Former Navy pilot Ryan Graves said that if the Biden administration doesn’t investigate UFOs in American airspace, then the U.S. risks being outmaneuvered by a foreign power.
Graves, who has testified that he has witnessed Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) during his career as a fighter pilot, was responding to a congressional hearing from Wednesday. Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, who is director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) under the Pentagon, warned Congress about the dangers of UAPs during his testimony.
Graves broke down Dr. Kirkpatrick’s testimony during an interview with Fox News Digital.
The former fighter pilot told Fox News Digital that President Joe Biden has a responsibility to tell the American people honestly what is happening in the skies above their heads.
“I think Biden holds the hammer on communication on this topic. I think that from the executive branch, they need to ensure the American people that they serve have the communication flow and the comfort and the leadership in the Department of Defense and the organization is now set up to do that.”
Graves noted that there was a “friction” between government agencies that need to be removed if the U.S. is able to respond to the possible threat of UAPs.
“I believe that if the Biden administration, the interagency task force that they set up can help bring those different agencies together, then it’s going to be the Biden administration’s responsibility to communicate the results of that investigation,” he said.
“In the past,” Graves explained, “the description and the shape of the objects was classified. In this hearing, we learned that about 50% of the objects are spherical in description. And then there’s a plethora of other descriptions of smaller probabilities that they discussed. They also showed that the objects were essentially operating in all the U.S. operational areas.”
Graves continued, “That includes the East and West Coast as well as over the “actual continental United States.”
And UAPs have been spotted in “operational areas off of Japan and in the Middle East as well,” he added. Some of these UAPs, Graves explained, were at altitudes “right smack dab in the center of our airspace,” also making them a “serious aviation safety issue.”
“The primary shape of these objects is spherical,” Graves said, adding that Dr. Kirkpatrick described some of the spheres as “clear,” “opaque,” or even “translucent.” The UAP expert even mentioned “emissions in the radio frequency band” from the UAPs as well as “frequency ranges that were associated with the detection capabilities,” according to Graves.
Graves agreed with Dr. Kirkpatrick’s assessment that the Department of Defense should implement procedures for UAPs into their operations and “normalize” the discussion of UFOs.
The possibilities for these flying objects could be anything from a foreign technology “all the way to space aliens,” as Graves said, summarizing Dr. Kirkpatrick’s testimony.
FORMER FIGHTER PILOT SAYS UFOS MORE COMMON THAN PEOPLE THINK: ‘WE WERE SEEING THEM ON OUR RADARS’
“But right now,” he added, “I don’t know if there’s enough collaboration and cooperation between the individual branches and organizations” for people like Dr. Kirkpatrick to be able to investigate the UAPs.
Graves said that the American public has shifted to a “sense of urgency” about the potential national security threats of UAPs.
The views of the public on UAP have also been affected by media coverage, which in the U.S., Graves said, “has matured quite a bit compared to the rest of the world.”
That is because people take UAPs “much more seriously than before,” Graves said.
“We’ve seen how this can be a very realistic national security issue if we just laugh off these unidentified aircraft.”
Those national security threats could potentially be catastrophic, he added.
“I’m almost hesitant to make this comparison,” Graves said, pausing slightly, “but we’ve seen what massive intelligence failures can lead to. We lived through 9/11 and we’ve seen the repercussions of different intelligence agencies not communicating what they know individually to put that full picture together.”
Looking from the outside, Graves said, the American government is still divided, without “organization or at least the willpower” to the various “puzzle” pieces on UAPs and create a full intelligence picture.
Graves emphasized that while he certainly could not predict a catastrophe on the level of 9/11, it was still important for national security to learn as much as possible about UAPs.
It’s a problem, he said, that America has “solved in the past.”
“Let’s solve it again, so we don’t get to potentially something catastrophic, not necessarily with UFOs or aliens, but some foreign adversary could take advantage of that gap in our domain awareness for bad purposes.”
Graves also responded directly to comments that Twitter CEO Elon Musk made that he has “seen no evidence of aliens.”
“My general sentiment is that Elon is jumping right to conclusions, much as I caution against for those that say ‘they are aliens.'”
That’s because the evidence is not decisive in one direction or another on the alien question, Graves said.
“We’re in a data gathering phase, not a conclusions phase. What we do have are anomalous sightings, confirmed by DoD. As we heard from the Pentagon’s UAP expert, Dr. Kirkpatrick, we simply don’t have the data to conclude at this time. Does Mr. Musk have such data?” Gates asked.
Graves added that his organization, Americans for Safe Aerospace, will continue to raise awareness on UAPs and educate “Capitol Hill and policymakers more on this issue.”
