Full transcript and Q&A, Brussels, 20/03/2024.

On March 20, at the initiative of Member of the European Parliament Francisco Guerreiro and UAP Coalition Netherlands, a discussion took place on the subject of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). The MEP was joined by astronomer Dr Beatriz Villarroel, ufologist Edoardo Russo,  André Jol, and pilot Christiaan Van Heijst. Pilot Ryan Graves also took part in the event via videoconference. Here is a transcript of his very short but dense presentation, during which the former US Navy pilot brought some crucial questions about UAPs to the attention of Parliament. He then spoke of his own experience and observations of the phenomenon. Notably during an incident in 2014 when he was an F18 pilot. Finally, he mentioned the challenges and issues facing the USA on the subject.

Transcript

Very good. Thank you for convening this public hearing on this topic. It's been stigmatized for far too long and unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAP are real, observed and documented by credible sources yet we know very little about them. Thanks to efforts like today, we are starting to see that change. 

My name is Ryan Graves, and I'm a former F-18 pilot with a decade of service in the United States Navy. I’ve witnessed advanced UAP firsthand, and I founded Americans for Safe Aerospace to support other aircrew and military witnesses and investigate this mystery.

 Today, I would like to call attention to three critical issues that demand our immediate attention. 

• One, pilots are seeing UAP every day, we need to trust your expertise and support them coming forward. I know from my own personal experience, and from pilots and military aircrew who share their experiences with me, that UAP are worthy of investigation. But too often pilots are afraid to share their stories due to stigma. 

• To understand UAP, you must start by collecting the data. As we convene here, UAP are in the global aerospace, but they are grossly underreported. These sightings are not rare, isolated, they are routine. Military air crews and commercial pilots, trained observers whose lives depend on accurate identification, are frequently witnessing this phenomenon but are either unable or unsure how to report UAP officially. 

• Three, government plays an important role to destigmatize UAP and to investigate the phenomenon. The stigma attached to UAP is real and powerful. It silences commercial pilots who fear professional repercussions and discourages military witnesses from sharing their reports. Governments can help by taking reports seriously and creating mechanisms to collect UAP data and investigate and evaluate it to solve this mystery.

• Four, UAP are a global phenomenon and international civilian collaboration is important. There's enormous potential to work collaboratively to better understand UAP whether it is through advocacy, international dialogue or scientific collaboration, the scope of UAP will not be fully understood without global civilian partnerships. 

I'll take a moment to share my story. 

In 2014, I was an F-18 pilot in the Navy Fighter Attack Squadron 11 “The Red Rippers” that is stationed at NAS Oceana in Virginia Beach, Virginia. After upgrades were made to our jets’ radar system, we began detecting unknown objects operating in our airspace. At first, we assumed they were radar errors, but soon we began to correlate the radar tracks with multiple onboard sensors, including infrared systems and eventually through visual ID. During a training mission in warning area Whiskey 72, 10 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, two F-18 Super Hornets were split by a UAP. The object described as a dark gray or black cube inside a clear sphere came within 50 feet of the lead aircraft and was estimated to be five to 5 to 15 feet in diameter. The mission commander terminated the flight immediately and returned to base. 

Our squadron submitted a safety report, but there was no official acknowledgement of the incident and no further mechanism to report the sightings. Soon, these encounters became so frequent that aircrew would discuss the risk of UAP as part of their regular preflight briefs. 

The UAP we encountered and tracked on multiple sensors behaved in ways that surpass our understanding, appearing motionless against hurricane force winds, accelerating over Mach one, and outlasting our fighter jets. 

This experience shared by many other aircrews along the eastern coast continues nearly a decade later, and the identity of these UAP remain unknown. 

Recognizing the need for action and answers, I founded Americans For Safe Aerospace. We believe that UAP present urgent priority for both Aerospace Safety and scientific inquiry. Our focus is on improving public education of UAP, breaking stigma and working towards better transparency and disclosure. I am proud and honored that more than 12,000 people have joined us in our mission at safeaerospace.org. Anyone can join, and I'm confident this is just the beginning. Last year I testified before the US Congress, the organization has also become a haven for military and commercial aircrew who have witnessed UAP. One of the biggest challenges these witnesses face is reporting in the absence of safe intake processes. We are actively working with commercial and military witnesses who have come forward to us and share their accounts. We work with each witness on a case by case basis depending on the witnesses goals, but typically they contact us for help navigating official channels in the US government. In cases with policy implications or where further investigation may be possible. We have helped witnesses share their experiences with members of Congress, professional staff of the Senate Armed Service Committee, investigators at the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which is tasked with investigating UAP and other agencies. 

The majority of witnesses who have contacted us are commercial pilots at major airlines. Often they are veterans with decades of flying experience. Pilots are reporting UAP altitudes that appear to be above them at 40,000 feet potentially in low Earth orbit in the gray zone below the Karman Line, making inexplicable maneuvers like right-hand turns in retrograde orbits, or J hooks. 

