For the first time, the US Navy has apparently confirmed footage of unidentified flying objects is real and should not have been made public.
Video reportedly first recorded in 2014 and 2015, but only recently shared by Tom DeLonge’s (yes, from Blink 182) UFO research organisation – To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science – shows US Navy jets chasing ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ through skies off the east coast of America.
According to Navy pilots, the unidentified objects were flying at around 30,000 feet, and travelling at hypersonic speeds with ‘no visible engine of infrared exhaust plumes’. They were reportedly spotted almost daily during training exercises between 2014 and 2015.
Up until now, the Navy have never addressed the footage. However, according to The Black Vault, an archive of declassified government documents, the Navy have now acknowledged the videos and what they appear to show.
Navy spokesperson Joseph Gradisher said:
The Navy designates the objects contained in these videos as unidentified aerial phenomena.
So, they’re basically saying they never found out what these flying objects were. They are quite literally unidentified flying objects.
However, the Navy prefer to use a different term, as Gradisher explained:
The ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’ terminology is used because it provides the basic descriptor for the sightings/observations of unauthorized/unidentified aircraft/objects that have been observed entering/operating in the airspace of various military-controlled training ranges.
Speaking to Motherboard about his request for further information on the videos, the author of The Black Vault, John Greenwald, said:
I very much expected that when the U.S. military addressed the videos, they would coincide with language we see on official documents that have now been released, and they would label them as ‘drones’ or ‘balloons’.
However, they did not. They went on the record stating the ‘phenomena’ depicted in those videos, is ‘unidentified.’ That really made me surprised, intrigued, excited and motivated to push harder for the truth.
According to Greenwald, however, the videos were never intended for public release, with Navy spokesperson Gradisher saying the footage was ‘unclassified’, but ‘the Navy has not released the videos to the general public.’
The footage, across three videos known as ‘FLIR1’, ‘Gimbal’ and ‘Go Fast’, appear to show two Navy pilots tracking a UAP off the east coast of America, as well as another incident in which a Navy Super Hornet pilot almost collided with a UAP near Virginia Beach.
Former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo, who led a government program to research potential UFOs, told CNN:
My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone. These aircraft – we’ll call them aircraft – are displaying characteristics that are not currently within the US inventory nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.