A fighter pilot whose UFO footage made headlines around the world at first assumed the sighting was part of a training exercise, a sensational government report shows.
The F-18 pilot apparently locked onto the 'Gimbal', as it has come to be named, thinking it was an adversary, the Daily Star reports.
The US serviceman, who has not been named, is believed to have given evidence of the sighting when reporting to the US Senate Armed Services Committee in 2019.
This new information was revealed in a report released to US government document repository the Black Vault.
The actual encounter - described by the Navy as a UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) - is thought to have happened off the coast of Jackson's Ville, Florida, seven years ago.
The report described what the pilot - whose name was redacted - told the Senate following their UAP encounter.
One section of the paper read: "Towards the end of one of the night flights (redacted) was conducting during the at-sea period, he and his pilot detected an air contact via (redacted) coming from the east and heading towards the ship.
"Initially thinking it may be a simulated advisory aircraft as well part of the COMPTUEX scenario, he took a (redacted) lock to investigate further."
COMPTUEX, or Composite Training Unit Exercise, is a rehearsal each US Navy carrier strike group performs before departing for deployment.
The new report of the 'Gimbal' sighting is one of three to emerge from files held by the US military.
One clip which was shot in 2004 but only released to the public in 2020 has gathered particular attention after the pilot disagreed with the official explanation for the phenomenon.
The video footage appears to show some kind of circular-shaped object moving above the clouds, but then disappearing from shot soon after.
The pilot who shot the footage, now-retired David Fravor, told CNN in 2017: “As I got close to it, it rapidly accelerated to the south, and disappeared in less than two seconds.”
But the Navy claimed that the image shown on screen was, in fact, glare on a jet's gimbal camera system.