Sometimes these reports are reoccurring, with numerous recent sightings north of Hawaii in the northern Atlantic. Some of these reports may represent Starlink satellite flaring, but many defy easy explanations. 

We are working to improve resources to assist pilots with these identifications. In January, I'm proud to share that the Safe Aerospace for Americans Act was introduced in order to give commercial pilots an official, confident and direct channel to report UAP encounters. If pilots see something, they should be able to say something and learn from it. Other witnesses I work with are military veterans who are sharing UAP encounters with our airspace and oceans. The most compelling involve observations of UAP by multiple witnesses and sensor systems. In these cases, again, most witnesses want their accounts documented and evaluated by the US government. 

But there is much more work to be done by the US military to support UAP reporting. I believe military and commercial aircrew witnesses who have reached out to Americans for Safe aerospace are just beginning. We're really only scratching the surface, and more witnesses will share their experiences once it is safe to do so. We believe that safe reporting is crucial to uncover the truth and better understand UAP, and we are committed to supporting pilots and advocating for their voices to be heard by elected leaders and government officials.

Briefly, I want to share a few of the problems and challenges that we face addressing UAP in the United States. 

First, at the most fundamental level, the need for improved reporting and data collection cannot be overstated. I believe more than 90% of UAP events go unreported in the United States. Secondly, UAP transparency remains a challenge. UAP represent a national security problem as much as a scientific opportunity. As a result, there's a delicate balance in UAP information that can be made available to the public responsibly. 

The US military has a vested interest to keep military secret, secret. Even under landmark UAP transparency legislation, the Disclosure Act of 2023 that was passed into law with several key provisions removed, such as a civilian review board, the president as commander in chief has a right to delay disclosure of UAP records indefinitely for national security reasons. Therefore, there's a unique role and public benefit for nonprofit organizations, academics, scientists to study UAP and make those findings publicly available.

I'm happy to report incredible progress has been made on this front. In addition to Americans for Safe Aerospace, the newly founded Sol foundation at Stanford, the Galileo Project at Harvard, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics are all examples of private sector efforts that have potential to change our understanding of UAP. 

The US military is taking this issue seriously because it continues to detect hard to explain events in defended airspace. As recently as this December, Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, which hosts the F-22 Raptor and helps defend Washington DC was subjected to waves of mysterious UAS overflight with a range of sizes and configurations.

 General Gregory M. Guillot, the new NORAD Commander since February, testified to the Senate Armed Service Committee on March 14, 2024, and I quote,”I've gone into the events at Joint Base Langley Eustis, and I'm using that as the centerpiece of my 90 day assessment to see where NORAD and Northcom can and should do more as this emerging capability outstrips the operational framework that we have to address it”.

In addition, the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office in the Pentagon announced earlier this month that it is also deploying purpose built hyperspectral sensors to military bases and training ranges to detect, track and characterize UAP. Simply put, the American military knows there's a domain awareness gap around small form factor objects and is working to close it. How much will be disclosed about the most anomalous cases remains to be seen. In closing, UAP truly are a global phenomenon. I recognize the skepticism surrounding this subject, but UAP will only be understood if we dedicate ourselves to pursuing and evaluating data. Thank you for your time today.

MEP Francisco Guerreiro : From Guillaume Fournier, Sentinel news. He's asking: Are you satisfied with AARO’s latest report? And are you happy with the aftermath of that report in the media?

Ryan Graves: Generally speaking, no, I'm not satisfied with the historical report that was released by the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office as of late. Now, I won't pretend to be a historian of the UAP topic going back to the 40s or earlier. However, one thing was clear is that the language and the dismissal that was inherent within that report did not align with the joint chiefs of staff recommendations for reporting UAPs that went out to all service branches.

And in that reporting, they were very clear that this was a serious issue that was occurring internationally as well as domestically, and was a concern, both for aviation safety and for our domain awareness. So I think that the report did focus on a few key areas, and they chose what they elected to speak about. But I think that the precedent of carrying about this from a defense perspective is ongoing now and a more important part of the conversation.

So to answer the second part of that question, I would hope that the press will be more engaged in the national security angle of this than the little green man side of the conversation.

MEP Francisco Guerreiro : And for Ryan, what one thing could encourage Europe and the US to talk more about with each other on these issues?

And I will then add up, if there should be like an international political move inside the UN, for example, to really connect this, this political drive also because it was stated that the tools, the methodology should also be combined. Or else, we'll just probably be talking about the same events, and we are not double-checking the events and the facts.

Ryan Graves : I think that's a great question. So from the perspective of the UN, I think it has a significant role to play as far as quarterbacking the coordination across Europe to be able to report that from an aviation safety perspective, not only to quarterback it but to bring different players to the table in the context of aviation safety, but what happens with that data, bringing in experts to understand it, and then also looking at conflict lines, I believe the study of UAP and identifying unknown aircraft and objects within our airspace is critical for national security.

So around combat zones around tension areas, our ability to identify these objects and deconflict from potential conflicts is extremely important.

Translation by Kate Sellier

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0