Tom DeLonge left Blink-182 in 2015 to chase his obsession with UFOs. The world mocked him for it. His group, To The Stars Academy, published three US Navy cockpit videos in 2017 and 2018. The Pentagon officially declassified those same three videos in April 2020. It confirmed real Navy footage of phenomena still marked unidentified. He was right years before the Pentagon admitted it.
Mocked for Chasing UFOs, Tom DeLonge Was Right All Along
In 2015, Tom DeLonge walked away from Blink-182, the band that made him famous, to chase something almost nobody took seriously: the idea that the US government was sitting on real footage of unidentified aircraft. Five years later, the Pentagon proved him right.
The Rocker Who Quit for UFOs
DeLonge had spent years talking publicly about his fascination with UFOs, often to bemused interviewers who treated it as a punchline.
In 2017, he formalized that obsession by co-founding To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science, a company built around aerospace research and the study of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP.
Critics were blunt about it. Headlines called him the "UFO-obsessed rocker." Fans wondered if the guy behind "All The Small Things" had lost the plot.
Three Videos Nobody Could Explain
DeLonge's organization didn't just talk about UFOs. It obtained and published real cockpit footage from US Navy pilots.
In December 2017, The New York Times ran two of the clips, known as "FLIR1" and "GIMBAL," showing Navy pilots reacting with disbelief as an object outmaneuvered their jet. A third video, "GoFast," followed soon after.
All three showed unexplained objects recorded during real training missions, first in 2004 and again in 2015.
In September 2019, a Navy spokesman confirmed the footage was genuine and said the objects were officially classified as "unidentified aerial phenomena" spotted entering restricted military training ranges.
The Pentagon Makes It Official
Confirming the videos were real was one thing. Officially releasing them was another.
On April 27, 2020, the Department of Defense declassified and formally published the exact same three videos DeLonge's group had put out years earlier.
The department said it was releasing the footage "to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real."
It confirmed the objects in all three clips remain officially unidentified. No explanation was offered for what they actually were.
Not So Wacky After All
The reaction was immediate. News outlets that had once treated DeLonge's UFO chase as a punchline now had to reckon with the fact that he had been ahead of the government's own paperwork.
DeLonge celebrated the moment publicly, thanking the shareholders who had backed his company through years of ridicule.
One entertainment outlet summed up the reversal simply: the wacky outer space guy from Blink-182 wasn't so wacky after all.
He never confirmed there were aliens. He didn't have to. He just had to be right that something was there, years before the Pentagon was ready to say so.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Tom DeLonge leave Blink-182?
What are the FLIR1, GIMBAL, and GoFast videos?
Did the Pentagon confirm the UFO videos are real?
Why did the Pentagon officially release the videos?
Does the Pentagon say the videos show aliens?
Verified Fact
Verified programmatically
Source: The War Zone (TWZ)Show verification details
Audited 2026-08-09 (fact-verifier, independent pass; WebSearch dead this session, WebFetch/curl + Wayback only). Primary sources read in full: (1) archived DoD statement (defense.gov live 403s bots; retrieved via web.archive.org/web/2020/... snapshot) - exact text: authorized release of three unclassified Navy videos (Nov 2004 + two Jan 2015), circulating after unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017, released to clear up misconceptions, phenomena remain characterized as unidentified, dated April 27 2020 - matches copy exactly. (2) TWZ (twz.com) - quotes same DoD statement verbatim, confirms 2007/2017 leak reference. (3) YouTube oEmbed + page metadata for both embedded/referenced TTSA videos: GIMBAL (tf1uLwUTDA0) uploaded by official To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science channel 2017-12-16; GoFast (wxVRg7LLaQA, same official channel) uploaded 2018-03-09 - independently confirms the 2017-then-2018 publication timeline claimed in text/social_text/caption/FAQs (not a compression error). (4) Time.com summary of Sept 2019 Navy confirmation. Claims checked: 2015 Blink-182 departure - CONFIRMED widely reported. TTSA founded 2017 - CONFIRMED (Wikipedia). FLIR1+GIMBAL published via NYT Dec 16 2017 - CONFIRMED (archived NYT page has two embedded videos, no GoFast). GoFast followed via TTSA Mar 2018 - CONFIRMED via YouTube upload timestamp (not simultaneous with Dec 2017 as one Wikipedia paraphrase loosely suggested - the primary YouTube timestamp is authoritative). Navy confirmed authenticity Sept 2019 - CONFIRMED, but the confirming official was Joseph Gradisher, a Navy spokesman (male), NOT a Pentagon spokeswoman as the article originally stated - CORRECTED (see below). DoD officially declassified same three videos April 27 2020 - CONFIRMED verbatim against archived primary statement. Videos remain unidentified, no alien/extraterrestrial claim anywhere in text/article/faqs/social fields - CONFIRMED, matches DoD ceiling language exactly. social_engagement_comment 2007/2017 leak claim - CONFIRMED verbatim against primary DoD statement. Paraphrased People.com line (one entertainment outlet, wacky outer space guy) - not in quote marks, correctly paraphrase-attributed, not fake-quoted. Embedded YouTube tf1uLwUTDA0 - CONFIRMED live, official TTSA channel, titled Gimbal: The First Official UAP Footage from the USG for Public Release. Numeric coherence - text/social_text/caption/faqs all consistent (2015 to 2017 to 2018 to Sept 2019 to Apr 27 2020), text=social_text-with-markdown-stripped verified programmatically (386 chars plain, within 280-420 band), no emdashes. Citation fidelity - source_url (twz.com) directly quotes the DoD statement with the exact release date, exact video count, and exact leak-year figures used in the fact; upgraded to the live defense.gov page was attempted but that URL 403s automated fetchers (verified independently, not just creator report) so twz.com stands as the reachable, quote-accurate public link. Novelty (nov=2) reassessed for general FB audience (not UFO-Twitter) - the DeLonge-vindication narrative is not a saturated meme on mainstream FB feeds the way Wojtek/Cliff Young are; nov=2 stands. Discrepancy found and corrected: article said a Pentagon spokeswoman confirmed the footage in Sept 2019 and tied it to a rise in training range incursions - the real confirming official was Navy spokesman Joseph Gradisher (male, Deputy CNO for Information Warfare spokesman, not a Pentagon-level spokeswoman), and his actual quote was about UAP terminology usage for objects entering training-range airspace, not a claimed rise in incursions. Corrected the article sentence to Navy spokesman + terminology-based framing, dropping the unsupported rise-in-incursions claim. No other corrections needed; text/social_text/social_caption/social_engagement_comment/social_link_comment/faqs already used Navy correctly.
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