Navy pilot shares incredible UFO encounter and 'national security' threat

24 July 2023 , 13:53

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Navy pilot shares incredible UFO encounter and 'national security' threat

A former US Navy pilot has shared his incredible encounter with a UFO, warning that they pose a "national security" threat ahead of a major hearing in Congress which will see UFO testimonies heard.

Ryan Graves, co-founder of American for Safe Aerospace, said the ways in which pilots are able to report UFOs need to be addressed. He is one of a number of witnesses expected to testify at a congressional investigation looking into government reports of UFOs with many politicians calling for government-held documents relating to extraterrestrial sightings to be released.

Mr Graves, speaking to Fox News, said he plans to tell Congress: "I'll be looking to share the experiences that I had as a Navy F-18 pilot, I'll be looking to share what has progressed in this conversation since the 2014 timeframe when we first started spotting these objects, and I'll be looking to share just how big of a problem this has become for other military aviators and commercial aviators as well."

Former Navy pilot Ryan Graves spoke about his experience encountering UFOs (CNN)

While most of us will refer to them as UFOs, Mr Graves prefers the term UAP's - Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. He explained: "Anomalous is the key word there, we're not tying this to the old terminology such as 'flying' or to the air. We are seeing these in the space domain, in the air domain, underwater... And so this is really a first principled approach to look at this agnostically and without all the cultural baggage there has been in the past."

There has been speculation that these UFOs, or UAPs, are not, in fact, extraterrestrial, but instead are a form of sophisticated drone developed by a country on Earth, a possibility Mr Graves agrees with "absolutely."

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"For me and for Americans for Safe Aerospace, we treat this primarily as a domain awareness gap," he explained. "It's a matter of national security that we understand what's in our airspace. It's a matter of aviation safety and security that our aviators and our aircrew know what's in front of them when they're flying around."

There have been greater calls for more transparency on what the government knows about these unidentified objects (CNN)

As a former US Navy pilot, Mr Graves flew an F-18 fighter jet. He said "We still don't know" what he and his crew saw while flying.

"We never really were able to draw a conclusion on what it was," he said. "But what we were seeing were objects, primarily spheres, that were travelling anywhere from completely stationary in very high winds, to an order of Mach 2. We were seeing these objects on a near-daily basis and they would be out there all day.

"We still don't know their origin, what their intent was, but we eventually had to start modifying our training so we wouldn't hit one of these objects, and they would get pretty close."

Mr Graves' group, Americans for Safe Aerospace, is hoping Congress will help put in place better reporting mechanisms for pilots, as well as provide more disclosure from all areas of the military as to what's really going on. Speaking to NBC, Mr Graves explained that the sightings are common among pilots, but the stigma of speaking about them keeps most quiet.

Videos were released by the Department of Defense in 2020 showing unidentified objects captured by military personnel

In April 2020, the Department of Defense shared three short videos showing UFOs, or UAPs. One video was shot in November 2004, while the other two were from January 2015. The official release from the Department of Defense came after the videos had already been circling in the public domain after "unauthorised releasediffe in 2007 and 2017".

In a statement, the Department of Defense said: "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. The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterised as "unidentified"."

Discussing the videos, Mr Graves said: "Unfortunately the videos that have been released are unclassified and low-resolution images. The fact of the matter is that most of these images were gathered through the use of sophisticated radar systems that allow the camera systems that allow the cameras to get in close in order to see.

"I'm a sceptic myself. I would like the general public to be able to see some of this more detailed information so that it can show the different behaviours over time, and that's one of the things we're pushing for at safeaerospace.org, is transparency on this topic. We believe the data deserves to be out into academia so others can continue to study this and we can start to reach some conclusions about what these actually are."

Ryan Graves said he would encounter UFOs, or UAPs, on a near-deaily basis (FOX News)

David Grusch, another scheduled witness, is a former intelligence official. He hit the headlines when he alleged the US government was illegally withholding information related to its possession of "intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin."

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When asked whether Mr Graves was willing to go so far as Mr Grusch, he responded: "My personal experience and the experiences from aviators are very pragmatic. They're dealing with this in the context of their professional aviation experience. David Grusch's experiences are different; he was tasked as a member of the UAP taskforce, which ultimately arose because of the greater reporting from pilots, and during his investigations he came across various materials and evidence, so I've heard him say publicly like others.

"So I'm interested to hear what that evidence is as well. From my personal experience and in my personal case I can't speak to that side of the conversation."

Fiona Leishman