[music playing]
NARRATOR: The coast of Florida, January 2015.
The crew of a Navy F-18 fighter jet
fly into restricted airspace and encounter an airborne object
directly in their flight path.
They aim their forward-looking infrared camera at the object
and capture it in flight.
F-18s were chasing this thing, and they couldn't catch it.
The UAP is doing things that modern aerodynamic vehicles
can't do.
NARRATOR: The pilots in pursuit of the unidentified craft
observed that it performed unusual maneuvers
unlike any military aircraft they had ever witnessed,
and all while flying at high velocities.
One of the impressive aspects of it
is that it's moving against the wind.
And you can hear the pilots say this.
JEREMY CORBELL: It doesn't lose speed,
and it rotates mechanically against the wind.
This Gimbal footage is one of the rare pieces
of physical evidence that is corroborated directly
by individuals who were out there on the East Coast
documenting these things.
It is highly impressive.
TRAVIS TAYLOR: Now, modern day aircraft can yaw and pitch,
and they can roll.
But they can't simply pitch straight
up and continue to move forward into the line of flight.
This thing does that.
It's moving extremely fast, and it's accelerating
much faster than the F-18s can.
So that in itself is a feat that mankind has yet to accomplish.
JEREMY CORBELL: We tried to vet this for a long time.
What's uncomfortable is that we haven't
figured it out-- that we don't know whose technology this is.
If you can't identify someone that's
far more advanced than you technologically,
Houston, we have a problem.
NARRATOR: Navy video of the incredible encounter
was made public in December 2017.
And the object was dubbed Gimbal due to its ability
to rotate on an axis.
But for ancient astronaut theorists,
just as intriguing as the way it moves is the object's shape.
WILLIAM HENRY: The craft itself is an acorn-shaped craft.
Immediately, that's reminiscent of what
the ancient Indian text described as the Vimana,
which were acorn-shaped craft.
In "Mahabharata" and in many of the ancient Vedic texts,
they speak about the so-called Vimanas.
The Vimanas were flying vehicles with which
to reach the celestial realm.
NARRATOR: In the ancient Sanskrit epics of India,
there are highly detailed descriptions of the Vimana,
which carried the gods and other important figures
through the sky and sometimes to other planets.
The acorn-shaped craft were even incorporated at the very top
of many Hindu temples.
And some researchers believe they
also inspired similar Buddhist structures called Stupa.
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: If we go to Indonesia
and look at Borobudur, where we have 194 Stupas sitting
in concentric circles, each Stupa, in my opinion,
represents a type of flying craft, because Stupa actually
means "celestial chariot," or a way with which
to reach the celestial realm.
And they are in the shape of the so-called Vimanas.
NARRATOR: Often, the Vimana were described as war machines
armed with incredible weapons.
JONATHAN YOUNG: There are tales of flying craft
that could defying gravity and fly at extraordinary speeds
that defy the laws of physics.
These were military in usage.
They had powerful engines and powerful weapons.
In these battles, missiles would fire
that could wipe out cities.
These were the earliest stories we
have of flying military craft.
WILLIAM HENRY: In the Indian texts,
the Vimanas are the chariots or craft of the gods.
They were clearly a method of transportation
that could take the gods from place
to place, country to country, and even to other planets.
They're sometimes described as bright clouds.
Some of them are seven stories tall.