US Fighter Pilots Witness UFO (ft. Ryan Graves)

on the you you have to think that that experience flying a fighter jet like that has to be peak flow state, right? 100%. And you know, honestly, it really even starts before we get in, you know, well, we have a brief that we have to prepare and you know, you're joshing around. Once that brief starts, it's very serious. Uh, you finish a brief, maybe have time for a coffee, and then you're you're walking to the jet, you're walking to maintenance, signing it out, signing out the maintenance forms, reviewing the aircraft, strapping in all the gear, you know, 60 lbs of gear or so, and hopping in the jet. You know, we

do what we call building our nest, you know, like we're unloading contents from our kneeboard, we're strapping in, we're placing things on our legs that we need for Um, but then once you get airborne, it's it is it's just like it's like being constantly in the moment, but you are planning ahead. You're always thinking about your fuel state, where you're going, what you need to do, what the contingencies are. And I would say the greatest example of that, the penultimate presence moment, if you will, is landing on the aircraft carrier, especially at night. It's a

very trippy experience. It can be almost meditative when you're out at range and you're just flying towards this singular little light that's in a sea of blackness and literally a sea as well. Uh, and you know, you kind of have this very like slow and gradual perspective change and all of a sudden you start to notice it's getting faster and faster. This perspective change, the light getting brighter and bigger and all a sudden you almost have to kind of snap out of this state and remind yourself that you're about to go through this very intense evolution. It almost feels like um does the jet

become like an appendage of your body at 100%. Yeah, 100%. U you're strapped in there. I mean there's it's not the jet and and you it's just you know you think and the aircraft moves, you know, I mean become so uh synchronized and and part of part of kind of your subconscious, you know, cuz you train so much on it. You're constantly making corrections. uh you're constantly doing things and just all those mechanisms are just so well rehearsed that it just feels like you're you're just part of the jet and you're just moving it around.

You did an amazing podcast actually with Dr. Ia Whitley who deals with the psychology of uh both fighter pilots and What did you learn from her? I mean I imagine she was sort of putting words and analysis and names to things that you've experienced firsthand, but what was that conversation like? Well, you know, we get a lot of what we call ground training where they bring in folks not like herself and teach it to us at a certain level and we go through different reviews, you know, like every six months or a year where we rediscuss these different issues. Um, but I think

what was like most impactful to me like as as the operator, as a guy on the leading edge, we don't always, you know, get to see behind the curtain to like the countless people that like it takes to get us there and make this mission successful. So to really talk and engage with someone who's devoted her career to this, her life to this, it was just really rewarding to kind of have that perspective from someone that is ultimately always on the outside of the actual operation, but is so critical to what we do. Yeah. And I imagine you learn so much

kind of in the abstract before you get into the cockpit and then everything probably goes away at some point. Like there's a great book called The Art of Learning by a guy named Josh Weightskin. He was actually the inspiration for uh searching for Bobby Fischer. So he's this prodigious amazing chess player as a kid and then he became I think a a champion in like Tai Chi push hands or whatever martial arts. So he's one of the few people who've like been at the top of two different disciplines and he writes this book about how to best learn

and it's [clears throat] called it's a great book. It's called The Art of Learning. And he says that you have to you can learn a bunch of mental models, but ultimately when you're like doing the thing, all the mental models just go And you have to kind of integrate. It's like a dog catching a Frisbee is not doing vector calculus when he's catching the He might be using it, but you [laughter] know. Yeah. I mean, those models too are based on assumptions, right? And you're building that model so that you can have some type of, you know, pre-nowledge of what you're getting yourself into so you can hopefully meet the expectations. But and you know I was on flight instructor for

three and a half years and it was called a advanced strike fighter instructor. And so I was working with students who were flying their first tactical jet uh for the first time. Uh, [snorts] and I told them all the time, you know, there's guys that and and girls that are incredibly incredibly studious, you know, memorizing the book, know the procedures inside and out, know exactly what to do, and they get up in the air and it all falls apart, you know, because they're trying to almost kind of reach back to what they learned on the ground instead of just kind of being in

the moment and like physically learning it, you know, which is a totally different mechanism than just memorizing something. And you know, you have to go in with with the right knowledge into those briefs into those missions. But the people that succeeded the best, you know, weren't trying to necessarily prove themselves in the jet. They were there to like actually take it in as a learning experience. M you know James McDonald of Macdonald Douglas, you know, famous American Aerospace Corporation, he uh got really interested in this idea because a lot of his early planes, he

would have fighter pilots fly them and they would kind of freeze up at times and he had a word for this. He would call them gremlins. And so he spent a lot of his research career looking for ghosts in the machine. And when I imagine when you're working with F-18s, you know, these incredibly comp complex instruments, you know, maybe your mind leaps to the conclusion that like there's something at play here that's almost like magical or mystical or something. Did you experience anything like that when you were when you were flying or Gosh, yeah, that's an

interesting question. I'd say, you know, I'd say the instances where that was, you know, maybe part of my my assessment of the situation, if you will, was during the abnormal times during emergencies where there was uncertainty about how things were going to go go down, right? You know, one example is I was about 80 miles west of the boat, 30,000 feet or so, um, nighttime, and all of a sudden

my canopy starts leaking. Uh, and I don't know if it's cracked. I don't know if a seal blew. Um, but you know what? We essentially just the jet and pulled down as fast as we could so that we didn't have a hypoxic situation if it did burst. Uh, and you know, those are the times when you kind of start maybe fitting the pieces together a bit as far as, you know, am I going to get through this? Am I going to get back to the boat in time? Is this going to get worse? Um, I've had multiple issues like that. And,

you know, in fact, maybe even a better story is a time we were going to drop a training round in uh, Saudi Arabia. And I was flying on the way out and I just it was very hard to describe. the stick just didn't feel right. And I had been on this boat. I just got to the squadron, my first fleet squadron, operational squadron. And you know, as a new guy, it's like last thing you want to do is be like, "My stick feels funny." You know, like this is not that's not a diagnosis. It's just maybe it's in my head. Right.

And you know, we're getting out there and it's I'm noticing it more and more. And then we get to the point we're going to drop the bomb. We roll in, you know, 40 degrees, nose down, and I'm in the dive for about two out of the six seconds. I pull up and I abort. And uh my commanding officer who was leading the flight was like, "You know what happened?" I'm like, "Sir, I don't know what to tell you, but my my stick is just not performing the way I would Uh like it feels tough to move in certain directions, and I have no warnings, no cautions, no advisories."

