Pilot Safety

“Some of the behaviors that we saw in our working area, we would see these objects being at 0.0 Mach—that is zero airspeed—over certain pieces of the ground. So, what that means just like a river if you throw a bobber in it is going to float downstream. These objects were staying completely stationary in category four hurricane winds. These same objects would then accelerate to supersonic speeds—1.1, 1.2 Mach—and they would do so in very erratic and quick behaviors that we do not—I do not have an explanation for.”

“During a training mission in Warning Area W–72, 10 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, two F–18 Super Hornets were split by a UAP.”

“While performing a routine Airspace Surveillance and Control Mission in the Eastern Air Defense Sector, an F–22 fighter observed multiple UAP contacts at mission altitude. Moving to intercept, the F–22 pilot noted multiple metallic orbs, slightly smaller than a sedan, hovering in place. Upon vectoring toward the UAPs, a smaller formation of the metallic orbs accelerated at rapid speed toward the F–22, which was unable to establish radar locks on the presumed-hostile UAPs. The F–22 broke trajectory and attempted to evade but was intercepted and boxed in by approximately three to six UAPs.”

“The object, described as a dark gray or a black cube inside of a clear sphere, came within 50 feet of the lead aircraft and was estimated to be five to 15 feet in diameter.”

“During this exercise, I received an email on the Navy's secure network from the operations officer of U.S. Fleet Forces Command. The email was addressed to all the subordinate commanders, and the subject line read, in all capital letters, ''URGENT SAFETY OF FLIGHT ISSUE.''”

“Yes, I concur with that. We have nothing that can stop in midair and go the other direction nor do we have anything that can, like in our situation, come down from space, hang out for 3 hours and go back up.”

“It wasn't until the Russians could develop the SA–2 surface-to-air missile and successfully shoot them down”

“The mission commander terminated the flight immediately and returned to base.”

“Certainly. I think the most vivid sighting of that would have been a near mid-air that we had at the entrance to our working area. One of these objects was completely stationary at the exact entrance to our working areas, not only geographically but also altitude. So, it was right where all the jets are going, essentially, on the Eastern Seaboard. The two aircraft flew within about 50 feet of the object and that was a very close visual sighting.”

“Between the Chinese balloon being shot down and two UAPs subsequently shot down following the event earlier this year the U.S. Government spent $1.5 million in taxpayer dollars on missiles.”

“The text of the email was brief but alarming with words to the effect, ''If any of you know what these are, tell me ASAP. We are having multiple near midair collisions, and if we do not resolve this soon, we are going to have to shut down the exercise.''”

“Now, that was our personal firsthand experience at the time. Since then, as I have engaged this topic, others have reached out to me to share their experiences both on the military side as well as a commercial aviation side. On the military aviation side, veterans that have recently got out have shared their stories and have expressed how the objects we were seeing in 2014 and 2015 continued all the way to 2019, 2020, and beyond. And so, it became a generational issue for naval aviators on the Eastern Seaboard.”

“I am going to get to that in a second. But last week White House NSC spokesman, John Kirby, stated that UAPs are having an impact on our training ranges and needs to be treated as a legitimate issue. Do you concur with his statements?”

“Now, our last hearing inspired us to introduce the Safe Airspace for Americans Act, joined by Chairman Grothman, Chairwoman Mace, and a bipartisan group of cosponsors.”

“And I assume we have never discharged any armaments against a UAP, correct?”

“None. We had a standard debrief where the backseaters went down to our carrier intel center and briefed would have happened and that was it. No one else talked to us and I was in the top 20 in the battle group. No one came. That captain was aware. The admiral was aware. Nothing was done.”

“No, and never felt threatened at all.”

“That is correct.”

“Yes, I would agree with the previous two, being a user of those training ranges, that the data has to be out there. You have to acknowledge that you are seeing them and then you have to collect the data. Right now, you get the report. Someone says, I saw something, but no one collects the radar data to back it up and do research.”

“Correct.”

“Certainly. I think that there is two categories that would be important. One would be kinematics and understanding the specifics of how the vehicle or objects are moving, and the second would be a more zoomed out approach of being able to look at origin and destination after or before the incident as well as getting a better contextual understanding of how these objects are interacting with each other.”

“Yes. As a recipient of a lot of those training range reports sometimes we only get contextual, kind of oral reporting. It would be nice if they attached all sensor data and there is a system in place that can handle multiple classifications of data, and that is an issue with the F–35, right. That jet was never built to be an ISR platform, and it is a pain in the butt to get that data off.”

“The basic issues then and now are twofold. First, incursions in our training ranges by unidentified objects represent serious hazards to safety of flight.”

“The first question is -- there have been no collisions between any U.S. assets in one of these UAPs, correct?”

“Some of the initial procedures have been implemented such as within the United States Navy that have a Range Fouler Report that gathers information from pilots. I understand that a service-wide reporting mechanism is still pending.”

“Pilots are reporting UAP at altitudes that appear above them at 40,000 feet, potentially in low Earth orbit or in the gray zone below the common line, making unexplainable maneuvers like right hand turns and retrograde orbits, or J hooks.”

“And when he approached he said that his radar went down. He said that his FLIR system malfunctioned and that he had to manually take this image from one of the lenses and it was not automated in collection as you would typically see in a test mission.”

“Our squadron submitted a safety report but there was no official acknowledgement of the incident and no further mechanism to report the sightings.”

“Yes. The objects that are being seen by commercial pilots are performing maneuvers that are unexplainable due to our current understanding of our technology and our capabilities as a country, and that applies for the military as well.”

“We know that our servicemembers have encountered unidentified aerial phenomena and, because UAPs pose potential flight safety and general security risks, we are committed to a focused effort to determine their origins.”