Unclassified Unidentified Flying Objects Make The Headlines
On 60 Minutes this week, correspondent Bill Whitaker discussed unexplained aerial objects, or UAPs, also known as UFOs.
Cmdr. Dave Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich, two former Navy pilots, told Whitaker they saw something "unsettling" and unexplainable while flying over the Pacific Ocean in November 2004. Fravor is a TOPGUN naval flight program alum. At the time of the encounter, he was the captain of the USS Nimitz's F/A-18F squadron.
Dietrich, a former F/A-18F pilot, has never publicly discussed what she saw that day.
Fravor and Dietrich were training with the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group about 100 miles southwest of San Diego on November 14, 2004. The USS Princeton had been observing "many anomalous aerial aircraft" over the horizon, descending eighty thousand feet in less than a second, unbeknownst to them.
Fravor and Dietrich say they were diverted from their training exercise to investigate the anomalous target, each with a weapons system officer in the back seat of their F/A-18F. They claim they first discovered a roiling whitewater field the size of a Boeing 737, then saw something odd above the water.
Under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Christopher Mellon was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. As per 60 Minutes, he claims the item the two fighter pilots saw showed sophisticated scientific capabilities. According to Mellon, the UAP seemed to have extraordinary acceleration.
The creation of a small group called the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, headquartered in the Office of Naval Intelligence, was authorized by Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist in August of 2020. These forms of encounters are now being encouraged to be recorded, and the task force will compile, review, and archive the information collected.
Senator Marco Rubio, who was acting chairman of the Intelligence Committee at the time, ordered the Director of National Intelligence to address Congress with an unclassified briefing on UAPs, after consulting with the Secretary of Defense. The report is set to be released next month.