Um and so there's not a whole lot we can do other than just kind of hang on. Uh, and we're progressing back to the boat. It's probably about 100 miles or so, and it's getting worse, and it's getting worse, and it's getting to the point as I'm like 10 miles from the ship where if I want to move the jet to the right, I have to take both hands and force the stick to the right. And if I tap it lightly to the left, the aircraft would essentially overbank 120 degrees immediately. Um, still no warnings, no cautions and you know there's a lot of lessons learned from that from that situation, but came back

boarded uneventfully on the carrier. Um, and it turns out there's one of our bleed lines we call it. They take air in the intake and they siphon some of it off to power generators and do other things. One of those had broken and it was essentially like a plasma beam just cutting things inside the jet. Oh my god. And it was cutting through the control feedback lines uh that attached to the stick. They ended up having to like crane the jet off of it. But, you know, that was certainly a moment where it was, you know, and it wasn't a doubt of the aircraft at first. You doubt yourself first before you kind of jump

to to the aircraft and you don't have any indications. But that was certainly a time where, you know, you're really questioning what's going on. You know, where does this go? And, you know, is there a ghost in this machine that I'm I'm battling? Yeah. And what did you experience per a lot of the listeners of this show that care about the UFO and UAP phenomena which you've played a massive role in both public advocacy wise um but also just in relaying this experience. What happened when you were there?

Yeah. So when we came back from that deployment we began we entered what we call a maintenance phase where we just were not flying as much. We're upgrading some systems. We're even sending some jets to four deployed squadrons. And um one of the we were slated for a major upgrade of our radar system which is our primary detection tool and uh what we use for a lot of the weapon systems. Um and we were going from something called the APG73. Uh it's considered a mechanically scanned array radar. So basically a big dish in front that's moving around

sending down range receiving them back and giving us a picture of what's out uh and we were upgrading to like a very new technology, very capable technology called uh actively electronically scanned array radar. Uh the APG79 and so this system uh it's fixed and it's much much more precise, send a lot more energy in in smaller packets with wherever it wants. And and it took about 8 months for this process to occur, you know, maybe like a month per jet. And so you might be

into a position, but perfectly Uh, we'd see them at 6 or 08 Mach around 250 to 350 knots. Um, and that's those are speeds that we typically operate at. Um, and they would be doing that in a in a holding pattern, in a circular pattern, in a racetrack pattern. And this is not consistent with what we would expect to see from radar errors, but it's what we were seeing. Um, we'd see them meandering sometimes. So, um, non-consistent heading and non-consistent altitudes, kind of just

moving in a general direction, but doing it very sloppy way, which is not again not how we operate. You're just wasting fuel. There's no real reason to do that. And this is you and roughly how many other people in your squadron are kind of noticing this? Yeah. Well, at this time we didn't really know, you know. Um, we we weren't really discussing it. Um, and I think a lot of guys that were seeing it just, you know, either maybe I didn't hear them talk about it or they just weren't talking about it. Um, but even some of these objects were even going over the speed of sound. Y 1.1 1.2. So, you're kind of at this point

personally noticing this and like kind of keeping it to yourself. Pretty much. Yeah. We're talking a little bit cuz there's a guy in my back seat. So there's a little bit of chatter, but it's not something we're like debriefing. It's not something we're we're going to the commanding officer with. But, you know, when we're out there, you know, with this radar system, whatnot, and we see targets or or tracks, we're not just like looking at them. We're we're we basically fly with a trackpad on our throttle and we're moving it around like a computer mouse, and we're selecting these targets. We're categorizing them and organizing them and switching between them. And it just

so happened that um some folks started flying with the AT Fleer. It's a infrared and electrooptical uh targeting system. And as they happen to be within a relatively close range of these these radar errors, yeah, they notice that the fleer, which is looking where the radar is looking, [snorts] is seeing something at these locations there. There's higher energy coming back from it. And typically, it almost just looked like someone was shining a flashlight into the sensor. there wasn't, you know, the skid of an aircraft and we're seeing propulsion come out the back. Um, and at that same

range, our our A9X missile systems that we're carrying are also detecting and locking onto these objects. And so now we're having correlation across three different sensors telling us that there's a physical object here. And that was kind of the moment we, you know, at least those that were aware, we're like, okay, this is like these are probably physical objects. Like we can't assume that they're just errors in the radar. That's, you know, it would be irresponsible. could lead to a safety risk cuz we were essentially just flying through these, ignoring them. Um, and so that that really kind of started, at

least for me and a few others, the process of trying to fly up and visually seeing one of these objects. Uh, and so we get on our radar, we get on our fleer, detect one that's slow, and um, you know, we step down about 800 ft outside of our 500t safety bubble getting look up so we can see it against the blue sky. Um, all our sensor data would get pumped into our helmet like an augmented reality system. So, it's telling us exactly where to look and we'd come by this very manageable merge. I'll say we're not doing at 1200 knots

like we use usually do. Um, and we couldn't see anything. Um, nothing there. We would turn back around and our sensors would reacquire it. Um, there it is again. And yet it seemed to be displaced a bit, but it was generally in the same location. And that, you know, just led to more confusion cuz we had to trust our sensors. Um, and we didn't know really what else to do at that point. And that was kind of the status quo for a few weeks. Uh, but

a few of my buddies in the squadron, they were flying out, two aircraft taking off together. um they're probably about 150 ft apart as they approach this kind of entry point at a fixed GPS location altitude where they enter that uh working area. As soon as they cross that threshold, boom, object shoots down the left or the right wing of the lead aircraft. Uh came within about 50 ft of the cockpit, which is extremely close. Uh and anything splitting a section is a problem. Um they canled the flight, turned back

around, and I I met I saw him in the ready room. He still had all his gear on, had his, you know, mouth gaped open a bit, you know, kind of just looking like, you know, what the heck? He's like, I almost hit one of those [ __ ] things. And, you know, we didn't know, I mean, we knew what he was talking about. We didn't have a name for it, but um or like you know what it looked like. Um cuz this was the first time we had really ever seen one as far as we knew at this point. At least I did. and he described it as a dark gray or black cube inside of a clear sphere.

