Understanding UAP As An Aerospace Safety Concern
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Hello and welcome to the addition of aviation weeks check six podcast. I am senior editor guy norris with me as garreton, a space and emerging technologies editor. So today we're delighted to welcome brian graves, his executive director for americans for safe airspace, the first military pilot LED nonprofit dedicated to uni densify, a Normal phenomenon as a matter of national security, airspace safety and science.

So just to put you in the picture, ryan, as a former U. S. Navy F, A eighteen f super hornet pilot and a combat veteran, is also the first U.

S. Active duty pilot to come forward publicly about regular sightings of uap or uf s, as they were once and sometimes Better on. And he's even testified before congress on the subject.

So one of the great reasons we are talking with round today is that he also serves as the first chair of the american institute of very ocs and astronautics and identified anomalous phenomena integration and I reach committee, whose goal is to service as a neutral scientifically focus group, which to enable safer commercial and military are in space Operations, and critically, to destigmatize the topic. So with all of that said, welcome, ryan. Thank you for joining us.

It's my pleasure to be here, guy.

Thank you again. Before we get to the the big questions and about our safety and obviously to get its questions, I wondered if you could just tell our listeners about your U A P experiences during your time in the navy and particularly from your first encounter, which I guess was April twenty fourteen.

Yeah, be happy to. So I was assigned to V, F, A, eleven, the red rippers in Virginia beat, which is nine eighteen f squad in the united states, to navy. And we had deployed uh board the U. S. S. Enterprise in twenty twelve.

And when we came home from that employment, we begin upgrade various systems in our jet, including our radar system from the apg seventy three to the apg seventy nine radar system, which was quite a big jump in capabilities. IT took about eight month or so for that of great process to party late, ross, all the jets and our squatter. So on some days we might be flying today in the morning with the older right r and then later in the evening, perhaps with the newer rate are.

And what we consistently discovered was that the newer rr was picking up a multitude of objects in our working areas off the coast of Virginia beach that we were seeing just on, say, the previous flight with the older radar. At first we assume these were radar errors or some type, uh, but eventually we will get close enough to the object for other centers on board to corporate with the radar, and be able detect these objects. H, one of those sensors was our A T flare system and electro optical targeting pod, as well as our am nine x, which is a short range air to air missile.

All of these centers would be killed by our radar system. And when close enough, we would notice that they were indeed picking up objects in the same point that are rate. I was dropping a sw phone.

And that's what really cute is in that these objects we are observing weren't just read our errors themselves, but uh, we're potentially real physical objects that we could dentist run into and have some type of mid a. And these objects were not behaving the way we would expect. They were very often completely stationary over a point in the ground, anywhere from the surface to upward to thirty, forty thousand feet.

Uh, we'd see them at point six, point eight mark, sometimes in circular or race track holding patterns. And we also see them, uh, flying supersonic one point one, one point two mark, uh, typically heading east. In those particular scenarios, we would often try to uh guide ourselves with the rate r with the flier in order to have a close board past emerge with these objects, nor to try to visually identify them.

But very often this was a futile effort. We would set ourselves up, typically on a stationary object about five hundred feet below. So, and all our senses are rate.

Our flare, our missiles, our electronics systems would be telling us exactly where the object is, even be pumping that information into our augmented reality headset or helmet. And so we knew exactly where to look. This was a pretty benie maneuver for us.

We should have been able to break out the objects, but we were unable to see anything we turn back around. Our centres would reacquire the target. And once again, I would IT would still be there and all the centers perhaps lightly displaced. Uh IT wasn't till uh, several weeks later, after this has become a regular occurrence that two aircraft from my squad and were flying into the entry point of those working areas, a fixed location at about four thousand feet at a particular G, P, S.

Location, or one of these objects split the section went right between the two aircraft, or about one hundred and fifty feet apart, uh, the object, described as a dark gray or black cube inside, out of a clear sphere, went within about fifty feet of the cockpit of the reading aircraft. He immediately called the flight, had lost confidence in his ability to safely clear the area in front of his aircraft and returned to the squad in space. Were reported that you know I will sit with those those dark things that we've been seeing and that was our first visual sighting uh of what these objects were sand.

