Revised November 2023
U.S. intelligence agencies are expected to deliver an “unidentified aerial phenomena” report to Congress in June 2021. The report was the result of a provision in the $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief and appropriations signed by President Donald Trump that called for a “detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence” from the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and the FBI.
The unclassified report, by the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense, aims to make public what the Pentagon knows about UFOs. These unidentified flying objects can’t be classified as known aircraft.
Over the years, military and civilian aircraft have reported unusually shaped objects with no visible propulsion system flying at speeds and maneuvering around in ways deemed impossible by conventional standards.
Many UFO believers think that the sightings are the result of advanced extraterrestrial technology. Others believe the mysterious craft uses classified technology deployed by the U.S. or foreign military powers. But the technological leap would appear to be incredible if this is work done secretly in facilities like Area 51. However, some speculate that technology found in supposed UFO crashes like the Roswell Incident in July 1947 could have provided knowledge from more advanced beings from the far reaches of the solar system.
The recent release of these videos seems to confirm that, at least in these cases, conclusions such as natural phenomena, weather balloons or refraction of light seem wide of the mark. The report's release to Congress should provide fascinating insights and plenty of ammunition for conspiracy theorists.
U.S Defence Department AATIP program
In 2007, the U.S. Defense Department established a secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) for $22 million to investigate UFO sightings. It was terminated in 2012 and was acknowledged for the first time in December 2017, following a report about the program published by The New York Times. The Times reported that the program’s initial funding came largely at the request of former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid.
In 2019, the U.S. Navy issued new guidelines for pilots to report “unidentified aircraft” to investigate these types of phenomena properly. It came as a response to “a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years.”
In August 2020, the Department of Defense established the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force to investigate the “nature and origins” of unidentified flying objects.
The official release of UFO Videos by the Pentagon
On April 27, 2020, the Pentagon declassified three videos taken by US Navy pilots, one from 2004 and two others from 2015, that showed UFOs flying at high speeds previously leaked in 2007 and 2017. On December 16, 2017, The New York Times reported on the incidents and published three videos, termed “FLIR,” “GIMBAL,” and “GOFAST”.
Following the official release, the Department of Defence said, “The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain unidentified”. The videos had been made public 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.”
On November 14, 2004, fighter pilot Commander David Fravor of the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group investigated radar indications of a possible target off the coast of southern California. He said the operator had told him that the USS Princeton, part of the strike group, had been tracking unusual aircraft for two weeks before the incident. The aircraft would appear at 80,000 feet before descending rapidly toward the sea, stopping at 20,000 feet, and hovering.
Fravor reported seeing an object, white and oval, hovering above an ocean disturbance. He estimated that the object was about forty feet long, and four people (two pilots and two weapons systems officers in the backseats of two airplanes) witnessed the object for about 5 minutes. When Fravor spiraled down to get closer to the object, the thing ascended, mirroring the trajectory of his airplane, until the object disappeared. The second wave of fighters, including pilot Lieutenant Commander Chad Underwood, took off from Nimitz to investigate. Unlike Fravor, Underwood's fighter was equipped with an advanced infrared camera (FLIR) and recorded a FLIR video, and coined the description "Tic Tac" to describe the infrared image, but did not see any unusual object.
The videos, featuring cockpit display data and infrared imagery along with audio of communications between the pursuing pilots, were initially provided to the press by Luis Elizondo, the former head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, the Department of Defense's investigation. Elizondo resigned from the Pentagon in October 2017 to protest government secrecy and opposition to the investigation, stating in a resignation letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis that the program was not being taken seriously.[ In September 2019, a Pentagon spokeswoman confirmed that naval aviators made the released videos and that they are "part of a larger issue of an increased number of training range incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena in recent years".
Around this time, a leaked Navy video from July 2019 showed a sphere-shaped unidentified object traveling over the Pacific Ocean near San Diego and being tracked by a US Navy stealth ship. Navy personnel can be heard saying in the clip saying, “It splashed.”
60 Minutes interviews May 2021
Cmdr Dave Fravor
On May 18, 2021, Cmdr. Dave Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich were interviewed by “60 Minutes” on CBS News about the UFO sightings over the Pacific Ocean in 2004.
Lt. Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot, told “60 Minutes” that pilots on training flights have seen unexplained phenomena “every day for at least a couple years”, saying, “I am worried, frankly, you know, if these were tactical jets from another country that were hanging out up there, it would be a massive issue. But because it looks slightly different, we’re not willing to actually look at the problem in the face. We’re happy to ignore that these are out there, watching us every day.”
In an interview with NBC News from February 2021, Fravor described the 2004 UFO incident, calling the object “the strangest, most obscure thing I’ve ever seen flying. As soon as we looked down, we see the whitewater, and then we see this little white Tic Tac. It’s pointing north-south and it’s just going forward, back, left, right,” he said, adding that it was bouncing around “like a ping-pong ball.” Fravor said the object was the size of his own F/A-18F fighter jet, “with no markings, no wings, no exhaust plumes.”
Commenting on the incident, Lt Cmdr Alex Dietrich, who was also one of the pilots sent to investigate the anomaly, says one of the biggest problems with UFOs is the stigma in talking about them, “So your mind tries to make sense of it. I’m gonna categorize this as maybe a helicopter or maybe a drone. And when it disappeared. I mean it was just…you know, I think that over beers, we’ve sort of said, ‘Hey man, if I saw this solo, I don’t know that I would have come back and said anything,’ because it sounds so crazy when I say it. I don’t know who’s building it, who’s got the technology, who’s got the brains. But there’s, there’s something out there that was better than our airplane”.
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Sources
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/ufos-are-make-way-us-senate-know-rcna973
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ufo-video-navy-california-us-b1849476.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Aerospace_Threat_Identification_Program
https://abcnews.go.com/US/navy-pilot-recalls-encounter-ufo-unlike/story?id=51856514
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