Um about 5 to 15 feet in diameter was the best estimate he could give it. Um and that really triggered a pretty big reaction to squadron cuz now we had to file paperwork, a safety report, a hazrap or hazard report. Uh and and so we did that and the safety officer took the time to kind of survey the rest of the squadron to see, you know, okay, what other experiences have you had around this? Yeah. And as it turned out, there were like four other near midairs that our squadron had over the past, you know, few months with this issue that went

What was So, you're taking all this in. What was your first instinct as to what this thing might have been? You know, at the time I really I I didn't speculate to what what it could be. UAP wasn't a term I was familiar You know, there were some jokes about UFOs. Um, but you know, I think the general assumption was that this would must have been something that blew in. It must have been some kind of civilian tech. It must have been maybe even worst case an adversarial capability. But,

you know, the more that we kind of talked about the various experiences, what people had and what they were seeing, it just those it didn't fit any of those categories. Even though like we didn't really have any any other label to give it, you know, or any other category to put it in, you know, there's no propellers, there's no propulsion. It seems to be masking. It's IR signature, so we can't even break out to see what it looks like. Uh, and they're traveling at speeds and Oh, by the way, they're out there all day. What were the What were the top speeds that you 1.2 Mach was the fastest I detected one of those? Yeah.

hovering right above the water and then it almost seemed to you know go in and out of the water like this be this kind of transmedium object which is another observable when it comes to UAPs. Did you experience anything like that or So I haven't heard of us in that time frame experiencing that. you know, we can see down to the ocean, you know, the ocean with our radar system, although it gets a little worse as we get really close. We really don't have the system to tell us that something's entering the water unless we're like up on it and we can visually see it. U but these things would be climbing and descending various altitudes. Um we kind

of cap our radar at around, you know, 30,000 ft or so. So if they were coming from higher than that, we weren't really observing it, but very likely that they were operating even higher than that. Uh they weren't respecting the boundaries of our area at all, which was a big clue, right? I mean, if it was some test, they would not be flying through the international commercial channel that's to the north of our area. But these weren't, you wouldn't be almost hitting one of the pilots. Like, that seems pretty unsafe. Even if you're It's funny because we did this great talk last night. It was a lot of fun. And uh I was telling you one of the guys

in the audience was NRO and NASA and he came up to me afterwards and was like I do think some of these things might be redteameing our systems, our detection capabilities in our airspace, which may be true in certain cases, but you wouldn't try to hit a pilot, you know, if that were the case. I don't know what your take is on that. Yeah, you know, I it's hard for me to imagine that they would unwittingly expose us to what would very likely be what's considered

like special access program type tech Um, that would that in itself would be a massive security flaw almost equivalent of telling someone that doesn't even have security clearance about it. And although by the way, we have, you know, very secure ranges that are in the middle of the country to test these types of things. They have engineers, they have pilots, they have whole squadrons that can do that type of work. Um, and so to take that type of tech, basically do an illegal activity to expose us to something we're not read into, and oh, by the way, doing it over international waters where it's very

well documented that there are, you know, adversaries that are hanging out down there, they're trying to see what we're doing, it just doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, I think that's uh that's right. And then also just the shape as well because the final um sensor is the the human eye, right? And so you guys saw these things and uh that that's incredibly important as well. How many eyewitnesses were there to the actual physical object? God, that's a good question. There was probably I mean I

would say probably let's see there was five safety reports. There was two people in each air or each jet. I mean so at least 10 out of the the 25 pilots or so that we had but I imagine it's much higher than that. And then it wasn't just our squadron. But I I later learned to talk to uh other squadrons that were operating out of the same area and even other areas later. But um you know when the New York Times article came out and I saw that I started asking people back on the East Coast cuz I was in a different area. I was asking people in my ready room and

Yeah. Um, and all I've heard that one and sphere is very common as well. Ones that are like outpacing jets, but um, you know, I mean, basically every base that we have in the US, I mean, uh, Norphick, Virginia Beach area, of course, out in California on the west coast. Yes. Um, further inland, Lore, Fallon, these are other, you know, big Navy training ranges. They're seeing them there. Uh, Pax River where we do our test pilot training. Uh, they're having incidents up there. So, you know,

I think where these sensors are, guys are seeing them. It's so fascinating. And we're on the heels of uh very interesting reports that last year at Langley Hampton Air Force Base for 17 days, you had quote unquote drones swarming the base. Yeah. And there was nothing that the US could do about this. Yeah. I mean, it's incredible, right? I mean, Langley provides air response to DC. I mean, that's a major major uh, you know, piece of the puzzle here.

Houses F-22s. They had to move the F22s to a new base cuz they were afraid of potentially losing those assets. Uh, they had similar incursions at uh, Norphick, um, the Norfick Naval Base, which is the largest naval base on the east coast, if not the country. Uh, it's basically where our carriers are stationed. Um, and there's other reports of similar objects that have been further in, like actually over DC itself. So, I mean, these are all adjacent to the areas that we were having our experiences and now we're having this influx of other issues that

are occurring, you know, further north and further north. And if only someone told them that this could potentially be an issue, right? Yeah. If you were to pull, you know, people on the street at this point, we're in pretty interesting times. I think probably 50%, maybe over 50% of the American population now believes in the reality of UFOs. You know, this is obviously going to be sort of a guesstimate on your part, but you speak, I'm sure, with a lot of other fighter pilots. You advocate for, you know, all these safety initiatives around the UAP topic. What percentage of

fighter pilots in and around, you know, military circles do you think are are bought into UAP's existing? Yeah, that's a tough question. Um, I'll tell you what, 100% of people that have had their own experiences are bought in. I'll tell you that. Yeah. Um, you know, I've I've heard from some of the staunchest critics on this topic. They think I'm embarrassing the community by having this conversation. Uh, and then they have their own experience and they're just, you know, like, "Holy [ __ ] you know, I guess I was the guy that was wrong here." So, you know, it's tough to say. I don't

know if I can quantify it with any precision, but um you know, in my experience, guys that are flying that radar, they are seeing these objects and whether they've had the agency to go check it out and gain a visual. I couldn't put a number on that, but it's definitely a topic, at least within the Navy, maybe not the Air Force, that uh guys are are smart on. They're briefing it in their flights. They're um they're debriefing it afterwards. They're submitting reports in some cases. Uh, I've talked to guys who are still not comfortable reporting it either because

they just don't want to put the time in or they don't think anything's going to happen or they don't want it to affect their career in some way. Um, and so I still think it's under reportported regardless. It's fascinating. I I I think the Navy angle to all of this is extremely underrated. I think the Navy has experienced a lot of this stuff for a very long time. And one anecdote is, you know, I did this show on this, you know, mid-century inventor named Thomas Townsen Brown who I'm fascinated with because I think maybe he made some interesting updates in topological

mentions as having set up UFO secrecy along with Robert J. Oppenheimer at, you know, the Atomic Energy Commission of And Sarbacher actually worked at the Harvard Undersea Observatory. Oh, did he? And so I I think there's a lot going on underwater. And I think that the Navy's got to be, you know, have experienced this stuff for a very long time would be my guess. Yeah. You know, that's interesting. And, you know, underwater world is is interesting. You know, they call them USOS or um unidentified submers

submersed objects, I believe. Um, and you know, I'll just say from my experience talking to the guys on subs and whatnot, they're always very KY, very secretive. Um, but think about it, you know, you don't have the the type of like air traffic that you have, you know, on our radar. We're always seeing all these different contacts, a lot of civilian air, but underwater, there's much less of that. And so, if you're seeing something bizarre, it's probably a very high likelihood that it truly is bizarre for some type of misinterpretation. [snorts] Um, and I know going back to gosh, even,

