Navy confirms videos of flying objects but don’t call them UFOs

NORFOLK: In one of the videos, a small object streaks across the sky before the US Navy fighter jet’s tracking system locks on and follows it.

“Whoa. Got it,” the pilot yells, laughing as the dot moves on his screen. “Woohoo!”

Another pilot asks: “Wow. What is that, man?”

The Navy isn’t offering an explanation – at least not publicly – for exactly what that object was.

But the service is confirming the authenticity of that video and two others taken from its planes in 2004 and 2015.

The release of the videos, which have been circulating online and in news reports, was not authorised, Navy officials said.

But the footage has prompted the Navy to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation into sightings by its pilots of what it describes as “unidentified aerial phenomena” or UAPs in US airspace on both coasts.

“We are not going to try to characterise anything that may have been seen out there,” Navy spokesperson Joseph Gradisher said.

“But the number of sightings has increased since about 2014 when the advent of new technologies such as drones and quadcopters have come into being.”

Meanwhile, lawmakers are calling for more information on the so-called UAPs, saying some of their movements seem to challenge the laws of physics.

“Based on pilot accounts, encounters with these UAPs often involved complex flight patterns and advanced manoeuvring, which demand extreme advances in quantum mechanics, nuclear science, electromagnetics and thermodynamics,” North Carolina Congressman Mark Walker wrote in a letter to Navy Secretary Richard Spencer in July.

“If the accounts are true, the unidentified crafts could pose a serious security risk to our military personnel and defense apparatus,” wrote Walker, a Republican on the US House’s Homeland Security Committee.