Movies

The New Film ‘What Are UFOs’ Examines Our Fascination with the Unknown

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On an ordinary day in 2013, no one anticipated anything extraordinary as a group of Navy F/A-18 fighter planes set out for their usual aerial exercises off the coast of Virginia Beach. However, this was a typical day for these F/A-18s, dominating the skies around them – until it wasn’t.

Simultaneously, the jets’ radar detected a group of approximately six objects traveling alongside them, exhibiting unpredictable movements that were more akin to acrobatics than regular flight patterns. At times, they would dart sideways at speeds over 350 knots, which is equivalent to 402 mph. In an instant, these objects would become motionless amidst winds moving at 150 knots (172 mph), gusts that posed challenges for the jets to maintain their position. Then, without warning, they would accelerate again. These objects displayed no visible exhaust, no apparent method of propulsion, and bore no resemblance to any known aircraft in the country’s civilian or military inventory.

Approximately five to 15 feet wide, these objects appeared as a “dark gray or black cube enclosed within a transparent orb,” according to ex-Navy Lieutenant Ryan Graves who was airborne at the time, as he told TIME. We almost collided with one of these objects; they came within mere 50 feet of our front aircraft, and that’s when we realized that we were encountering something somewhat unusual here. I am not aware of any aircraft in our possession that can maneuver at extremely slow speeds or even stop, then swiftly accelerate and perform like a fighter jet.

On another occasion, these mysterious aerial phenomena, often referred to as UFOs, didn’t just make an appearance for the Navy. As Graves recounts, they were spotted in Virginia Beach from 2013 to 2015. Later, during naval exercises on the USS Theodore Roosevelt off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, these phenomena seemed to be present beforehand or had followed us, as we experienced over a dozen incidents, two of which were documented by the Navy and subsequently published by The New York Times in 2017.

As a movie buff with an insatiable curiosity about the unexplained, I can’t wait to delve into the captivating footage often referred to as “the Gimbal” in the upcoming PBS NOVA documentary titled “What Are UFOs?” Airing on January 22. This intriguing clip is among the eyewitness accounts featured in this fascinating exploration of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). I’m one of many individuals who have had such encounters, and I’ll be sharing my experience in the documentary.

The documentary traces the evolution of UFOs and UAPs in American skies, from the first widely publicized sightings by aviator Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947, to the present day, where reports of UAPs have skyrocketed, with over 801 cases reported to the military since 2023 alone. Interestingly, within the Pentagon’s classified budget of approximately $65 billion, an estimated $22 million has been allocated to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which investigates these mysterious occurrences.

Prior to the modern UFO and Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) focus we see today, the United States military had already shown great curiosity about the origin of such mysterious flying objects, as evidenced by the NOVA documentary. From 1947 to 1969, a clandestine program known as Project Blue Book, declassified since, was run by the Air Force to investigate over 12,000 reported sightings of unidentified flying objects. Out of these, approximately 701 cases remain unexplained. Many early reports, from 1947 to 1949, were of military equipment belonging to a Department of Defense project called Project Mogul, which involved launching high-altitude balloons carrying sensitive microphones meant to detect Soviet nuclear test sounds. The initial whispers about extraterrestrial activities at Roswell, New Mexico, originated from a local farmer gathering debris from a descended balloon on his land.

In this current era, an increase in airborne traffic leads to a higher probability of false Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) alarms. Every day, approximately 1,800 weather balloons are launched globally, as per NOVA’s documentary, and the Federal Aviation Administration indicates over one million registered drones in private American hands. Many alleged extraterrestrial sightings can be attributed to common earthly occurrences. However, incidents like the gimbal case present challenges in simple explanation, a fact underscored by another UAP incident, popularly known as the Tic Tac.

In 2004, near the coast of southern California, the U.S.S. Nimitz Carrier strike group detected mysterious flying objects on radar that would intermittently appear and disappear from their tracking screens. When visible, these objects would move in an erratic manner, looping, diving, and skittering while swiftly descending from 80,000 feet to 20,000 feet before hovering. Eventually, a naval pilot named David Fravor and others were dispatched to investigate this phenomenon, and they discovered the object of their search – a flying machine that was approximately 45 feet long and bore a striking resemblance to a Tic Tac breath mint in both color and shape.

In 2023, testifying before Congress, Fravor described an incident where all four of us observed an unusual object resembling a Tic Tac, with its length running north to south and moving erratically over the water. Unlike anything we’ve seen before, it lacked rotors, rotor wash, or visible control surfaces like wings. This mysterious object abruptly changed its orientation to match mine, climbed upwards, and then suddenly shifted again, aligning itself with my aircraft. As we approached within about a half mile of it, the object accelerated rapidly and vanished.

The Navy published a video showing an unidentified incident, and they’ve yet to propose any explanation for what it might have been.

Similar to Tic Tac and Gimbal, numerous enigmatic Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) persist in confounding experts. Graves, currently serving as the executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace – a non-profit organization dedicated to gathering UAP sightings – aims to influence public discourse about unidentified objects and manage potential airspace conflicts. He doesn’t claim to know what these mysterious objects are, but he has strong opinions on what they aren’t.

He expresses his doubt that the adversary is showcasing technology surpassing our current capabilities during these operations with low rewards and high risks. He finds it hard to believe that unknown technologies could be deployed over our homeland, in a vulnerable position for capture and reverse engineering. That’s not something he can fathom. Such logic doesn’t make sense to him.

It’s equally improbable that these vehicles are just advanced domestic technology, with many in the military unaware of their existence. As Graves puts it, “These were aerial resources displaying capabilities surpassing our current state-of-the-art.” By “state-of-the-art,” he means technology that would take more than a decade for the U.S. to develop, if they began researching and building it today.

Graves refrains from hypothesizing about extraterrestrial origins, stating that at present, our definitions and methods for identifying interstellar objects are not yet refined enough to make such claims with certainty, as we lack a clear understanding of the “magic physics” these objects might be using.

The NOVA film presents alternative theories. Conspiracy skeptic Mick West, who wrote the book “Escaping the Rabbit Hole,” proposes an explanation for the mysterious object in the gimbal video. Instead of the object moving, he suggests that it’s actually the camera that’s causing the illusion of motion. However, this doesn’t account for what the stationary object could potentially be. In another infrared video where the object appears to vanish and reappear, West proposes that the camera may have captured an image of a bird that matched the background temperature, making it seem as if the bird had vanished.

As a movie buff, I find myself left pondering just as many mysteries at the end of that film as I was intrigued by at its beginning – much like the current enigma surrounding Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). With over 400 billion stars in our Milky Way alone and an estimated 200 billion galaxies in the universe, it’s mind-boggling to think of all the potential planets harboring advanced civilizations. Could one of these alien societies choose to visit our solitary planet, and if so, what could possibly prompt them? Regrettably, such questions remain unanswered. However, sightings continue to multiply – even as the solutions to this cosmic puzzle seem to evade us.

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2025-01-22 20:06

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