Fighter pilots say that are ‘stunned’ and exasperated at the lack of support from the pentagon. At The Hill, Marik von Rennenkampff explores some of these experiences and asks whether things have improved for them at this point:
“With aviation safety alerts as their only recourse, frustrated aviators and their commanders noted that the UFOs pose “a severe threat to Naval Aviation” and a “critical risk” to flight safety. Just days before the April 2014 incident, the squadron’s exasperated commander that “it is only a matter of time before this results in a midair [collision].” A few weeks earlier, the skipper of another East Coast squadron, “I feel it may only be a matter of time before one of our F/A-18 aircraft has a mid-air collision.”
Despite the frequency of the encounters and the severity of the hazard, it took the Navy five years to adopt a formal UFO reporting structure. The first batch of these reports, heavily redacted and spanning only a few months in 2019, makes clear that the U.S. government faces a significant challenge.
In one UFO incident, an aviator reported that he had “never seen anything like this before.” In another encounter, an aviator “noticed an object with flight characteristics unlike anything I had seen in my [redacted] years of [redacted]” — implying a particularly anomalous encounter.”
These aren’t just fighter pilots, is if that weren’t enough. The report goes on to explain that high-ranking officers have aired their concerns as well.
Former fighter pilot Ryan Graves was interviewed for this report. He’s become something of an advocate for military and government action regarding UFOs in controlled American airspace since leaving the service.
“I see frustration. I see confusion about what [the aviators are] seeing,” Graves told me. “That’s not normal language [in the UFO reports]. That’s not how we operate.”…
Unsurprisingly, Graves takes the Pentagon’s foot-dragging on UFOs seriously — and personally. “I lost about a friend a year on average while I was in the Navy… This is a dangerous business. To think that we’re adding more danger for no reason is outlandish,” Graves told me.
For Graves, eight years of relative government inaction since his squadron’s 2014 near-collision “is unacceptable. It’s a demonstration of ignoring the needs of their operators. That’s the bottom line.”
The UFO sighting phenomenon has only increased over the years with 2004 being a pivotal moment. Back then fighter plane Nimitz encountered a UFO and was able to record the event. While the government has admitted that they have no idea what these objects are or where they are from, it should alarm everyone to learn that US fighter pilots have no clear orders on how to handle these situations.