” Greenewald explains.

The first of the two videos, dubbed “Gimbal,” was captured by a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet equipped with a Raytheon AN/ASQ-228 Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) pod. Raytheon would even go on to advertise their equipment as the best “UFO spotter” on the market as a result. The brief video shows the Super Hornet tracking the unusual object while pilots and weapons officers discuss what they’re seeing.

The second video, which may have been captured during the same UAP event, was also captured using the same Raytheon equipment mounted on a U.S. Navy Super Hornet. The video is clearly captured from a different angle and represents a different period of time, as the recorded dialogue between pilots and the behavior of the object on screen are different.