On Wednesday, July 26, 2023, David Grusch, an Air Force veteran, Geo Spatial Intelligence Agency officer, and member of the pentagon’s UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena), went before the House Oversight Committee’s national security board with two fighter pilots who had reported sightings and firsthand experiences of UAP’s.
Grusch had served as a representative of two Pentagon task forces investigating UAPs earlier this year. He told the committee that he was informed of a “Multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program” during the course of his work. He was denied access to these programs when he requested it, causing him to accuse the US Military of misusing funds to shield these operations from congressional oversight. He later said that he had interviewed officials who had knowledge of aircraft with “nonhuman” origins and that so-called “biologics” were recovered from crafts.
In response to public interest and political pressure, federal and military agencies have shared information about these unexplained aircraft encounters, even though many sightings have been of pedestrian origin (weather balloons, drones, etc). Grusch said he hasn’t personally seen any alien vehicles or bodies but his opinion and evidence comes from 40 separate individuals, some still working in the UAP Task Force, over the past 4 years.
He testified, “My testimony is based on information I have been given by individuals with a long standing track record of legitimacy and service to this country-many of whom also shared compelling evidence in the form of photography, official documentation, and classified oral testimony.” Several times during the hearing, Grusch deflected some of the lawmakers’ questions, saying that he could only speak in SCIF (a Sensitive Compartment of Information Facility). This included when he was asked if the government had had any contact with aliens, and whether anyone had been murdered to cover up information about “extraterrestrial technology.” Grusch said he couldn’t comment.
The subcommittee also heard from former Navy fighter pilot Ryan Graves and retired commander David Fravor about their encounters with aircraft of an unexplained origin. Graves recounted an incident with a flying object off the coast of Virginia Beach in 2014. While flying an F-18, he said he came upon an aircraft that looked like a “dark gray or black cube inside of a clear sphere” that he estimated to be 15 feet in diameter. He then told lawmakers that his squadron filed a safety report at the time but he received no official acknowledgement of the incident.
Fravor offered the panel his own eerie account of a UAP encounter that was captured on video in 2004. The Pentagon released this video along with others in 2020. Fravor described being flabbergasted when he and three other service members saw a white, Tic-Tac shaped flying object emerge over the San Diego coast line. As he and other pilots tried to investigate the object, it rapidly accelerated and left no detectable turbulence.
The highly anticipated hearing was open to the public and citizens waited for hours to secure a spot on the hearing. A 22-year-old from New York City, who remained anonymous due to stigma around the subject, told reporters he made plans to attend saying, “it’s something that could be a historic moment.”
