Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot who testified that he witnessed Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) with his own eyes, called on President Joe Biden to investigate the mysterious objects spotted in American airspace.
Graves, a former fighter pilot, explained that after 2014, when "upgrades were made to our radar system, our squadron made a startling discovery: There were unknown objects in our airspace."
And these were not "mere balloons," like the Chinese spy balloon that dominated the country’s attention in February.
"These were no mere balloons. The unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) accelerated at speeds up to Mach 1, the speed of sound. They could hold their position, appearing motionless, despite Category 4 hurricane-force winds of 120 knots. They did not have any visible means of lift, control surfaces or propulsion — in other words nothing that resembled normal aircraft with wings, flaps or engines."
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These are not isolated incidents, Graves argued in an article headlined, "We have a real UFO problem. And it’s not balloons."
"The point is that we don't have as clear an understanding of what's above our heads as we thought we did," Graves told Fox News Digital.
"There are uncertainties up there that we have to deal with. If we don't with it our adversaries are going to take advantage of that uncertainty, that weakness, to spy on us with various means, as we've seen," he added.
"It's pretty clear. If there are things over our head [that] we're not sure what they are, well we need to figure it out. If they're adversarial, it's a national security issue, we have mechanisms for that. If it's not a national security issue, if it's not an adversarial platform, then it's a matter for scientific inquiry."
Graves echoed that sentiment in his Politico article, writing that if "the phenomena I witnessed with my own eyes turns out to be foreign drones," he continued, "they pose an urgent threat to national security and airspace safety."
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Graves wrote that UAPs were unlike anything he had ever seen before.
"I am a formally trained engineer, but the technology they demonstrated defied my understanding."
It was an experience that convinced the Navy pilot that the U.S. government had a responsibility to acknowledge UAPs.
"Our government needs to admit that it is possible another country has developed game-changing technology."
Graves also shared a quote from deputy director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, Scott Bray.
"We were quite confident that was not the explanation," Bray reportedly told Congress when asked if the UAPs were part of a US military classified project.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, R, also confirmed that the origin of these UAPs is not the U.S. military.
"We have things flying over our military bases and places where we’re conducting military exercises and we don’t know what it is and it isn’t ours," said Rubio, who is vice chair of the Intelligence Committee.
Rubio said that UAPs were a risk to national security on Twitter.
"Advanced objects demonstrating advanced technology are routinely flying over our restricted or sensitive airspace posing a risk to both flight safety & national security," he tweeted.
"The Navy has officially acknowledged 11 near misses with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena that required evasive action and triggered mandatory safety reports between 2004 and 2021," Graves shared in the bombshell report for Politico.
Fox News’ Chris Eberhart contributed to this report.
