Three Former Military Officials Testify About UFO Sightings
An unidentified aerial sighting from 2004 was at the crux of Wednesday's testimony.
A house oversight committee met on Wednesday in the first-ever public hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, more commonly known to the public as UFOs. During the hearing, representatives heard unclassified testimony from three retired military veterans who had reported their own sightings, in an effort for transparency from the U.S. government.
The witnesses included former Navy pilot David Fravor, former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch, and former Navy pilot Ryan Graves. Graves currently serves as executive director for Americans for Safe Aerospace; both he and Fravor testified that they had spotted unidentified aircraft while serving in the U.S. military.
Grusch, on the other hand, alleged the existence of a secretive UFO retrieval program as well as the possession of "non-human" biological material. He also claimed that the government has covered up its research into the sightings, and had done so above Congressional oversight. The Pentagon has already denied this claim in a statement to the Associated Press.
The hearing opened with a statement from Fravor, who testified about his own encounter with a "Tic Tac" shaped unidentified flying object in 2004 while serving as U.S. Navy commander. Fravor said that his team had been on a routine training mission off the coast of Southern California when they were asked to investigate an unidentified object that had been witnessed for two weeks.
He said that the object had been observed coming down from 80,000 feet—where outer space begins—to 20,000 feet, "hanging out for a few hours," and then going straight back up. After getting within about a half mile of the object, Fravor says it "rapidly accelerated and disappeared," only to turn up on radar some 60 miles away, less than a minute later.
After witnessing the object firsthand, Fravor said it was "shocking" that the incident was never investigated, and that neither he nor his team had been questioned. It wasn't until years later that he was contacted by former Pentagon whistleblowers, who worked with the New York Times to publish a 2017 story about what had transpired.
"It removed the stigma of UFOs, which is why we're here today," Fravor said. "Those articles open the door for the government and public that cannot be closed. It has led to interest from our elected officials who are not focused on little green men, but figuring out where these craft are, where [are] they from, the technology these possess, and how do they operate."
Fravor explained that this is all the more reason why government agencies should be transparent with U.S. elected officials.
"The Tic Tac object we engaged in 2004 was far superior to anything we had [at the] time, have today, or are looking to develop in the next 10 years," Fravor said, wrapping up his opening testimony. "If in fact we have programs that possess this technology, it needs to have oversight from those people that the citizens of this great country elected into office to represent what is best for the United States."
"If UAP are foreign drones, it is an urgent national security problem," Graves later added. "If it is something else, it is an issue for science. In either case, unidentified objects are a concern for flight safety."
Although no current government officials testified at Wednesday’s hearing, in April, Sean Kirkpatrick, director of a Pentagon office that investigates unidentified flying objects, told a Senate subcommittee the US government was tracking 650 potential cases of unidentified aerial phenomena. Playing video from two of the episodes, Kirkpatrick told the committee that his office found "no credible evidence” of objects known to defy the laws of physics.