Politico on the UFO phenomenon: “These are not balloons, but aircraft with advanced technology that we cannot explain”

“We have a real UFO problem. And it’s not about the balloons.” ABOUTPolitico’s extensive article on recent objects that flew over the US and were shot down overlooks a much larger problem with modern aircraft,”which we cannot explain.”

The US Navy officially acknowledged 11 encounters with unidentified flying objects that required evasive action and triggered a mandatory security policy between 2004 and 2021.

Ryan Graves, a former US Navy fighter pilot and engineer, chairs the UAP Integration and Communications Committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and is the founder of the new nonprofit Americans for a Safe Aerospace Sector (www.safeaerospace.org). In his article in Politico, he mentions his own experience when he “collided” with a UFO in the air.

On a clear, sunny day in April 2014, two F/A-18s took off on a training mission off the coast of Virginia.. The aircraft, which were part of a Navy fighter squadron, climbed to 12,000 feet and headed for the W-72 warning zone, an exclusive patch of airspace ten miles east of Virginia Beach. Then one of the pilots saw a dark gray cube inside a transparent sphere – motionless against the wind, fixed right on the entry point. “I almost hit one of those damn things!” the flight commander told us soon after in the cockpit, still shaken by the incident. We all knew exactly what he meant. “Those damn creatures” have been tormenting us for the past eight months.

I joined the US Navy in 2009 and went through years of rigorous training as a pilot. In particular, we are taught to be skilled observers in identifying aircraft with sensors and eyes. Our job is to know what’s in our operating area. That is why in 2014, after upgrading the radar system, our squadron made an unexpected discovery: there were unknown objects in the airspace. They first appeared on newly upgraded radars, and we assumed they were “ghosts in the engine” or software bugs.

But then we started matching the radar signatures with several surveillance systems, including infrared sensors that detect heat signatures. Then came horrendous blunders that required us to take evasive action. These were not just balloons. Unidentified air phenomena (UAPs) accelerated at speeds up to Mach 1 (the speed of sound). They were able to hold their position while remaining stationary despite Category 4 gale-force winds of 120 knots.

They had no visible means of lift, control surfaces, or engines—in other words, nothing like a conventional aircraft with wings, stabilizers, or engines. And they overtook our fighters, who were constantly operating all day. I am a graduate engineer, but the technology they demonstrated defied my understanding. After this close miss, we had no choice but to file a safety report, hoping that something could be done before it was too late.

But there was no official confirmation of what we experienced, and there was no other mechanism for reporting sightings – even as other crews flying along the east coast began quietly sharing similar experiences. Our only recourse was to cancel or reschedule training sessions as the UAP continued to roam our territory unhindered.

Nearly a decade later, we still don’t know what it was. When I retired from the Navy in 2019, I was the first active-duty pilot to go public and testify before Congress.

In the following years there was remarkable coverage of the meetings, and some steps were taken by Congress to get the military and intelligence agencies to do much more to get to the bottom of these mysteries. But there has been nothing close to the level of public and official attention given to the recent crashes of a Chinese spy balloon and three other unidentified objects that were likely research balloons. And that’s the problem.

Advanced objects displaying advanced technologies that we cannot explain regularly fly over our military bases or enter restricted airspace.

“UAP incidents continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting potential concerns about air safety or enemy intelligence gathering activities., the director of national intelligence said last month, citing 247 new reports in the past 17 months. – Some UAPs appeared to be stationary in the wind overhead, moving into the wind, turning sharply, or moving at considerable speed without any discernible means of propulsion.”

The US Navy also officially acknowledged 11 UAP misses that required preventable action and triggered mandatory safety situations between 2004 and 2021.

Advanced drones are also a growing threat to the safety of commercial aircraft. Last May, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an alert after a passenger plane flying over West Virginia experienced a rare failure of two major systems while passing under what appeared to be a UAP.

One thing we know for sure: these facilities are not part of some secret US project. “We were almost certain that this was not an explanationScott Bray, deputy director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, testified before Congress last year. Florida Senator Marco Rubio confirmed in a recent interview that, regardless of the origin of these items, they definitely do not belong to the US military.

“Objects fly over our military bases and places where we conduct military exercises, and we do not know what belongs to us and what does not.,” said Rubio, vice chairman of the intelligence committee. What President Biden didn’t mention during his Feb. 16 press conference is that UAPs show advanced performance capabilities.

The American public must demand accountability. We must understand what is in our sky. In the coming days, I will be launching Americans for a Safe Aerospace Sector (ASA), a new organization dedicated to aerospace safety and national security.

The ASA will support pilots and other aerospace professionals reporting UAPs. Our goal is to demand more information from government officials about this important security and national security issue. We will provide credible voices, public education, grassroots activism and lobbying on Capitol Hill to get answers about the UAP. The White House should not confuse recently shot down low-tech objects with inexplicably advanced high-tech objects seen by pilots.

Our government must recognize that perhaps another country has developed a revolutionary technology. We must urgently eliminate this threat by bringing together the best minds in the military, intelligence, scientific and technical fields. If advanced UAPs are not alien drones, then we definitely need some serious scientific research into this mystery. Obfuscation and denial is a recipe for more conspiracy theories and more disbelief that gets in the way of our search for truth.

If the phenomena I saw with my own eyes turn out to be alien drones, they pose a serious threat to national and airspace security. If it’s something else, then it should be a scientific priority to figure it out.”

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