Former Navy Lieutenant Ryan Graves says he and other members of his F/A-18 fighter squadron detected strange, maneuverable and unidentified objects flying in the restricted airspace southeast of Virginia Beach nearly every day for two years beginning in 2015. The sightings were so common, he says, pilots and their crews began to take them for granted. Graves is calling those objects a threat to security in a 60 Minutes interview.
Graves is one of several current and former military members who have spoken publicly about what the Pentagon now calls unidentified aerial phenomena or UAP. These documented sightings of UAP, recorded on gun camera video and photos taken by U.S. service members, have been analyzed by the Defense Department for years. But the government only grudgingly acknowledged the internal efforts after unclassified videos of UAP were leaked to the New York Times in 2017. Now, the Senate Intelligence Committee has ordered the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense to compile a report on unidentified aerial phenomena to be delivered next month.
"I am worried, frankly. You know, if these were tactical jets from another country that were hanging out up there, it would be a massive issue," Graves tells Bill Whitaker in an interview airing Sunday on 60 Minutes. "But because it looks slightly different, we're not willing to actually look at the problem in the face. We're happy to just ignore the fact that these are out there, watching us every day."
To read more, click here.