This is just a brief update, but there has been a lot of media coverage since yesterday of the new Congressional interest in recent UFO sightings reported by the U.S. Navy.
POLITICO first reported a couple days ago that three more senators, including Senator Mark Warner (D), vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, received a classified Pentagon briefing today about the increasing numbers of bizarre objects being seen by Navy pilots in recent years, especially since 2014/2015. There have been rumours and other first-hand reports of such briefings happening since last year.
“Navy officials did indeed meet with interested congressional members and staffers on Wednesday to provide a classified brief on efforts to understand and identify these threats to the safety and security of our aviators,” spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Daniel Day said.
“Follow-up discussions with other interested staffers” were also scheduled for Thursday. “Navy officials will continue to keep interested congressional members and staff informed. Given the classified nature of these discussions, we will not comment on the specific information provided in these Hill briefings.”
Even President Trump said that he been given a short briefing.
Last April, POLITICO also first reported that the Navy had updated its reporting guidelines for pilots, in response to the sightings.
There was also an excellent new update yesterday from Tyler Rogoway, a military journalist for The War Zone, who has been reporting on all of this for a few months now. His update shows how these sightings have been much more widespread than previously known, on an almost daily basis for Navy pilots off the U.S. East Coast in 2014 and 2015. The East Coast reports all describe the same kinds of objects: “translucent spheres with cubes suspended inside them,” hovering for many hours at a time, moving erratically and taking off at hypersonic speeds. One of the objects reportedly flew between two fighter jets, which were only about 100 feet apart.
Those sightings are apparently still happening, given the Navy’s newly updated reporting protocols and Congressional briefings. Other coverage from yesterday and today includes:
CNN
CNN
CNN
CNN
CNN
CNN
NBC News
Fox News
The Hill
Forbes
Vanity Fair
New York Post
Gizmodo
Huffington Post
Popular Mechanics
Army Update
In the Nimitz case from 2004, multiple (up to 10 or so at once) objects were reported by Navy pilots in the vicinity of the USS Nimitz Battle Group off the coast of California. The objects were described as white and shaped like tic-tacs, about 45 feet long and smooth with no wings, windows, propellers, engines or exhaust, as seen by a few of the pilots. They were reportedly tracked on radar descending from about 80,000 feet to 20,000 feet in a few seconds or less, and back again. One of the objects, as also seen visually by Commander David Fravor, descended from about 20,000 feet to almost sea level in only 0.78 seconds, as tracked on radar.
You can watch the excellent documentary short film about Nimitz by Dave Beatty here. A comprehensive analysis of the incident is also available on the SCU website.
So what are these objects? Secret U.S. testing of new exotic technology? Someone other nations’ new technology? Somebody else’s technology? Some people have wondered if they might be Russian or Chinese, although an Air Force spokesman and Major both said that is unlikely in a recent article in Task & Purpose:
“While there is a proliferation of UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] technology across the globe, we are not concerned that China or Russia have developed a long-range capability about which we are not aware,” said Air Force spokesman Maj. Bryan Lewis.
“Any drone that could fly from Russia or China to the United States’ East Coast would have to be at least as large as an MQ-9 Reaper and the data link used to fly the aircraft would be detectable,” said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. James Poss, who served as the service’s former assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. “I’d be very surprised if these were Russian or Chinese aircraft operating from Russia or China,” Poss told Task & Purpose.
These and other reports are currently being covered in the new 6-episode series Unidentified on the History channel, Friday nights at 10:00 pm PT. This week in the U.S., it is now episode 4, but here in Canada it is still at episode 2.