you know, Columbus and even before that, most likely that they were, you know, seeing things under the water that they didn't understand what they were. And uh I know Rear Admiral Tim Galidet uh who used to run uh Noah National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association is highly interested in these underwater anomalies. I know he's he's working on uh pursuing that as a as a research Yeah. There's um the little brother to the NRO which is is now public so I can talk about it but I there's not much known about it is neuro and it's the

underwater version of the NRO and one gets a sense that yeah we've probably detected a lot of these things underwater and do do you think you know per what you described as the kind of the observables of what you saw at Oceanana do you think these things have their own almost like inertial reference frames because one of the observables is they seem to be able to break conservation of momentum, right? Like you're flying Mach, you know, one or two or whatever and then you stop on a dime and it's like that's just impossible like with a you know a gas propulsion

fighter jet and so and then you plasma is also coming off the craft which can reduce uh I guess geforce you know you know inertial drag and so do you think they've figured something out in that in that realm? Obviously, we're in extremely speculative territory here, but yeah. No, I mean then I think it's a natural question though because based off of the flight mechanics, I mean, if you have something that's going supersonic or even, you know, even point8 or so and you immediately stop it. I mean, it's no different than just slamming into the ground, right? I mean, in fact, it's probably a faster stop

than if you were to crush an aircraft into the ground. So, you have to ask yourself, you know, how is it doing that? And I don't understand a physical mechanism that would allow it to do it without having to speculate about some type of ability to, you know, control or manipulate inertia. Yeah. Fleer, uh, which, you know, you guys picked it up with Fleer also seems to be this important kind of sensor modality. Fleer had just been installed in 2004 in the Nimits case with David Um, and so it was like this new Rathon

Fleer system and Rathon's like, we're not in charge of what you detect. what you detect is, you know, it's on you guys or whatever. Um, and so I find that very interesting as well, especially given, you know, how put off who actually lives in Austin out here. He's one of the deepest, you know, on some of the scientific theories around this stuff. And I think one of the questions, you know, average people ask, which is a fair question, is like, why aren't we drowning in high resolution photo of of this stuff? And I think it's because of these blue shifts and red shifts. And so if you were actually

manipulating spaceime in these ways that would comport with all these observables that you're mentioning uh you'd probably you know it would be it would be things at the ends of the electromagnetic wave spectrum not in the RBG spectrum that we sort of see and so it makes sense that Fleer would pick this stuff up you know well our systems too you know they're designed for very specific purposes and the way our systems work is that you know we have two giant or one giant and you know propulsion system in aircraft and they

expel a lot of heat and the rest of the aircraft kind of absorbs energy from the friction of the air and things of that nature. Um and so the system is calibrated because that's the expectation what you're going to see. So you can break out rivets on a jet, you can see the cockpit um and you can very clearly see um you know the the flames in in the exhaust if you will. Uh but if you had something that was propulsing itself in an entirely different mechanism that was putting energy out equally across the skin of his body, it

might just look like a blur, a um yeah, just a blur essentially because um it's you know we're kind of getting the worst part of the image and it's that's what's being um that's type of energy that's putting out across the entire surface of the object. And so the fleer, although it might be effective for detecting that there's energy coming from there, it's essentially masking itself so that we can't see. And it might not be doing that potentially. It could be a byproduct propulsion or it could just be a clever uh masking system. It's fascinating. One of the

things that always stood out to me about the Fraver testimony was he would say it almost felt like the craft detected him, like knew that, you know, he was sort of looking at it. And is is that something that comports with any of what your squadron saw? No, it doesn't. Not in my experience. Well, I've heard some stories after the fact, but you know, they would be doing their own thing. They'd be in the area. Uh so it seemed like they were focused there, but they weren't like if we showed up, they weren't like coming over to us or going away. They just continued to do their own thing.

Um so we certainly didn't have that type of experience. Uh but you know, I have heard, you know, multiple cases of these maneuvering around aircraft um up in Pax Rivers. fascinating case with one of my good friends who had basically a sphere pull up about 15 feet from his cockpit while he's, you know, maneuvering pretty quickly and hang out there for about 20 seconds and then start off in front of him. Um, there's another instance down in New Orleans where uh an object with the same description shot past the cockpit, initially thought it was a

experienced Advanced UAP firsthand and I'm here to voice the concerns of more than 30 commercial air crew and military veterans who have confided their similar encounters with me. It was a historic debt. It was incredible. I mean I I couldn't believe it. I was lucky enough to be in the room and we talked to each other for a bit afterwards and it was just like I I never thought this topic would ever get that sort of air time on that level. And so how did you feel about that, man? I mean, just what an incredible experience and day, you know? It was

really powerful for me when I went there. I mean, I didn't know where I was going to like show up, right? So, it's like, I got to find the room. And we just so happened to be walking in the same direction as everyone else. And um, you know, we see the line of people and we're like, "Oh, okay. Well, this must be a spot. Interesting." You know, it's cool. There's a line. And we kind of get to the front line, realize it was a corner. You take the corner and there's, you know, another 500 people lined up on that side. And it was just I mean it was really uh powerful to to just see all the support and the interest you know in person instead of just kind of the

random comments on Twitter or X excuse me. Mhm. Um, but you know, in a sense, it's almost like almost like landing on the boat, at least it was for me, where you're just kind of locked in and trying to push away all the, you know, all the doubts and other thoughts that you might have. Just kind of get into the zone, be very present, like, you know, we mentioned earlier. Um, I met Dave for the first time there. Got to speak to his lawyer and some of the other folks out back. Um, it was kind, you know, funny anecdote. We were

kind of getting ready to line up to walk out. Uh-huh. And uh it was like Dave was well Dave Brush was standing there and then Fraver and they both just kind of like grabbed my shoulders and pushed me to front. You first. This is your show. Get That's pretty wild. Yeah. And I was like, "Here we go." You know, and I mean cameras clicking and you could you almost feel them. It's almost like you can't even hear them in some sense, you know? I mean, it's just really powerful. But you know what was so fascin or so rewarding I think for me was that you know you see hearings on

the news and it's usually like you know the members are maybe attacking the witness or whomever is testifying or maybe it's a partisan issue and there's just a lot of back and forth on on the sides of the aisle. But I've never seen a hearing that was quite like that where it just seemed like everyone was working together, right? We were all trying to figure this out. It wasn't partisan. it wasn't um adversarial. Uh and I think it's, you know, strange that this is an issue that's starting to bring out at least politically like some

of the best of us where we can have like a normal adult conversation and maybe move the ball forward. Yeah, it was wild to see AOC and Matt Gates just completely sympatico, you [laughter] know, just in total agreement over this issue. it's uh I think that this might be the only issue [laughter] in which they agree on everything. Um, so you're you're sitting there and you're sitting with uh, you know, David Fraver and with David Gush and you and David Fraver have these amazing kind of eyewitness accounts and then you have David Grush

