UFO Flew ‘Directly Between’ Two F/A-18 Super Hornets; Ex-Fighter Pilot Calls For Inquiry Into Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

A former US Navy pilot urged government agencies to look into UFO sightings over the United States or face a “national security” threat. 

In an interview with Fox Digital, Ryan Graves, a former naval lieutenant who formerly piloted F/A-18 and has testified to having seen UFOs, opened up about his personal encounters with them. 

Graves served in the Navy for almost 11 years, flying the cutting-edge fighter jet and serving as a flight instructor. 

According to Graves, during his time in the Navy, he and other squadron members encountered an experience that has persisted to this day but was initially unidentified. 

He explained that these unidentified objects first appeared as contacts on their radar and camera systems before becoming visible to the human eye.

He recounted an incident when two aircraft from his squadron flew side by side, and one of these unidentified objects flew directly between them. According to Graves, a team member characterized the object as a “dark gray or black cube inside of a clear sphere.” 

Graves, the founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace, noted that although these objects occasionally remained stationary in an odd manner, they did not act like “tethered balloons.”

Graves explained this happened because these objects can move at high-speed rates. 

He explained that ultimately one would observe these things moving at speeds of around 0.6 to 0.8 Mach or about 250 to 350 knots at such altitudes and that they would either be in some holding pattern or appear to be moving just in one direction. 

Graves asserted that it would either be an adversarial platform and a concern for national security, or the US is unaware of what it is. Yet, it is a topic worthy of scientific investigation and curiosity. 

The ex-pilot said that other pilots are reluctant to share similar experiences. Graves also urged government entities to end their internal divisions and start sharing their information and passing it forward for the benefit of the general populace. 

FA-18E Super Hornets
FA-18E Super Hornets/US Navy photo

A Concern For National Security? 

Sen. Marco Rubio and other government officials have confirmed the existence of UAP and UFO encounters. However, according to Graves, the media’s reporting on them still leaves much to be desired. 

In February 2023, Rubio said there is a risk to flight safety and national security when advanced objects demonstrating advanced technology regularly fly over sensitive or restricted airspace in the US.

The recent appearance of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon over US airspace has also aroused national security concerns. 

However, the instances of balloon sightings over American airspace also brought attention to a much more significant national security concern, namely the ongoing ambiguity surrounding the origin and identification of UFOs. 

For many years, some have claimed that the government has been withholding proof that some UAPs/UFOs are extraterrestrials. Perhaps, however, there has never been evidence to back up this theory.

Government UFO Report Won't Rule Out Visitors from Space | BU Today | Boston University
This 2015 image shows an unidentified object that rotated as it flew along clouds, according to the fighter pilots tracking it. Photo by Department of Defense

On the other hand, some skeptics have argued that UFOs could be a useful screen for the government’s covert flight/technology projects, intended to safeguard secrets and deceive any adversaries.

Nevertheless, the possibility of intelligent life visiting Earth is a common topic of the investigation into Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), basically just UFOs by another name.

A new paper (that hasn’t been peer-reviewed) excluded the more philosophical concerns about life on other planets and instead concentrated on the physics of highly maneuverable UAPs in particular.

The paper was authored by Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), and Harvard University’s Avi Loeb. 

While designing physical restrictions to investigate these UFOs, Kirkpatrick and Loeb found that the most recent UAP observations contradict the rules of physics. 

They stated that “the friction of UAP with the surrounding air or water is expected to generate a bright optical fireball, ionization shell, and tail—implying radio signatures.” But, many of the UAPs studied don’t exhibit these signatures.

Despite what appears to be a blatant indication that something extraterrestrial is unfolding, the report emphasizes that such abnormalities could be explained by more common factors, i.e., our human instruments are insufficiently sensitive to understand what’s happening.

Most UAP sightings are too far away to obtain a highly detailed photograph of the object. The authors noted that the lack of range information makes determining the object’s velocity difficult. 

In other words, these UFOs can be optical illusions caused by sensors. Such reports will appear more frequently as scientists from many organizations and colleges begin developing techniques for analyzing these currently explainable objects.