Recently, the Pentagon released a statement that blew everyone's minds. They confirmed that not only did they previously investigate UFO sightings, but?they still monitor reports of this kind to this day.
And it seems they had quite a few sightings to go on over the years.
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In a New York Times report, the publication describes how it spoke to a number of US Navy pilots about sightings of "unidentified aerial phenomena". As it turns out, pilots were reporting "almost daily" sightings of unidentified flying objects between 2014 and 2015, including one that seemed to look like a "spinning top moving against the wind."
Though there were probably at least a few instances before, it seems the number of reports began skyrocketing in 2014. At the time, Navy pilots began reporting they spotted unidentified craft in the air at 30,000 feet, while conducting training maneuvers between Virginia and Florida. Apparently, they sometimes reported those vessels seeming to reach hypersonic speeds.
In late 2014, one pilot in Super Hornet reported almost colliding with what he thought was a UFO, understandably freaking him out enough to file a report. He says he saw something that looked like a "sphere encasing a cube" zipping between his jet and another pilot's roughly 100 feet away. Another pilot, Lieutenant Danny Accoin, talked about an incident where his plane's radar, missile system, and infrared camera all picked up an object in range, but not his helmet camera "I knew I had it, I knew it was not a false hit," he said. But still, "I could not pick it up visually."
The strange sightings apparently became so common that the Navy had to earlier this year issue special guidelines for how to report "unexplained aerial phenomena." They still don't have an explanation for what their pilots may have been seeing though.
Since the 1980's US jets have been steadily improving their radar and detection systems, which is when the sightings began increasing. Many other may have also encountered the phenomena, but assumed they were false hits on the radar.
US Department of Defense via New York Times
One 10-year US Navy veteran, Lieutenant Ryan Graves, claimed he saw these UFOs almost daily. What bamboozled him the most though was the way they seemed to be flying. He reported to both the Pentagon and Congress that he saw these objects at 30,000 feet, seemingly flying at hypersonic speeds but with no visible exhaust plumes even on infrared. They would also be in the air for what seemed to be 12 hours at a stretch.
More importantly though, he describes the objects' uncanny ability to stop rapidly, turn instantly, and immediately accelerate to hypersonic speed again. While a machine could do that, the maneuvers themselves would subject a human pilot to G-forces that could very easily knock them unconscious.
All of these sightings took place in airspace designated for fighter-jet training, so the pilots don't believe they were drones, even the classified kind operated by the US military. None of them would outright say that they may have spotted aliens either. They just have no idea what they were.