I usually shy away from UFO stories, as most tend to be fantastically ridiculous, or plainly obvious hoaxes. Even within those realms, some will occasionally catch my interest, but never in an “Oh wow, maybe there’s something to that?” kind of way. Well, stories like this are different. News broke a few months back about the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, which was a government-funded study of the UFO phenomenon, which the government said had to be shut down because they needed to focus on more important things. But they swear, there are no UFOs and they will never, ever fund a project to investigate them again. Just like they assured us after Project Sign…and Project Blue Book…and Project Grudge…and dozens more I’m sure exist but we just haven’t heard about yet. Anyway, footage like this has been leaking out, not questionable video take from some farmer or some kid. These were shot by the U.S. Navy. So a little more gravitas.
A newly-released video which shows U.S. Navy pilots encountering an unidentified flying object (UFO) in 2015 has garnered calls for more research into what these mysterious objects could be.
“What the f— is that thing?” one pilot can be heard saying in the video.
“Wow, what is that, man?” the pilot adds. “Look at that flying!”
The footage was released Friday by To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science (TTSA), a private scientific research and media group. It is led by Dr. Hal Puthoff, a NASA and U.S. Department of Defense adviser and James Semivan, a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency service member.
The clip is said to be “an authentic DoD video that captures the high-speed flight of an unidentified aircraft at low altitude” and “reveals a previously undisclosed Navy encounter that occurred off the East Coast in 2015,” according to a statement from TTSA.
The new video comes on the heels of two other declassified videos that capture alleged encounters between U.S. Navy pilots and unidentified flying objects that were published by the New York Times last December.
The Department of Defense declined to comment on the latest video, but confirmed to ABC News last December that the U.S. government ran a program for investigating reports of unidentified flying objects until 2012.
“The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program ended in the 2012 time frame. It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,” the statement read. “The DoD takes seriously all threats and potential threats to our people, our assets, and our mission and takes action whenever credible information is developed.”
Chris Mellon, a TTSA advisor and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, slammed what he said was the lack of research into what could be behind these videos in an op-ed published Friday in the Washington Post.
“We have no idea what’s behind these weird incidents because we’re not investigating,” Mellon wrote.
“Nobody wants to be ‘the alien guy’ in the national security bureaucracy; nobody wants to be ridiculed or sidelined for drawing attention to the issue,” he added. “This is true up and down the chain of command, and it is a serious and recurring impediment to progress.”
Last December, retired U.S. Navy Cmdr. David Fravor told ABC News that what he believes what he witnessed during a routine training mission on Nov. 14, 2004, “was not from this world.”
He continued: “I’m not crazy, haven’t been drinking. It was — after 18 years of flying, I’ve seen pretty much about everything that I can see in that realm, and this was nothing close.”
The footage is definitely odd, if not mind-blowing. But then again, the paranormal is never quite as sensational as you see in the movies or on TV. It’s much more subtle. A fleeting glimpse of an odd shape, or the sensation that there is just a little something off or odd or out of place. This video, like the others released recently, definitely falls into this category of subtly unsettling. It’s not a fantastical spaceship from Star Wars or Star Trek, but whatever it is, it’s not anything our military recognizes. And that alone should be concerning.
