Skip to main content

US Navy Pilot reports of UFOs go mainstream

On May 26, 2019, the New York Times published a story about five US Navy pilots reporting UFO sightings in 2014 and 2015 off the coast of Florida. The story cites their descriptions of unknown craft that could fly at hypersonic speeds and hover over the ocean. Their reports were handed off to the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

The five Navy pilots were interviewed by the New York Times reporters about the UFO sightings that occurred while they were conducting training maneuvers off the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt before deployment to the Middle East. The Times reporters said that due to the 2014 and 2015 sightings, that the Navy upgraded its classified guidance for how pilots are to report UFOs, which now are officially referred to as Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAP).

A video was included of one of the UFO incidents where the pilots could be heard exclaiming: “Wow, what is that, man? Look at it fly!” The video had been released over a year earlier and was the subject of a March 12, 2018, Fox News interview with Luis Elizondo, the former Pentagon official, who headed AATIP from its 2007 up to 2017 when he retired in protest over the lack of support the program was receiving.

In the Times story, the pilots made clear that no known piloted aircraft could perform the UFO’s complex aerial maneuvers:

What was strange, the pilots said, was that the video showed objects accelerating to hypersonic speed, making sudden stops and instantaneous turns — something beyond the physical limits of a human crew.

They speculated that the UFOs might be part of a highly advanced drone program that raised several safety issues due to the possibility of a midair collision. They refused to speculate further about the UFO’s origins. Earlier in April 2019, the Navy issued new guidelines for reporting UFO sightings, and cited safety concerns as a factor for the need to improve the reporting process.

There are several important takeaways from this latest New York Times story that follows a December 16, 2017 story that analyzed similar sightings reported by Navy pilots back in 2004.

The first is that the US Navy is allowing its pilots to go on the public record about UFO sightings that have national security implications. This has effectively reversed a decades-long military policy dating back to 1954 called JANAP 146(C), which forbade military and civilian pilots discussing UFO sightings that were deemed to have national security implications. JANAP 146 referred to possible prosecution under Espionage Laws for unauthorized transmission of UFO sightings reported by military and civilian pilots that fell under the official reporting mechanism established by JANAP. 

The second takeaway is that the Pentagon is allowing official military surveillance video to be leaked to the public about a phenomenon which on the surface appears unknown, at least to the pilots witnessing them. It is more than likely, however, that the phenomenon is very well known to the military hierarchy who have sanctioned the leaking of the videos, which it needs to be emphasized are official Navy videos whose unauthorized disclosure carries severe penalties as JANAP 146 makes clear.

Third, the fact that the New York Times has released the story is sending a clear signal to other mainstream media sources that it is OK to discuss UFO sightings and their national security implications. We can, therefore, expect many more mainstream media stories about UFOs/UAPs in the near future as evidenced by multiple news sources immediately reporting on the Times story.

What can be concluded about the mainstream media’s newfound enthusiasm to discuss pilot reports of UFO?

It’s important to emphasize that there is no way the Pentagon would reverse its decades-long policy (JANAP 146) unless it was convinced that it could adequately explain the national security implications of UFO sightings. It’s more than likely the video leaks and pilot interviews are part of an official disclosure process of advanced aerospace technologies that are well known to US military leaders.

The Pentagon is slowly educating the public about advanced technologies it has secretly developed. There is abundant and compelling evidence that both the USAF and US Navy have developed secret space programs that utilize the kind of advanced aerospace technologies witnessed by the Navy pilots in the 2014/2015 and 2004 incidents.

It is most likely, however, that the US Air Force’s arsenal of advanced aerospace technologies will be the first secret space program that is to be revealed given the abundance of evidence proving its existence as I have documented in the US Air Force Secret Space Program. While the Navy program focused on deep space operations, the Air Force focused on near Earth operations and its craft deployed technologies that will be easier to explain as human engineered.

It will help the unfolding UFO disclosure narrative greatly if US Navy pilots are bewildered by the advanced technologies they are witnessing, thereby pointing to such technologies belonging to another military service. This will deflect attention away from the Navy SSP to the Air Force’s SSP.

It’s becoming very clear that the Pentagon has decided to move forward with preparing the general public for future announcements of advanced aerospace technologies that have been secretly developed in highly classified programs. This will be used to explain the origins of many UFO sightings over the decades, including those witnessed by military pilots that were studied by AATIP. I for one, don’t believe all UFO sightings can be explained as terrestrially developed advanced technologies, but certainly a great many are.

The advanced aerospace technologies secretly developed by the Air Force, as I explain in the US Air Force Secret Space Program, will be gradually disclosed with the official launch of Space Force, which is part of a long term strategic plan to eventually disclose and merge all advanced aerospace technologies developed by different branches of the US military.  In the meantime, to get more information about AATIP and multiple military pilot reports of UFOs since 2007, you can tune in this Friday to the official launch of the History Channel’s, “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation”.

© Michael E. Salla, Ph.D. Copyright Notice

Further Reading

AATIP, secret space program, UFO, US Navy