UFOs Are a Common Sight, Former Military Official Tells Congress

Former military and intelligence officials testified to a congressional panel Wednesday that they have seen UFOs and said they could pose risks to national security. 

The former officials called for the U.S. government to share what it knows about the phenomena.

Two of the witnesses, former U.S. Navy fighter pilots, said they have seen “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAP, a phrase the federal government uses to refer to what are commonly known as UFOs.

One of the pilots testified that encounters with UAP are common among military aircrews and commercial pilots.

A former intelligence official also testified at the hearing that he believes the U.S. government has hidden from the public that it possesses aircraft of a nonhuman origin.

 Wednesday’s hearing, by a House Oversight subcommittee, is Congress’s latest push for transparency around UAP, which have long fascinated the public. The federal government has begun disclosing some information about UAP. It has set up task forces to investigate the phenomena and plans to release more findings.

“The lack of transparency regarding UAPs has fueled wild speculation and debate for decades, eroding public trust in the very institutions that are meant to serve and protect them,” said Rep. Glenn Grothman, (R., Wis.). “There lies a pressing demand for government transparency and accountability that cannot be overlooked, and that’s been a problem that’s been around for 50 years.”

Witness David Grusch, a former member of a U.S. Air Force panel on UAP, has said the federal government has withheld information about the recoveries of aircraft of nonhuman origin from Congress and the public.

Grusch told lawmakers Wednesday that during the course of his work with a UAP task force, he was informed of a UAP crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering program that had existed for decades. When he tried to learn more about that program, he was denied access, he said. He reported what he learned to his superiors and to multiple inspectors general, he said.

Grusch said he believes the U.S. government is in possession of UAP based on interviewing 40 witnesses over four years with direct knowledge of the program. 

He testified that the U.S. government has recovered nonhuman biologic material from crashed UAP, citing people with direct knowledge of the program.

Grusch declined to elaborate on many of his answers, saying it would pertain to classified information that he was barred from discussing in a public hearing. 

The Pentagon’s UAP task force, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, hasn’t been able to substantiate claims that any federal programs have possessed or reverse-engineered extraterrestrial materials, a spokesperson for the Defense Department said. 

“The Department is fully committed to openness and accountability to the American people, which it must balance with its obligation to protect sensitive information, sources, and methods,” the spokesperson said.

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has also said it has found no credible evidence of extraterrestrial activity.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R., Tenn.), and Rep.

The committee plans to hold further public hearings on UAP, Burchett said.  

“We’re going to start talking to people, we’re going to start naming names,” Burchett said.

The other two witnesses are former U.S. Navy fighter pilots Ryan Graves, executive director of the UAP-focused advocacy group Americans for Safe Aerospace, and retired Cmdr. David Fravor.

“These sightings are not rare or isolated,” said Graves, who served in the Navy for over a decade. “Military aircrews and commercial pilots, trained observers whose lives depend on accurate identification, are frequently witnessing these phenomena.”

Graves said his aircrew saw UAP during a training exercise off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va. Two jets encountered “a dark gray or black cube inside of a clear sphere” and the object came within 50 feet of the lead aircraft, he said. It was estimated to be 5 to 15 feet in diameter, he said.

The mission was terminated, Graves said. The squadron submitted a safety report, but there was no official acknowledgment of the incident, he said.

The encounters with UAP became so common that the aircrew would discuss the risk of the objects during preflight briefings, Graves said. 

Fravor’s testimony included his account of witnessing UAP in 2004 off the coast of San Diego. Fravor had been directed to inspect an object, and was told by the mission’s air controller that these objects had been observed for over two weeks coming down from over 80,000 feet and rapidly descending down to 20,000 feet, hanging there for hours and then going straight back up.  

Fravor said he saw a small white object that looked like a Tic Tac and had no rotors or wings. It was “moving very abruptly over the white water, like a ping-pong ball,” he said.

Fravor flew his aircraft closer to get a better view of the UAP, and “it rapidly accelerated and disappeared,” he said.

The air controller informed him that the object was now about 60 miles away, traveling that distance in less than a minute, Fravor said.

Fravor said he believed UAP posed a potential threat to national security, especially if a foreign adversary captures one and is able to duplicate the technology. 

“The technology we faced was far superior to anything that we had,” said Fravor, referring to the UAP he witnessed in 2004. 

All three witnesses said the UAP may be probing for weakness in the U.S. military system.

Provisions in the Senate’s version of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act would require federal agencies to hand over records related to UAP to a panel with the power to declassify them. The provisions have bipartisan support. 

Federal officials have begun releasing some information about UAP. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report in 2021 that reviewed dozens of reports of mysterious flying objects between 2004 and 2021. The report found several examples of objects that lacked visible forms of propulsion or that appeared to use technology beyond the known capabilities of the U.S. or its adversaries. 

U.S. defense officials released videos of such objects last year during the first Congressional hearing on the subject in more than half a century. One video, taken from the cockpit of an aircraft, showed a spherical object flying to the right of the aircraft. Military officials were unable to explain what the object was.

Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, said in public testimony in May his office is studying about 800 cases of UAP reported from 1996 to 2023. Only a small percentage of those cases are anomalies that can’t be explained, he said.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has established a separate panel tasked with reviewing nonclassified data on UAP. The team plans to issue a report on its findings this summer. 

—Isaac Yu contributed to this article.

Write to Joseph De Avila at [email protected]