There is no simple answer to the question of whether the presence of UFOs (unidentified flying objects) represent extraterrestrial activity here on earth or not.
UFOs are indeed real, as the United States Navy has just (re)confirmed, but with a catch—the term they prefer is Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).
Joseph Gradisher, spokesperson for the deputy chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, told the Black Vault that the term UAP “provides the basic descriptor for the sightings/observations of unauthorized/unidentified aircraft/objects that have been observed entering/operating in the airspace of various military controlled training ranges.”
It is ambiguous enough to rule out stating with certainty that the sighting of an UAP is a sighting of an extraterrestrial—or alien—spacecraft. An unauthorized and unidentified aircraft can be anything from a rival nation’s spy plane or drone to a black project of the United States itself. The changing of the term, from UFO to UAP, is not recent, but shows evidence dating as far back as 2004, to a British Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) study of UFO-activity titled Project Condign.
The footage that accompanied the remarks, that has excited many in 2019, is the same that was released in 2017 and publicised by the New York Times. It is footage of an incident that took place near the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in 2004, just 100 miles (160km) off the coast of San Diego.
In it, two F/A-18E/F Super Hornets spot an unidentified tic-tac-shaped object, flying at speeds and performing manoeuvres hitherto thought impossible for modern man-made aerial vehicles. You can watch the footage, taken by the Super Hornet’s gun camera, here.
The video is known as the ‘2004 USS Nimitz FLIR1’ video. First seen in a 2017 article by the New York Times, they were recently published by the ‘To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science’, an organisation co-founded by former Blink-182 member Tom DeLonge.
The cruiser USS Princeton, also in the region at the time, sighted these objects multiple times, dubbing them ‘Anomalous Aerial Vehicles’ that were operating around the Nimitz’s carrier group. The carrier strike group’s official report stated that “The AAVs would descend ‘very rapidly’ from approximately 60,000 feet [18,300 meters] down to approximately 50 feet [15 meters] in a matter of seconds,” and that ‘elongated egg’ or ‘tic tac ‘ shaped objects were approximately 46 feet in length, with the F/1A-18F’s radars unable to obtain a ‘lock’ on them. In addition, they would cause the seawater beneath them to boil and froth, though, as mentioned, the had no visible control surfaces from which to emit heat.
The second video being discussed is the ‘Gimbal’ video, which shows a different incident filmed in 2015 by an infrared camera.
The third clip, dubbed ‘Fly Fast’ was also filmed in January of 2015, but it is not known whether it is of the same object.
These three clips, put together, represent the most reliable pieces of footage of a UFO or a UAP to date. They were captured using the US military’s best available sensors at the time.
While the footage was never consciously declassified by the US military, though they had gone through the official declassification review process, their release came after years of study and analysis of such phenomena by the US government, including a Congress-ordered investigation called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), all of which led to no publicly-released conclusions besides the still-true fact that the objects sighted remain ‘unidentified’.
There are many points to note from the footage: The objects can hover, leave no visible exhaust plumes, (ruling out conventional modes of propulsion), they are capable of hitting speeds of over Mach 5 without generating sonic booms, and the manoeuvres they execute would generate levels of g-force that are far beyond what the human body can tolerate.
What conclusions one can generate from these—whether they are evidence of a top-secret military project or of an alien race—will hinge on a deeper examination of the evidence. DeLonge says the footage is nothing new for him and his team, and that ‘it’s about to get real’—perhaps, hinting that more leaks are to come.
One of the fighter pilots, Commander Fravor, who was part of the F/A-18F team that attempted to intercept the UAPs in 2004, had only this to say to the New York Times:
“I have no idea what I saw...It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s,” adding, “I want to fly one.”