sitting next to you saying that there's been a covert reverse engineering program. We've actually had a crash retrieval program for, you know, 70 plus years around this Do you believe that? Do you think that the US government is reverse engineering UFOs? Oh, that's a tough one. You know, um I you know, in my job as a Navy pilot, I was not exposed to any type of technology like that or any type of programs like that. And so the only information that I have to go off of is the same information that basically

you know? I [laughter] mean, I think it's tough for everybody. Um it's one of those things I think that you know the only satisfying um resolution is to have it essentially be admitted and pulled out to some degree by the government itself. Um and although I think people are you know they have their scales of probability and I think you know he moved the needle quite a bit closer to certainty than Yeah. than before. And um you know it's it you know I I listened to a little bit of his story before the

hearing but you know a lot of that was new information for me as well and it was very surreal experience me sitting next to someone testifying to that type of information. so yeah I mean I I I believe what he said. I believe he did it in earnest and unless he was being manipulated, you know, I think that the the statements that he made are, you know, the first line of attack for a representative to further understand this and hopefully uncover what's going on. Totally. And he gave over a thousand

pages to the inspector general, the ICIG, Thomas Mannheim, who the the quote from Mannheim was, "This is urgent and credible." And so, yeah, I don't know, unless it's like something where the tip of the iceberg doesn't resemble the rest of the iceberg or something. And so, um, we're jumping to conclusions around exotic material falling from the sky, but it like has to do with something that we're not even thinking of. There are things you can fathom like that, but on the surface, you have a guy I've

gotten to know him personally. I think he's extremely high integrity, really, really smart, has literally an autistic attention to detail, and uh yeah, I think it's it's hard to argue with, and it's so near-term falsifiable where it's like he brought 40 people who claim to have worked on this stuff firsthand to the IC inspector I if something doesn't pop in the next 20 years, I think you you know, it's it's kind of falsifiable, right? So it's like going to inflect one way or the

other where people will be like that was a scop or they'll be like this was real and just incentive or motivation wise it doesn't make sense for him to you know do that if he doesn't actually believe it. Yeah. I mean he was being very specific. He wasn't just kind of saying oh you know we've heard rumors of this that and the other thing. I mean you know I mean I heard him say he's like I can tell you the location. Let's get in a skiff. So I mean you don't say that unless you're highly confident about what you're saying cuz I mean you're just setting yourself up for failure. Yep. And more and more have has come out around like possible past gatekeepers in

politics. You hear Dick Cheny's name, you know, around uh you hear George W. Bush might have contemplated UFO disclosure. And a part of me and then you, you know, we talked about it last night, John Podesta, who's you know, you could say Clinton's chief political operative, you know, was the White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, basically ran Hillary's campaign, extremely into this topic. I I sort of want to question some of these public figures and be like, "What do you know about this stuff?" I mean, it's I mean, a lot of these people are alive,

you know, let's let's have the conversation. And I certainly understand why they would be hesitant to do that, you know, I I agree with you. I think more attention should be put on these folks and have them at least provide a statement about what they know. And you know, there's always a fear, not fear, but you know, the expectation that they're just simply going to deny it cuz I mean, if they are read into these details, they would be breaking the law and would very likely face consequences. Totally. Yeah. No, it's a it's understandable that it would move in this sort of step function way where

it's like a little more comes out and then, you know, you you get regulatory action and then a little more can come out and that you wouldn't get this kind of catastrophic blow up. Is that do you think that's part of an intentional strategy or is that just kind of what's happening through a outside group? I think it's I think it's probably somewhat both. So like I don't think we talked about this last night. Think about the psychology of a whistleblower, right? Like you're this like patriotic guy with a military or intel background. Maybe you bump into this stuff. There was, you know, this UAP task force that

was created that Grush kind of came out of. this guy David Grush who testified with Ryan and there are other kind of you know high level officials who came out of that you know task force if you bump into any of these programs maybe these people have intersected with your career in the past as David Grush has said and himself you're probably going to want to coordinate somewhat with people on the inside to do this in a safe way that makes sense for American national security so yeah I don't think uh any of

the people at the forefront of disclosure by the way myself included want everything all out all at once. Having said that, as an academic field, I mean it's like it's like it's like the nuclear thing is a great example, right? So you have like nuclear trade secrets that like should never get out, but like nuclear science like nuclear physics is a program at every elite university. And the idea that, you know, I I think we're kind of stuck in these physics, you know, string theory and some other stuff. Uh that that's really travesty cuz it's just like we

have this like massive brain drain going on uh on this like really really big level where not to insult any strength theorists out there. I think they're very smart strength theorems, but um if if we don't have access to kind of greater ontological truth, like your your physics theories are going to be like way off. But yeah, I don't I don't think there is there are very many proponents of quote unquote catastrophic disclosure on the inside. But I don't think most people on the inside want everything out. I don't think they want trade secrets that will give China or

Russia an advantage over the US. You know, they don't want those things out. Um, but I do think and then I also think there's probably something around softening the blow for the onlogical shock or whatever where it's like if you have some top of the pyramid view of this, it's probably pretty expansive and deviates a lot from the average person's worldview and so maybe some sort of conditioning thing is happening. I I think uh more likely though it's emergent and so like it's

like one person makes a move here. There are these like game theory dynamics around disclosure or like this person wants this stuff to come out and then this person over here is like wait I've been sitting on this stuff and they're getting the glory here and there's like stuff like that happening that's like doesn't seem that coordinated. It seems like human and then in the world in which there are NHI which I I am pretty sympathetic to. I think you know we're not apex you know consciousness. Uh I think more likely than not if it's coordinated it's not being coordinated by us in the world in which they exist.

We always talk about what's happening uh within our community if you could say. But yeah I mean if if that's true then you know there's other calculus that we're totally not taking into account. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's fascinating. Yeah. I I I'm really curious to see where it goes. Do you feel like you have any sort of prognosis or Yeah. prediction for the next few years? I'm not playing that game. [laughter] That's good on you. Yeah. But I mean, I see I see the change that's happening right now. I don't know necessarily where it comes to

culmination. I don't know when it ends, but there certainly is an acceleration of the process. You know, there seem to be more cases. There seems to be more people that want to talk about it. And you know, I I think there's this kind of interplay between this disclosure process, whether government's willing to share information and release stuff, whether you know, the government or whether factions within the government are doing that, and the process of people out in the civilian world, and the commercial world that are saying, "Hey, you know, like, well, I guess I'll investigate this. I could put resources here. I might be able to detect these objects. I might be able to understand

