Lieutenant Ryan Graves is leading an effort to encourage reporting of sightings of what the military calls Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – Science Photo Library RF
A former US Navy fighter pilot has told how his squadron encountered UFOs almost daily for months while training off the American coast.
The sightings included a near collision with an object that appeared like a cube inside a sphere, and a close encounter with a fleet of objects moving at 120 knots into the wind.
Lieutenant Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot, is now leading an effort to encourage reporting of sightings, and advocating for scientific study of what the military calls Unidentified Aerial Phenomena [UAPs].
Last year, Congress held its first hearing into UAPs for 50 years, and the Pentagon has received 350 new reports in the last two years, 171 of which remain unexplained.
Sealed-off block of airspace
Lt Graves told the Telegraph how in 2014 his squadron – the VFA-11 “Red Rippers” – was based on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, preparing for a deployment to the Persian Gulf.
The pilots trained in a sealed-off block of airspace called W-72 off the coast of Virginia, where nothing else was allowed to fly.
After the planes’ radar was upgraded pilots began picking up objects in the training area.
They were initially dismissed as radar errors, but then they flew closer and started seeing them on their FLIR systems, which are infrared cameras that detect heat.
“It was almost as if the sun was shining a flashlight [on the UAPs],” said Lt Graves. “We would have them on a radar, and then we’d have a FLIR. We’d fly by them as low as we could trying to see them.
“We were trying to figure out what the heck these things were. We were seeing them pretty much daily. We’d go out there and they’d be out there in the morning, they’d be out there in the evening.
“These things were pretty much always out there. That would range from two to three of them, to six or seven.”
Then, the near collision happened when an object passed right between two jets, within 50ft of the lead aircraft.
Lt Graves said the pilot involved was shaken up after landing back on the carrier.
