New details keep emerging in the ongoing saga of To the Stars Academy and the U.S. Navy's experiences with unidentified flying objects. Navy personnel continue to come forward to share their encounters with strange objects in the skies and on radar systems, yet we are no closer to understanding what this all means for our understanding of unidentified aerial phenomena - if it means anything at all. Is this what disclosure looks like, a psychological operation to sway public opinion, or just a great way to sell advertising space on cable TV? Could it be all three?

The Navy’s 2004 and 2014-2015 encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena have been well-documented in recent months - perhaps over-documented - and most of the information has been carefully controlled and released by To the Stars Academy. However, Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot Ryan Graves just this week went out on his own and shared new first-hand details of his and other pilots’ experiences during their 2015 deployment to the Persian Gulf aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

USS Theodore Roosevelt 2 640x457
USS Theodore Roosevelt

Graves appears on the TTSA History Channel program Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation, and has come forward to help clarify some of the comments he made in the heavily edited series. Specifically, Graves contacted The War Zone’s Tyler Rogoway to clear up some of the confusion concerning whether or not the USS Roosevelt continued to encounter anomalous radar tracks and incredibly fast flying objects while on deployment in 2015 to aid with the conflict in Syria. Graves says that his strike group indeed came into contact with what appeared to be the same UAPs while operating in both the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf, but that due to the nature of their mission, the strike group could not waste time or resources investigating the objects:

While flying in the med [Mediterranean] during the transit, or while operating in the Gulf, the workload we have is significantly higher and we had less time to explore the phenomena, especially at this point where it was such a daily occurrence we essentially only gave them enough thought as to avoid hitting them. However, to answer your question, in the med I did occasionally see radar signatures that performed in ways that were consistent with our experiences back home, though at a significantly reduced rate.

Graves goes on to note that the air over the Syrian conflict zone "is very congested airspace, there is much more air traffic than one would expect, both friendly and otherwise, especially as we go through the straits," which made it even more difficult to identify anomalous aircraft. Still, this firsthand account adds to the intrigue and mystery surrounding these accounts of these encounters. Does this mean that the objects were following the strike group around the globe, or does this show that perhaps that the Navy’s pilots and new technologies simply encountered the same ‘glitches’ while on deployment as they did during training?

hornet 640x457
F/A-18E Super Hornet

At the far end of the speculation spectrum, given all of the strange coincidences surrounding these accounts, could these encounters mean that the Navy brought some type of exotic new aerospace technology to the battlefield for the first time in 2015? Until we know the true nature of the objects seen by these pilots and other Navy personnel, everything remains total conjecture. Don't hold your breath.

I’m far from alone in sensing that TTSA and/or the defense industrial complex probably have ulterior motives other than disclosure and aren't telling us everything they know about these encounters or these objects. I still suspect that all of this is likely just a lead-up to a new arms race, recruiting propaganda for the Space Force, or the Navy prepping the public for a reveal of new paradigm-changing technologies; after all, much of the UFO waves of the mid-20th century are now regarded to have been a cover story for tests of formerly classified aerospace technologies like the first jet fighters, stealth aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and ultra-fast reconnaissance planes like the A-12 and SR-71.

All of this recent UFO news could very well be a means of obfuscating what’s really buzzing around in sensitive military airspace. If U.S. military personnel have seen and tracked these objects, chances are high that other nations' militaries have as well. Maybe this is all the Department of Defense trying to muddy the waters surrounding what other nations know or think they know about these objects. Do we really trust "former" counterintelligence officers and "former" DoD spooks to tell us the truth on cable TV?

Brett Tingley

Brett Tingley is a writer and musician living in the ancient Appalachian mountains.

Join MU Plus+ and get exclusive shows and extensions & much more! Subscribe Today!

Search: