Recently a declassified
footage purports to show a very new instance of the military tracking an
unidentified flying object. This particular footage was recorded in 2015 on a
Raytheon ATFLIR pod, a targeting pod mounted underneath aircraft that's
equipped with a camera with a laser rangefinder and a laser-spot tracker.
The pod was mounted
underneath a US Navy F/A-18 jet flying about 25,000 feet (7.6 km) at a speed of
Mach 0.62. The camera makes three attempts to lock on to an object moving
extremely fast, but fails the first two times. On the third try, the pod
manages to get a lock, and the pilots speak out about their excitement and
amazement at what they are seeing.
"Whoa! Got it!"
one of the pilots, yells out loud after locking on to the UFO. "What the
f--- is that thing?!" the other asks. nThe object continues at a fast
rate, and the pilots appear to be amazed.
"Wow! What is that,
man?" one says. "Look at that flying!" One of the pilots from
the declassified videos published by The Times told ABC that he thought the
aircraft he saw was "not from this world."
"After 18 years of
flying, I've seen pretty much about everything that I can see in that realm,
and this was nothing close," Commander David Fravor said.
The footage was posted
online by To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, a private scientific
research group that aims to "help push science, technology, and ultimately
humanity forward." It is not the first time UFO footage recorded by the military
has been declassified. The New York Times published videos in December of
declassified UFO flights recorded by the US military. The Times later reported
that the Department of Defence fielded a program that investigated the
incidents, but that it was terminated in 2012.
"The Advanced Aviation
Threat Identification Program ended in the 2012 time frame. It was determined
that there were other, higher-priority issues that merited funding and it was
in the best interest of the DoD to make a change," a spokesperson from the
DoD said at the time.
"The DoD takes
seriously all threats and potential threats to our people, our assets, and our
mission and takes action whenever credible information is developed."
Chris Mellon, an adviser to
TTSA and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence for
the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, wrote a piece in The Washington
Post on Friday calling for more serious attention to the UFO issue. Mellon wrote,
"We have no idea what's behind these weird incidents because we're not
investigating." He said one of the reasons it isn't investigated to the
extent it should be is the stigma attached to UFOs.
"Nobody wants to be
'the alien guy' in the national security bureaucracy; nobody wants to be
ridiculed or sidelined for drawing attention to the issue," he said.
"This is true up and
down the chain of command, and it is a serious and recurring impediment to
progress." Here's the full new video:
Via Bussinessinsider