Even as the U.S. Navy acknowledged for the first time publicly that its aviators have seen and recorded videos of unidentified flying objects, the official spokesperson made sure not to use the term UFOs. Instead, the spokesperson for the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, Joseph Gradisher, calls them “unidentified aerial phenomena” or UAPs.
“That’s because we want to destigmatize the reporting for our aviators, so they don’t hesitate to tell us what they have seen,” Gradisher told Law&Crime Network. “Our aviators are not above ribbing the pilots who have spotted something that cannot be identified,” he said.
Earlier this month, Gradisher first confirmed to The Black Vault – a massive online repository of government documents – the authenticity of three U.S. Navy videos which show unidentified objects making unique aerial maneuvers. Two of the videos were recorded in 2015; the first one, titled “Gimbal,” was captured by a Navy fighter jet from the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, off the eastern seaboard, near the Florida coast. The second one, titled “Go Fast,” occurred off the East Coast and was taken by a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet using the Raytheon ATFLIR Pod that was being operated by a highly trained aerial observer and weapons operator whom the government had spent millions of dollars to train. A third video, titled “FLIR 1,” was captured by a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet, present at the 2004 Nimitz incident off the coast of San Diego.
“They don’t know what they are,” said John Greenewald, the founder of The Black Vault, during an interview on the Brian Ross Investigates program on the Law&Crime Network. “The idea that if you report a UFO, you’re some kind of crazy guy; they want that to go away,” said Greenewald, who has been tracking purported UFO sightings since he was 15. “They want the men and women who are bravely flying in our skies to not feel bad if they see something they can’t identify,” he added.
Raising the question of what else has been sighted over the years, Navy spokesperson, Gradisher said that there continue to be sightings of “incursions in our training areas which affect the safety of our aviators and the security of our operations.”
But Greenewald from The Black Vault says the Navy continues to classify other sightings. “There’s a lot more to this. How many more? They won’t go on the record,” he said on the program.
The three videos were released by the To the Stars Academy of Sciences in 2017 and 2018, and triggered extensive speculation from believers and skeptics alike. The recent confirmation by the US Navy that the objects are indeed “unidentified,” has only added to the debate.
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[image via/To the Stars Academy]
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