Investigative journalists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp conducted an exclusive interview with a Marine who captured footage of a UAP during a deployment in Iraq. The interview includes the 2008 military-recorded UAP footage filmed in northwest Iraq - within an active combat zone. This vehicle of unknown origin, had no conventional flight control surfaces - and appears to have a strikingly similar morphology to the now famous 2015 “GIMBAL” UAP.
You can learn about this UAP case in Corbell’s investigative series called UFO REVOLUTION and on Corbell’s and Knapp’s podcast and show called WEAPONIZED.
DATE - 2008
LOCATION - North/West IRAQ (active combat zone)
IMAGING TYPE - Infrared (IR)
EVENT DESCRIPTION - “GIMBAL” shaped UAP filmed by SGT Matt P. Davis (U.S. Navy, 0311 Scout team leader, LCpl at the time of the encounter).
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION
JEREMY CORBELL - Tell me your name, what you were doing in Iraq, your unit, what your role was...
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - Matt Davis, United States Marine Corps. The unit was First Light Armor Reconnaissance Battalion. I was a scout with that unit. We're doing anti-terrorism, just operations in Iraq. We had huge, huge areas of overwatch to do, just doing patrols to the desert, you know, just like, prevent any kind of enemy movement, clear villages, set up vehicle checkpoints. Do night operations. They were always, always operating. It was non-stop. So the LAV vehicles have three crewmen, a driver, a gunner and the vehicle commander... and four scouts. Team Leader, machine gunner, point man, like a grenadier... stuff like that. We would take tactical pauses. You know what I mean? Like waiting for more orders. So, we would set up in coils, which is like a 360 degree security. There's, uh, four LAVs, which is two sections, Alpha and a Bravo.
JEREMY CORBELL - What's an LAV, by the way?
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - It's a Light Armored Vehicle. It's got a 25 millimeter Bushmaster cannon, 240 Bravo machine gun on top with the 240 coax. And at all times there's two scouts popped up in the rear. We do area, route, zone reconnaissance... and just operations, you know. So if we need to get somewhere fast, we have those vehicles we assess scouts, we can dismount. You know, clear sections. Use the vehicles for overwatch, go and do assaults, you know, on buildings... or just clear areas. Just, all that type of stuff.
JEREMY CORBELL - And what's the video you sent me?
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - So, me me taking myself back. This particular evening, maybe 100 miles from the Syrian border, we set up a coil, which is a 360 degree security... and basically I was looking at the thermals. At he gunner seat, you know, I'm just doing my observation in the desert, you know, just kind of scanning back and forth. Making sure nobody's going to sneak up on us. I can pop up for a minute, out of the turret and come back down and look through these thermals. I remember seeing something, I didn't laze it to see the exact... how many meters it was away, but me observing it... I'm gonna say it was probably about 200 meters. I kinda seen something raise up, an object come off the floor from that distance. And I was like, what is that? You know, I was talking to myself. And I seen, I would probably say it went about 25 meters off the ground. And I seen it sway to the left, stop, and then sway back to the right. Maybe from that center point that it raised up to that 25 meters, 20 meters, it swayed about 30 to 50 meters to the left. And then coming back to that center point it originally raised up from it went another 30 to the right - and came back - and started elevating upward. And I was like, this is, this is weird. What the hell is this? I grabbed my camera, I had a little black Pelican case, pop it open and sort of filmed this all. So I was looking through my camera screen, and seen it raise up and keep continually raising, and on that thermal with the reticle, there's a little center dot, which is like your center visual. So, I seen it raise up, and I was following it with the turret, just raising the turret up as I... so the barrels gonna go... I could tell it wasn't a plane or helicopter. Kind of a consistent speed shooting upward, not super fast, but it was just almost kind of like a floating object... and it just, there was nothing out in that area that we would have been operating. If there was - we would have known about it. Definitely the enemy didn't have any kind of helicopters or anything, or any helos or aircrafts. I knew it was 100% worthy of filming a video. I was like, I knew it was something out of the ordinary, so I filmed it. You know as I was filming, I wasn't like, oh this has this shape or... I wasn't thinking that. I was like, oh, this is just a strange object I'm seeing come off the ground, and, you know, swayed to the left, you know, to the right... and then went upward. And kinda, didn't go straight up, but it kind of like veered a little bit, and kind of, you know, almost like a, like a back and forth motion. And just kept kind of going up. And it went so high up. I was like, dude, somebody's gonna, like, see this barrel pointing straight up in the air, and like, what the hell is this guy doing? I knew it wasn't right. And what I really should've done, was like, hey you guys, I spot something right now. It's coming off the desert floor, you know, you know, going upward. And I wish I continued to film it, to be honest Jeremy, I wish I kept filming. I was like, man, I gotta stop.
JEREMY CORBELL - You look at this thing. It doesn't have rotors. It doesn't have a tail. It doesn't - it's symmetrical looking - it doesn't have rotor wash. You weren't seeing any of that. The shape is fucking weird.
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - Like, almost like a dish looking thing, like something kind of slightly protruding out of that top maybe.
