Earlier this month, a spokesman for the Department of Defense confirmed that it does indeed continue to "pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena" - and just a few weeks later it has been reported that unidentified flying objects have been spotted by pilots in the US Navy.
In 2014 and 2015, pilots reported seeing "strange objects" during training procedures that were described as having "no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes," and now it has been made public by a report by The New York Times.
These aircrafts were said to have reached heights of 30,000 feet, and would fly at hypersonic speeds, the pilots described. "These things would be out there all day," said Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot. Graves has been with the Navy for a decade, and saw these UFOs as he trained near the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt.
"Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect," Graves added.
The objects seen were said to have been making manoeuvres "beyond the physical limits of a human crew," such as making sudden stops, instant turns or immediate acceleration to hypersonic speeds.
The pilots interviewed in the report initially believed them to be part of a top-secret drone program, but changed their minds because government officials would have known there were fighter pilots in the area and wouldn't have risked the near-collisions.
Graves report was sent to the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, but he wasn't the only one. In late 2014, another pilot claimed he almost hit one of the objects, and described it as looking like "a sphere encasing a cube," according to the paper.
Another pilot, Lt. Danny Accoin, said he identified a nearby flying object on his radar, missile system and infrared camera but couldn’t see it in his helmet camera. "I knew I had it, I knew it was not a false hit," he said. But still, "I could not pick it up visually."
A minute-long video was also shared in the article, appearing to show two encounters:A spokesman for the Navy, Joseph Gradisher, explained to the Times that it is still not known what caused the sightings. "There were a number of different reports," Gradisher said. "Some cases could have been commercial drones."
However, he did admit that in other cases, "we don’t know who’s doing this, we don’t have enough data to track this," adding that "the intent of the message to the fleet is to provide updated guidance on reporting procedures for suspected intrusions into our airspace.”
While Lt. Graves speculated that the US military had no vehicle which matched the attributes spotted. Lt. Accoin said: "We’re here to do a job, with excellence, not make up myths."
The incidents in the area eventually tapered off, and the Department of Defense has not made any further comment on what the objects could be.
