Perhaps the greatest conspiracy theory of them all -- the one concerning an extra-terrestrial presence on Earth -- was re-ignited in June when Air Force veteran David Grusch filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that the U.S. government possesses craft of non-human origin.
Grusch, alongside two other whistleblowers -- former Navy pilot Ryan Graves and former Navy commander David Fravor -- testified before a Congressional hearing on UFOs, referred to as UAPs, July 26.
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UAPs, Graves said, present a potential risk to national security. He claimed that the government has more information and awareness of these unidentified objects than they let on, and urged transparency in conversations surrounding UAPs.
"I have experience of UAPs firsthand. As we convene here, UAPs are in our air space, but they are grossly underreported," Graves said. "These sightings are not rare or isolated, they are routine. These encounters became so frequent that aircrew would discuss the risk of UAP as part of their regular pre-flight briefs."
"If everyone could see the sensory and video data I witnessed," Graves added, "our national conversation would change."
Both Graves and Fravor discussed specific situations in which they encountered these objects. Both men said that the objects represent a technology that no Earth-bound science can match; humans, they said, could not survive the g-forces of these vehicles.
"Not for the acceleration rates we observed."
Fravor discussed a scenario in which he encountered one of these such objects, saying that the UAP was "perfectly white and smooth." It had neither windows nor seams.
"The object had been observed coming down from over 80,000 feet, rapidly descending to 20,000 feet, hanging out for hours and then going straight back up," Fravor said. "Above 80,000 feet is space."
As Fravor and his pilots drew closer to the object, it vanished; it moved a distance of around 60 miles in the span of a minute.
"We have nothing that can stop in midair and go the other direction. I think it's far beyond the material science that we currently possess," Fravor said. "We have nothing close to it. It was amazing to see. I told my buddy I wanted to fly it. It's an incredible technology."
Graves reported an object that was floating, completely stationary, in the midst of category four hurricane winds, which run between 130 and 150 mph.
"These same objects," he said, "would then accelerate to supersonic speeds, 1.1, 1.2 Mach, and they would do so in very erratic behaviors that I don't have an explanation for."
Since renewing its efforts to investigate reports of UFOs in December, the Pentagon has clocked hundreds of reports. As of April, about half of its 650 reports were categorized as being worthy of investigation.
The Anomaly Resolution Office released a Department of Defense video of a UFO captured by a U.S. drone at a Senate hearing in April. The analyst who testified at the hearing, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, said that the video was "readily explainable."
"In our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics."
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