The Committee on Oversight’s Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs held a hearing today on improving the reporting of and defense against Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.
UAPs, unlike UFOs, describe unexplainable sights in the sky in a general sense, including unidentified flying objects.
The government reportedly spent $1.5 million in taxpayer money shooting down the Chinese spy balloon and two other UAPs this year, with little clarity on the events from the Biden administration.
U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said that the hearing, and discussions on the topic in general, was difficult to put together.
“We’ve run into roadblocks from members, from the intelligence community, the Pentagon,” Burchett said.
After requesting that pilots’ accounts of sightings of UAPs be reported to Congress, Burchett was reportedly told that the intelligence committee “did not like that,” and the amendment was not heard in committee.
“We need to tell the folks at the Pentagon that they work for us, we don’t work for them,” Burchett said.
Ryan Graves, executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, a nonprofit dedicated to safety and security with a focus on UAPs, said that UAP sightings were not at all uncommon, but grossly underreported.
“Military aircrew and commercial pilots, trained observers whose lives depend on accurate identification, are frequently witnessing these phenomena,” he said.
Graves shared his experience as a pilot, including how UAP sightings became so common after upgrading jets’ radar systems that flight crews discussed their risks in regular pre-flight briefs. According to him, anyone with an upgraded radar system after 2014 saw these objects.
“The majority of witnesses are commercial pilots at major airlines,” Graves said about those who came forward to his organization. “Often, they are veterans with decades of flying experience.”
Graves said that UAPs were often sighted in low Earth orbit above pilots, making unexplainable maneuvers like sudden turns, j-hook maneuvers for fast turnarounds, and orbits against the normal direction of Earth’s orbit, known as retrograde.
“The objects that are being seen by commercial pilots are unexplainable due to the current knowledge and capabilities of our country, and that applies to the military as well,” Graves said.
He said that numerous sightings recently came from Hawaii and the North Atlantic.
“I recognize the skepticism surrounding this topic,” Graves said. “If everyone could see the sensor and video data I witnessed, our national conversation would change.”
David Grusch, a former National Reconnaissance Officer representative and reporter to the UAP task force, said that government higher-ups informed him of a “multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program,” but was denied access to additional information after requesting it.
Grusch also said that he knew exactly where the government was holding recovered UAPs but did not disclose it to the public.
When asked by Burchett on the risks of UAPs, Graves said that they represented a major security threat to commercial airlines.
“The commercial aviation sector has not adapted to the lessons that the military has implemented,” Graves said. “The military and Department of Defense have stated that UAPs represent a critical aviation and safety risk. We have not seen that same language being used in the commercial markets; they are not acknowledging this risk.”
Graves told the subcommittee that a major step would be to set up a system for pilots to report UAPs without fear of losing their jobs. Commercial pilots currently have no active systems of reporting.
Witnesses also said that any information or videos on UAPs that did not directly threaten national security should be made public.
UAPs themselves, however, could pose a serious threat to national security.
“The technology that we faced was far superior than anything that we had,” Former Commanding Officer for the Navy David Fravor said about his personal UAP encounter. “If you had one, you captured one, you reverse engineered it, you got it to work, you’re talking something that can go into space, go someplace, drop down in a matter of seconds, do whatever it wants, and leave, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Nothing.”
Graves also said that the continued ignoring of UAPs gave foreign threats an opening to take advantage of.
Burchett, backed by members of the subcommittee, vowed to write up legislation to keep government agencies in check and allow for oversight of UAP encounters.
“We’re going to uncover the cover-up, and I hope this is just the beginning of many more hearings and more people coming forward about this,” Burchett said.
