Navy pilots reported close encounters with unidentified flying objects during training exercises off the East Coast in 2014 and 2015.
Navy pilots stationed on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt conducting training exercises off the coast of Florida and Virginia from the summer 2014 to spring 2015 reported multiple encounters with objects traveling at supersonic speeds and stopping and accelerating at rates that would kill a person, according to the New York Times.
The incidents caused the Navy to institute new reporting rules for pilots that encounter UFOs.
“There were a number of different reports,” Navy spokesman Joseph Gradisher told the publication. “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.”
Members of the Navy and experts said that the UFOs are most likely commercial drone operations or other earthly objects. None of the pilots suggested that the incidents may have had extraterrestrial origins.
Navy Lt. Danny Accoin had two interactions with UFOs while part of the Roosevelt. Neither time did he see a UFO, but the objects showed up on his plane’s instruments.
“I knew I had it, I knew it was not a false hit,” Accoin said, describing the second incident when he locked on to an object with a training missile and saw it on an infrared camera. But “I could not pick it up visually.”
Navy Lt. Ryan Graves remembered speaking to another pilot that almost hit a UFO.
“I almost hit one of those things,” the pilot told Graves.
The object appeared to be a cube inside of a sphere. The incident prompted the pilot to file an aviation flight safety report, Graves said.
The Stars Academy of Arts and Science released footage of a UFO captured by a Navy plane off the East Coast in 2015 and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. In the video, pilots can be heard openly wondering about what the object is.
“What the f— is that thing,” one can be heard saying.
“Wow, what is that, man?” another said. “Look at that flying!”
The Department of Defense closed down the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, the agency responsible for investigating issues such as the UFO encounters by the Roosevelt’s crew, in 2012. The program’s duties are still carried out by Pentagon officials, however, sources within the department told The New York Times in 2017.