JEREMY CORBELL - Everything knew about that area, made that object ridiculous.
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - 100%. The way it came off the ground, I knew right there, I was like man, I'm grabbing I'm grabbing my camera and filming this.
JEREMY CORBELL - When you see it go up and you stop filming, did it just continue going up? Or did you see what happened after you stopped aiming the barrel at it? Or were you just like, I gotta stop?
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - I gotta stop and I didn't see anything. I don't know where it went. I don't know if it continued or stopped or went somewhere else, but...
JEREMY CORBELL - You're in an active combat zone. Is this correct?
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - That's correct.
JEREMY CORBELL - You're estimating things 200 meters away. You should have known if something was out there, right?
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - Yes. Yes.
JEREMY CORBELL - So you would know if something was a craft of that size, at 200 meters away. Like, you would be aware if it's our government launching it, like you'd be aware if there was enemies 200 meters away, right?
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - 100%. I'm on watch. You know I'm a scout. I'm using that as, like a giant scope to, like, catch everything. That is the best way to spot any kind of enemy there, you know, there's thermal heat. It picks up, you know, if there's like, some guy, like, trying to hide out there, you're gonna spot it. You know. And there's, there's different, you can adjust the reticle. There's ah, the there's the thermal. I mean, you're gonna be able to spot anything you need to.
JEREMY CORBELL - You're in this Light Armored Vehicle. You're on watch. And this is like a gun that's like mounted, like a turret gun, that's kind of mounted that has this optics weapon system, like built into it, and that's why we're seeing it green, like Infrared, or what?
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - Correct?
JEREMY CORBELL - And if you were kind of like the main operator of that, you could have switched through all the different modes. That's not really your job. But you were kind of like, hey what the fuck? And you're looking out.
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - Yep.
JEREMY CORBELL - So was it, like, much clearer when you're looking at it through the weapons system, like, could you see the edges of the object you're seeing more clearly? Or was is it basically what we're seeing there?
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - A little bit clearer. I was kind of shaky with it. I was trying my best to hold a steady because the turret was, like, in a manual mode where you have to like, turn the turret by turning these, like, almost like wheels inside.
JEREMY CORBELL - You're using, what we see is like, you know, normal people we see, it's like a green screen, but that's infrared, right? So that's a form of amplified light. And you're watching through this, and then you notice this thing that you suppose is about 200 meters away, approximately, and you see it swaying. And the swaying, that that made you realize, hey, this is different.
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - Well, first of all, it's like, I would something be directly, there's no, like, we had no like, something, that would not be possible for something like, like, if we're operating out there, we had other, you know, troops. What would they be doing? Okay, say if it was a Huey or some kind of Hilo, a rotor wing, and it was landing out there, I would be seeing, like, dust kicked up, static off the rotors. I would be, I would know that something's out there. You'd hear a sound. It didn't make any sense. It just, I was like, what the hell is that? Like, that's exactly, I remember thinking like, what the hell is that?
JEREMY CORBELL - You should have seen something like rotor wash. You should have heard it. And you don't. I know we're just completely guessing, right, on fucking size. If you had to estimate about the size...
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - Like it was, I would say it was kind of a large thing, whatever it was, like, kind of a larger, but not massive, you know, like, I'll say 25 feet, like across, I don't know that's a guess. Maybe from the top to the bottom, maybe 15 feet, you know, something like that.
JEREMY CORBELL - What's so interesting to me, though, is the shape. It looks eerily, like the GIMBAL UFO that has been all over the news.
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - I've seen those videos, and... that looks pretty similar. Wow.
JEREMY CORBELL - Yeah, man, if you put him like side by side, it's eerie. What I'm wondering is I know that the footage of the GIMBAL was a thermal camera. It was a FLIR-POD, Forward Looking Infrared, which is more of an authentic thermal signature. Where the green infrared is photons of light, so you kind of see the shape in the green. Because with the thermal, it could have like an exhaust jet, and that exhaust jet...
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - Yeah I understand.
JEREMY CORBELL - Yeah. So I kind of, I'm looking back at your green video, and I'm thinking, the shape you see is probably the shape of the object. Do you agree with that? Is that accurate? Am I missing something?
SGT MATT P. DAVIS - I would have to agree with what you just said. I mean, I kind of wish I could have changed, like, to the thermal, and like switch back. And I can't 100% confirm what that thing was, but I just know... I knew it wasn't something normal. You know, that's what made me... I was like, dude, this is... what is this thing? I grabbed it, and I was like, man, I gotta film this. And it never happened in-between then or after. It was... it... I... I... believe that it was like a... some kind of craft. I'll just word it like that. I don't know how else to say it. It's something different, that's for sure.
CONCLUSION
We hope that this, and other soon-to-be-released materials will be representative of a unique moment in modern history. A turning point towards the rational and transparent approach of investigating and exploring the mystery of the UFO Phenomenon, reducing stigma, and encouraging transparency on this enigmatic puzzle.
“No matter where UFOs are from - it is now openly admitted by our Department of Defense that they are appearing with an increased frequency worldwide. It’s time to acknowledge the UFO problem.” - Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell
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