What happened
In September 2019 the US Navy went on the record about the three cockpit videos that had circulated since 2017. Spokesman Joseph Gradisher told reporters, first via The Black Vault and then other outlets, that the Navy considered the phenomena shown in the clips to be unidentified. He supplied dates: the first video was recorded on 14 November 2004, the other two on 21 January 2015. He also explained the Navy's new vocabulary. Unidentified aerial phenomena, he said, was simply the descriptor for unauthorized or unidentified aircraft and objects seen entering military training ranges. Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough separately described the clips as part of a wider pattern of range incursions in recent years. The Navy had already updated its procedures for pilots to report such encounters, and senators including Mark Warner had been briefed. The statement did not explain what the objects were, but it settled one question: the footage was authentic military sensor video, and the Navy could not say what it showed.
The official explanation
The Navy made no claim about the objects' nature. It framed the issue as airspace safety and possible intrusions by unknown aircraft, and a spokesman suggested the rise in reports might partly reflect the spread of cheap drones. Analysts such as Mick West later argued that the specific features in the videos can be explained by camera glare, parallax and the motion of the jet, pointing to distant aircraft or balloons rather than exotic craft.
The anomalous case
Governments rarely concede they cannot identify what their own fighter jets filmed. Researcher John Greenewald said he expected the Navy to call the objects drones or balloons and was surprised it chose the word unidentified instead. The 2004 encounter behind the first clip involved more than a camera: Navy personnel have said the cruiser USS Princeton tracked unusual contacts on its SPY-1 radar for days, and pilot David Fravor described an object that mirrored his jet and then vanished. Former AATIP official Luis Elizondo wrote that what the pilots met performed in ways that defied known aerodynamics. By confirming the footage and declining to explain it, the Navy turned a leaked internet curiosity into an official open case.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- U.S. Navy Acknowledges Fighter Pilots' Unexplained Sightings newspaper, maritime-executive.com
Sources
- UFO videos are footage of real 'unidentified' objects, US Navy acknowledges KTVU FOX 2 (Fox News)
- U.S. Navy Acknowledges Fighter Pilots' Unexplained Sightings The Maritime Executive
- Pentagon UFO videos Wikipedia
Witness reports elsewhere
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