And the more the disclosure process moves forward and information comes out, it motivates the outside. And the more work that happens on the outside, the more pressure that's exerted to release information on the government. And I think we've been seeing this kind of interplay and and buildup between those two groups. Y and you know what's going to what's going to be the end result? Where's the where's the big reveal going to come from? I guess is to be seen. Totally. I it's this beautiful crowdsourced effort. And I think there can sometimes be ego in this space of like I want to be the

one or whatever. But it's it's this amazing thing where if you if you push it, you know, a little farther, you often get something back. It's a social movement in a lot of ways, right? I mean, the more information that comes out, the more people understand it's okay to talk about uh and they stop dismissing the things that they maybe have as far as information or maybe that they've experienced. And you know, I've been privileged to talk to a ton of people on this topic and you know, the amount of people that have had their own personal experiences are I mean, pretty

close to 50%. Wild and [clears throat] maybe that's even higher once people feel more comfortable. I mean, even last night, you know, the question was asked and you know, maybe like 30% of the crowd raised their hands. And so, yeah, I mean, the more you know, even if you do an action in this in this space and it doesn't lead to the government releasing a new video or something, you're you're educating the populace on why this matters, why it's important. And, you know, once I've met a lot of naysayers as well, and it's easy to tell that they

haven't done any research into this because they would see the connections and at least have some interest in it instead of being completely dismissive. And so more information that gets out there, you know, we're changing minds, making people understand this serious issue, and all that's going to just lead to greater understanding. Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. Uh you're you're doing work with that. I mean, you're doing you're doing that job, you know, with this podcast. So, thank you. Oh, man. Well, do doing my small part, but I appreciate that. Uh something we we share is an interest in the private

sector applications of this stuff. And despite conspiracy theories about, you know, I work with Peter Teal, people think he's reverse engineering a UFO. I wish I It's not happening. It's not happening. I wish you were more interested in in in doing things like I think the um the trouble with some of this stuff in the private sector world is it's just long time horizons. It's they're moonshots. They're really like, you know, low probability but extremely important, you know, work. And so we

is that a lot of our best and brightest talent aren't working at the big primes anymore or in government positions. They're working at, you know, private sector companies. And so, what do you see? Do you think there's opportunity here? I know you're doing some interesting work in this area. Yeah, I you know, I think I consider this part of the kind of discovery process. How can we motivate the government to release information because there's a pressure coming from the outside to move the conversation forward and I think it takes you know it takes place in kind of two categories. There are there are companies and and

people that are working on tech that is inspired uh by this topic. Um some very interesting technologies by some very you know intelligent people and mainstream people. uh advanced propulsion, advanced materials, uh energy production, uh and integrating that into unique ways that would be consistent with some of the things that we're observing. And you know, I think some of these capabilities are capabilities that can come online say like in a normal 5 to six year timeline [snorts] uh without having to be a 10 or

15 year type project. I think they could be broken down and I think really the key to doing that is finding opportunities that have wide applicability, right? So, of course, if you can uh say generate energy in the skin of an aircraft, that would be highly applicable to many different industries, but it also might validate or invalidate something that we're seeing in the UAP topic. On the other side of that coin, it's not just about trying to put forward these different technologies. It's about, you know, how do we better understand what we're seeing? How do we sense these better?

And that's an area I've spent a lot of time thinking on. what technologies can we put forward uh that will provide us you know the ability to detect these objects to characterize them and then further evaluate you know exactly what they are what their intent are and you know where they came from. Um I've started a small company that is building uh what we believe to be the next generation of space situational awareness cameras that will be able to provide uh highly detailed information around non-traditional orbital uh trajectories. Uh these can go on satellites and it has a great use case

where you know it can provide awareness to the satellite operator. So they can choose or not choose m to maneuver their their uh space vehicle and extend the lifespan. But this would also be a source of uh uh UAP detection that could be uh commercialized and sold as potentially intelligence product or uh whe whether within DoD or within the commercial markets. Um and so I think you know the way that commercial space is evolving and being deregulated or at least not deregulated but it's loosening

up quite a bit uh I think the time is now for companies and u other folks to look to how they can contribute to this project through open- source technology through commercial projects and you know that's an area that I've talked to a number of people that are interested in funding. uh if anyone's interested in learning more about that, be happy to to share that information and and help them on their on their journey because that's I think the path that's going to move us into understanding this and not having to just simply sit back and wait for the

government to share with us. And I think also unconstraining or opening up some of these like prior uh biases that we have especially in physics. Carl Nell just uh did a great interview for Danny Sheihan's New Paradigm Institute and he was talking about not only the preponderance of of life in the universe and how you know it's probably much older than we think it is and you know all sorts of things there but also when it comes to physics faster than light travel you know uh

Miguel Alubiieri figured out this sort of theoretical model and NASA's been studying this for years you have Sunonny White at NASA you know doing interesting work in this area and it involves I guess negative mass or negative energy but we actually detected negative energy you know with the casmir effect and so there are all these ways in which if you talk to an average scientist at you know any sort of university they'll say these things are just impossible and then you'll talk to like somebody doing interesting work at in at the frontier of R&D at aerospace like I just met this

uh former head of revolutionary tech at skunk works and it's like he agrees with all this kind of ostensibly wacky stuff that I believe way more than, you know, any of these like prestigious professors and it's this weird thing where it feels like aerospace has the real science and academia just doesn't. What do you think? Yeah, I mean I agree with you. It seems kind of like a zero sum game in academia where everyone's competing for the same grants. The standards are extremely high uh and no one wants to screw with their career path so they can get tenure and

then kind of settle into whatever they actually really want to do. Y uh but you know that's different than how the startup world works in the technology world. You know guys are they're pushing the edge of the boundaries and they the only limitations they have are are their resources and um and what's capable. So yeah I agree with you 100%. I think a lot of the real interesting work is is happening out there and that's why again I think it's such an interesting time now where that that type of environment this you know this startup community that we have could be leveraged to be able to push this conversation forward. I I I don't

think we can rely on academia to do Absolutely. It would be awesome if young talented STEM students watch content like this and they are get opened up to these frameworks and they can work on thing and we were talking about it last night. As important is the process of discovery, right? What can we do in the private sector? What can we do in a commercial world in order to bring forward capabilities, technology, and understanding that's going to allow us to decipher this without waiting for the government to throw us grabs essentially? And so there's multiple

organizations out there. Some of them are attacking it from a technology side. Can we protect uh potentially create technology that replicates some of the uh kinematics that we're seeing? If we can imagine perhaps they have capabilities in the skin of their vehicle to generate power versus having that engine in the back. So there are companies working on some very interesting energy and materials propulsion technologies. Um on the other side there's how do we better understand this scientifically? It's like SpaceX is an amazing company but it's an earthbased space company and

