WHAT’S THE STORY?

THE New York Times and other publications have reported that Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) were spotted by US Navy pilots during training exercises off the east coast of the US during 2014 and 2015.

A video has emerged showing what looks like giant spinning tops – think The Mysterons of television fame – while pilots spoke of strange objects with no visible engines travelling at supposed hypersonic speeds.

The New York Times has posted one video and the History channel will this weekend start to air a series about UFOs which includes the 2014-15 incidents.

The Times reporters wrote: “No one in the Defence Department is saying that the objects were extraterrestrial, and experts emphasize that earthly explanations can generally be found for such incidents.”

That is because we use the term UFO to mean something of alien origin when strictly any UFO is merely something that nobody can identify.

WHAT MAKES THIS SIGHTING DIFFERENT?

THE fact that the reports were made by US Navy pilots, all highly trained and very professional who knew that they were risking their careers and certainly any promotion by reporting UFOs.

Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot with ten years’ service as a flier in the US Navy reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress as well as his superior officers.

He told the NY Times: “These things would be out there all day. 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.”

The Times reported: “Lieutenant Graves and four other Navy pilots, who said in interviews with The New York Times that they saw the objects in 2014 and 2015 in training maneuvers from Virginia to Florida off the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, make no assertions of their provenance.”

What is also making this latest phenomenon very different is that the US Navy and the Pentagon have not dismissed them outright and indeed are taking the matter seriously. After all, if they’re not from a different part of the Galaxy then where are these mysterious objects from since there is no doubting the evidence that they exist. The Navy reminded its pilots about reporting such encounters. A spokesperson explained: “We don’t know who’s doing this, we don’t have enough data to track this. So the intent of the message to the fleet is to provide updated guidance on reporting procedures for suspected intrusions into our airspace.”

ARE THEY ALIENS?

MOST physicists and astronomers contend that the vast distances in space and the energy that would be required to make it to Earth, plus the longevity that would be required of interstellar pilots, make it practically impossible for aliens to visit this world.

There is one class of aircraft that is coming under suspicion – drones. Josh Gradisher, Navy spokesperson, told the NY Times that the US Navy doesn’t have all the answers for the observations made by Lt. Graves and others.

“There were a number of different reports,” Gradisher said. Some cases could have been commercial drones, he said.

Others have suggested that the UFOs could be military drones or some other sort of aircraft that that US authorities do not want anybody to know about – the same explanation that was proffered about area 51 back in the 1950s and 60s.

WHAT’S THE PENTAGON DOING ABOUT IT?

THE US military’s head office had to admit almost two years ago that it was operating a secret programme to monitor UFO sightings especially those by service personnel during the course of training or action.

Earlier, in the course of her presidential election campaign, Hillary Clinton let slip that the US authorities now referred to UFOs as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).

Two committees in Congress have been investigating UAPs, and the same team of New York Times reporters that have come up with the latest story broke the news in December 2017 that the Pentagon, at the instigation of a politician, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, had been running AATIP – the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

AATIP was run from 2007 to 2012 by the US Defence Intelligence Agency. They spent $22 million over the course of AATIP, gathering intelligence on UFO sightings across the globe.

One civil servant told the press: “They produced reams of paperwork. After all of that there was really nothing there that we could find. It all pretty much dissolved from that reason alone—and the interest level was losing steam.”

One problem – there was a 490 page report compiled at the end of AATIP. To date it has never been published … and some people say the programme is still ongoing, while a civilian equivalent To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science is very much in existence. .

A few people have since speculated that Donald Trump has set up the Space Force because he had been shown evidence of UFOs.