The videos, captured on Navy aircraft cameras with infrared targeting systems, show black shapes floating and sometimes accelerating at incredible speeds against the wind as baffled pilots watch.

All three videos had previously been leaked, prompting the Navy to confirm their authenticity in September in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

It said in January that some briefing material it had about the videos was classified as top secret and would cause “exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States” if released.

GIMBAL pentagon declassifies UFO videos
A still from GIMBAL, one of the three videos released by the Pentagon on Monday. 
US Department of Defense

Despite long-standing popular associations with stories of aliens, the terms “unidentified aerial phenomena” and “UFO” do not mean the object is thought to be extraterrestrial.

Take a look at the videos — which have the file names FLIR, GOFAST, and GIMBAL — below.

FLIR, also known as the Nimitz video, November 2004

This shows footage taken by Navy pilots off the coast of San Diego on November 14, 2004, according to The New York Times and Vice.

It has also been called the Nimitz video, from the name of the pilots’ ship, the USS Nimitz, according to Vice.

Book Undersea UFO Base: An In-Depth Investigation of USOs in the Santa Catalina Channel

FLIR has no pilot commentary but shows a dark, oblong shape being tracked by the infrared camera. At one point, the object accelerates unexpectedly to the left, causing the sensor to lose its fix on it.

“It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” one of the pilots, Cmdr. David Fravor, told The Times in 2017.

GOFAST, January 2015

This clip shows what looks like the ocean surface as a small object skims past the camera at high speed.

The pilots tracking it can be heard giving a whoop of satisfaction when the camera gets a fix on it. One says, “What the f— is that?”

GIMBAL, January 2015

In the 34-second footage, the aircraft’s infrared camera tracks a saucer-like object flying above clouds as pilots discuss what it could be.

One says it could be a drone, while another comments that “there’s a whole fleet of them,” though no other object is visible in the video.

The object then rotates.

“My gosh, they’re all going against the wind — the wind’s 120 knots to the west,” the first pilot can be heard saying.

The videos were previously published by The Times and the To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science, a UFO research group founded by the Blink-182 guitarist Tom DeLonge.

The Department of Defense said on Monday that it found that the videos don’t “reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems” and that their release “does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.”

“DOD is releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos,” it added.

“The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified.'”

This release ‘only scratches the surface’ of what the government knows

Former Sen. Harry Reid, who helped fund the US government’s UFO investigations, tweeted on Monday that the Pentagon’s release of the videos “only scratches the surface” of what the government has on file.

As the Senate majority leader in 2007, Reid funneled $22 million into the investigations, the news website Axios reported.

“I’m glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available,” he tweeted.

“The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications,” he added. “The American people deserve to be informed.”