it it'll take a human on a chemical combustion rocket 80,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri B. uh which is not viable obviously and so we need some sort of space-time metric engineering you know just to kind of speculate a little bit one of the things that fascinates me about the UAP topic is if you know if we can make the assumption that these are from somewhere else they're observable they're studyable you know are we one or two like breakthroughs away from having the same capabilities you know that would you know immediately lock potentially close

to our lifetimes access to the rest of the galaxy in a lot of ways and I can't think of a a a grander vision for focusing our energy on something. Oh, yeah. It would be amazing. And that was actually probably when I interviewed David Grush uh right after your guys's amazing testimony. That was probably the thing the thing he said that was seared the most in my mind which is he said if I were a betting man I think that this represents tech that is not a step-wise leap ahead of humanity but it's almost

an alternative timeline in which they went some civil propulsion route and we went this destructive catastrophic nuclear route and I just I was like holy [ __ ] that's amazing. Yeah, I thought of similar things, right? Like I mean again making the assumption they're from elsewhere. I mean what if they evolved on a a highly uh a large planet that had very high gravity, right? And perhaps it the economics didn't work out such that you know chemical rockets were a solution that was ever viable and so they maybe it took them longer to get to

space but then when they did they did it by developing a technology that either we haven't got to or never considered because there was more economic option on the table. That's fascinating. Yeah. So like mass ejection wouldn't even work cuz the gravity was so intense. So you need some sort of space-time warping. Wow, that's cool. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, there's so many there's a plethora of options when it comes to this stuff. And I Yeah, I think per our conversation on, you know, kind of academia, aerospace in the 40s and 50s. You were telling me earlier that um you live in

New Hampshire and you live pretty close to this pub that is uh dedicated to the grav gravity research foundation I believe uh you know this work of Roger Babson they're doing all sorts of gravity research and this is a time when military and academia were extremely entangled and then you had these things called the Mansfield amendments which disentangled them and you have the invention secrecy act of 1952 as well where it felt like you know physics physics became dangerous. You had, you know, atom bomb up until a thermonuclear

bomb and you have to think, you know, that like physics itself needs to be treated in this sort of more careful And so, yeah, I think we're in this weird time now where a lot of people feel very kind of duped by a lot of the frameworks that are public, string theory, quantum gravity, that sort of thing. And yeah, they they want tech to reacelerate cuz we live in this we live in this horrible multi-polar world that's on the brink of nuclear catastrophe. Like if there was ever time to get better exciting civil side use

cases and explore the stars, it would be now. Yeah, [laughter] absolutely. And you know, when I think about that, I I kind of go back to your your comment earlier about, you know, we can't release things that are going to damage our national security, right? We're not suicidal. It doesn't make sense to do that. We certainly can't rely on something else that may be out there to to stop us from wronging ourselves. Um, but you know, nuclear physics is a known quantity. It exists and people share that. We don't share the secrets to our nuclear weapons. And I think, you know,

I think that's a fair model for how this can be understood, right? We don't have to maybe give away the secrets of the material science of the propulsion system of how it's integrated in other tech, but the base reality that exists. I think that's my hope for, you know, people talk about disclosure. What does that really mean? But I think ultimately that's what it needs to be just an acknowledgement of the reality of the situation and allowing them to share hopefully, you know, an assessment of maybe not the star system they're from, but you know, to understand that they're not from here. It's it's not an

advocating for UFO disclosure. Some people support Arrow, others say that, you know, they are somehow co-opted or they're not doing their job in good uh in collecting this data. They've recently had a change of the guard. So from this guy Kirkpatrick to I think you told me who the new leader is, John Kowski. John Kowski. What do you think of Arrow as an organization? Yeah, you know, as an organization, I think that um you know, one, they've been given a very challenging task uh

and it's something that requires them to interface with essentially the whole of the government to be able to resolve. So, just right off the bat, understanding that they have a very colossal task on their hands. Um, but you know, I, you know, I've know they've received a lot of criticism as well, um, from people online that have suggested they're not doing their job, um, earnestly. Um, and, you know, I think the individuals within the office themselves are, you know, doing the best work that they can do with the resources

they have. Um, but ultimately, you know, they need to be properly funded, which I believe has occurred, and they need to have access to the right information. Um, and ultimately it's a DoD organization, right? They're not there to um succumb to the needs and desires of the American people necessarily that are looking for particular answers to questions they have. Uh, and so we, you know, I think we need to understand that, you know, they're doing it within the confines of of answering to a customer that isn't necessarily the

biggest disappointment that that was removed from the first version of the UAP Disclosure Act and we're dwindling on our options for this year's version, but I think that is really going to be the key pieces key piece that, you know, Arrow just simply can't can't fulfill, right? They're not designed to do that. They don't have the the the authority to be able to share and declassify information for the most part. Uh, and so, yeah, I think, you know, I think there's other components that are needed outside of just Arrow. Yeah, it would be amazing if we got that um executive

panel of interdisciplinary experts to sort of you know help with this process. You have worked a lot on kind of aviation safety initiatives around this. I I guess I'm somewhat of a split mind where I'm like my take is going to be very armchair compared to somebody like yours when it comes to aviation safety. So I'll sort of like be differential to like you and other fighter pilots. And then at the same time, I'm like, this stuff has probably been going on for a long time if it's the UAP phenomena. And

is you hit something in the air and you lose your aircraft. And you know, that's obviously the worst case scenario. And I think for a military pilot that is not treating this seriously, that's a much higher probability than say a commercial airliner that they're just sitting there in the chair, you know, they're looking outside, they get all the time in the their cognitive loading, as we call it, is is pretty low. Um, they don't have the agency to maneuver, so they're on a very strict path. Um, and you know, I think that the risk is lessened in that particular scenario. As a military pilot, we are often

operating at the edge of your cognitive ability, you know, and starting to maybe shed things. Um, that's when you have a much higher risk of having an incident. Um, when you're, um, you work as hard as you can, you're doing, you know, mental math, you're targeting into all these different groups, you're getting blown with the wind, you're flying next to your lead, all these things compound and then that's when you have an issue. Um there's there's a gentleman that sends me on several times a month stories that

he's pulled up about aircraft that have mysteriously gone missing. Um And so there, you know, some of them are, hey, he he saw an object and he chased it and then, you know, 5 minutes later he flamed out or he crashed. interesting. Um there's a number of cases where it's just, you know, an an aircraft hits an airborne object and it crashes and there's no knowledge or understanding of what the object was they hit. And I'm not necessarily attributing to UAP specifically, but I think there's a lot more research that

can be done to validate some some issues that have occurred in the past that may or may not be related to this. Yeah. what was considered a national security issue in the context of foo fighters 1942 to 1945 and specifically in Bavaria, southern Germany, you had these like what looked like controlled controlled balls of lightning kind of showing up and but messing with Allied fighter flight paths and fighter pilot flight paths and it was it seemed like you know there was some sort of intentionality on the part of these

objects and the the pilots were definitely kind of they felt like they're they were being kind of obstructed in their abilities to fly. Safety is one thing. National security, however, I think it's a very clear and present danger, right? So, when we're flying around in our jet, we're being very cautious about what aircraft are out there. And if this was a a tactical scenario, I mean, we have to know 100% what each one of those aircraft are. Are they a threat? Are they a commercial airliner? And we're going to, you know, start World War II by shooting down, you know, 100 people

in an aircraft. Uh and so we have so much technology and so much training into that. And so when you just you take this very complex scenario and then you just kind of sprinkle in all these unknowns, right? It becomes a massive issue. Yeah. Even if the conclusion is we know the signatures of these things, there's not much you can do, but like when you detect it, you know what's going on. You know, maybe don't be aggressive and kind of do your thing or something. Even if that's the takeaway, like it's good to have that, right? And look what's

happening, you know, in Ukraine, of course. I mean, having unidentified, non-responsive, unknown origin type vehicles that are operating near our military bases. I mean, you can see the devastating effects that that could potentially lead to. And, you know, I think one of the big things we see is that guys say, "Oh, you know, someone that might be a bit incredulous on this topic is saying, oh yeah, I don't believe in UFOs. That's nothing." Or, "I don't even want to report this." And what if it is an adversary that is observing our bases and doing something? You know, it's just

this massive flaw. And we've learned these lessons in the past, but it seems like we're repeating this error by just the force of the stigma that is surrounding this topic. What do you think of, you know, Lou Alzando has been out for a while now, you know, since 2017. uh he was kind of one of the first whistleblowers and he in the past has said maybe UFOs are sort of prepping the battle space. Maybe they're doing recon or sort of a scouting job and maybe they're they are somewhat adversarial

and they haven't stopped nuclear wars in the past. Do you think that that's a Well, that was one of my first assumptions when I uh we were seeing these on the Eastern Seabboard. We weren't assuming they were uh UFOs doing that, but we're like, "Hey, this could be an adversary that is soaking up our waveforms, that is trying to decrypt our radios, that is observing our tactics." And if we just ignore them and let that happen, you know, the next time we go into a major conflict, all of a sudden, they know everything we're doing. They can jam us. They can break our radios.

And so, we were setting ourselves up for failure in that point. So, I do get the sense that even just having them out there in the passive kind of non-escript way they were could very well just be a recon type There's a long history of fighter pilots like yourself having seen these things. Um, so you have Gordon Cooper who uh, you know, was one of the first American astronauts who spent more time in space. I think he spent 36 hours in space or something for the Mercury mission. Ted Stevens, who was a senator from Alaska, who actually helped start OAP with uh

Harry Reid, right? Um actually saw saw a UFO, I think, in World War II as well. And then recently, uh I interviewed our mutual friend James Fox. He talked about Buzz Aldrin's sister telling him that Buzz Aldrin, as a fighter pilot in World War II, saw a UFO, I think, in Japan. I don't know where. So, I think this is a very it's probably a much more common occurrence. And I I'm uh just uh very grateful for uh you to uh be the tip of the spear as far as coming out and destigmatizing it because

a lot of this stuff is going on, water cooler conversations, hallway conversations, and you're really making it public. Yeah. I mean, before before I spoke out, I mean, you'd hear the talks, right? Even just not just the historical ones, but guys, you know, kind of older guys been flying for a while, like they all just seem to have that cool story they tell you, you know, once they had a few drinks in them. [laughter] Right. Exactly. [snorts] And so, yeah, I think this is I think this is much more per pervasive. I think it's been happening for a while and and it's still happening. You know, I mean, I've spoke to current astronauts that have had their own instances. Um, so it's, you

know, it's strange how we we tend to discount the past, even the recent past on this topic, but um, it does seem to be very per pervasive. And, you know, when I when I spoke out about this, I I did it simply because I was hearing that my colleagues were having no resolution to this issue. it was still a safety issue. It wasn't getting run up the chain. It wasn't getting resolved. Um, and you know, my motivation was simply to be able to provide some additional information so that this would hopefully get the attention it needed to get

resolved. And of course, since then, I've learned it's not usually resolvable. Um, as as Arrow has learned. Despite the name. Um and but and then I you know I kind of became a beacon for people to call and report their their incidents for me primarily aviators but all sorts of people and I you know that's what led me to believe that you know wow this is this isn't just military pilots it's commercial pilots and you know that was my goal going back to the hearing was just simply to be able to do the same thing I was trying to do for the

military guys is to be able to share just how prevalent this was and how this was something that was just going unmitigated and was you know a real iss And um I'm I'm eager to see where this conversation is in 5 years, whether there's full disclosure or or not. I think that this topic and conversation is going to continue to grow in the public sphere. People are going to be more willing to share their experiences and stories and I think we're going to learn a lot from that. I'm equally eager. I think you're going to play a big part in it. And uh before

we wrap up, I you mentioned something fascinating to me, which is you know one of the central characters whose voice we all know from one of the three videos that the New York Times released in 2017 that the Pentagon admitted was real in there's a whole fleet of them. Look on My gosh, bro. Going against the wind. The wind's 120 knots west. The whole thing, dude.

Well, if there's anything, it's rotating. You want to talk about that? Uh, yeah. I'll talk about a little bit, you know. So, I mean, when I first saw the New York Times pop, uh, massive deja vu, right? I'm seeing this. What? What the heck? You know, and um my gosh, that's the video I saw in the classified space, my very good buddy. I'm not going to say his name. Um who recorded that video and uh of course the pilot in the front seat as well, but this particular gentleman was in my wedding party. We went through training in Virginia

when we first got the F-18 together. Went to the boat for the first time at night together. We got sent to the same squadron after that together. Uh, and then as I was leaving that squadron, he actually put in a package to um transfer from a weapon system officer, the backseat guy, to become a pilot. Then he got assigned to the same place I was We spent most of those 11 years or so hanging out together. We're very good Um, and you know, we got to talk just recently and he actually shared something with me. I I um

which we should specify which video are. Yeah. Um but he he he shared something uh new on one of the uh now famous videos in particular the go fast video.

No, I took an auto. Oh, okay. Oh my gosh, dude. Wow. Look at him. Uh, and what this was was that it wasn't just a singular object when they detected that. They're actually four objects that were in what we call line of breast. They're basically a straight line about a mile apart which you know and flying formation that way which you know makes you think they have to be connected to each other in some sense digitally right they have to know where they are in relation to each other to be able to fly that precise of a formation

but you know he's still very um interested in this topic at least in the context of his experiences. It's still something that he thinks about and I think we'll be hearing some more from Can't wait and excited to see what you do, too. And uh yeah, hopefully we can keep collabing. And thanks for coming out to Austin, Ryan, and coming on the My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Awesome, man.