Then we've had a numerous amount of reports uh from that area, from other f eighteen Operating areas on the west coast, uh, over the gulf, mexico and over land where they have been seeing similar objects, often described as metal c fears with the same performance characteristics that we've i've described to you are and they're typically between about five to fifteen feet and diameters. The best estimate that we have right now. Ah and that was really my introduction to to this issue.

And at the time, there was no talk of U A P. That wasn't something without was even in our lingual. There are some checkers about uf hos. But you know, we were very pragmatic tic. We had a lot to do, a lot of training requirements and getting ready for our next employment. Uh, and so you know at least for myself, the assumption was that this issue will get resolved through Normal channels, whatever those were as time progressed. And as a quick ending point, I learned that that wasn't true, that this wasn't getting resolved with the Normal channels when I saw twenty seventeen in new york article released a various footage from for gene beach in the fact from my squad room from flat that I was was involved with, where I was clear to me that, you know, this had not gone up the chain to a significant degree to lead to any type of resolution. And that's when I decide to to speak out about this topic.

right? Of course, I suppose I got to ask, you will see as a pilot, what was your good reaction really as a professionally trained pilot? Uh, what was the sort of process you went through afterwards after experiencing IT in and deciding what to say?

Well, for us, we d like to know we're simple of fighter pilots. We're like to put things in the categories ism in the bucket. So for us having these objects out there, they either really fit into two buckets, either an efficacious system or some type of panie system in either of those.

Those buckets for us was a safety of flight concern. Um I think we kind of overlooked as a group the seriousness of the national security concern that this might imply and for us, we are religious treating IT as a potential medor r hazard that we had to avoid. So once we are all in agreement that you know these are real, these are physical, we could potentially hit them.

We simply treated them like any other mitter hazards that one might um have out there. So we would avoid the objects we stop emerging with them. And we would often uh reschedule, even cancel training missions if these objects were in the areas that we were limited to.

And and you mention the the new york times report in twenty seventeen and the video clipsed that that emerge from the the limits and a revel U S. Theatre reservoir t encounters as well and be a more pilots slowly beginning to speak out about what what you've described as advanced objects demonstrating cutting edge technology that we cannot explain that are routinely flying in our over our military bases or entering restricted airspace.

Um so I know it's pretty obviously in we gathered sort of talking about this to a probably a bunch of aviation people who listening to this is our audience. We in airspace collectively realized that these days, if you have a culture in which pilots are not reporting, then you have a safety issue automatically. Whatever they see might be completely explicable depending on the circumstances, but if they don't get reported in the first place, then it's a safety issue.

And even the basic mythology surrounding uap UFO, you know, events appears to create an environment in which the reaction of a pilot or crew might itself become a safety issue. So I think we can agree sharing as a fundamental aviation safety culture. And we've got countless examples anyway of where sharing helps identify patterns of behavior, of events, such as the end, for me, of unstable approaches or controlled flight into terrain where where danger looks go out. Because we bring you in here at this point, because I know you are trying to look at really what the next steps are and how we could help these statements tize, I suppose this is this subject.

Yeah, I wanted to dive in a little bit on the safety 呃 aspect some more to maybe give people a little bit more color on a some of those uh， visual sightings in particularly that one instance where you mentioned the object flue between, I think you were talking about two f eighteens. Did those pilots feel any you know, turbulence or besides a visual setting? Was there any did a rock the aircraft anything like that?

None that was reported uh, at the time ah that could very well be the case, but none that was particularly reported. I believe the object was actually stationary at the entry point and the aircraft itself for providing the of motion. So although appeared as if it's IT past the the two jet, I believe IT was actually stationary there. And um in the two aircraft, which were probably about three hundred notes, three hundred and fifty not to that time um zippo passive and there .

have been other close calls or close passes with objects like this IT has not been like you know visual .

but far often the distance when we had that near midi air we kind of came together as a squad and said, OK you there spend some chatter about these objects IT hasn't been very well. Promotion, ted. But this issue, this instance represents a true hazard report that we now need to file with the naval aviation safety center.

And when we did that, we took A A sense of the squad to speak with really all the pilots. Okay, you know, we have to report this. Let's really think back to instances that we have may have had with this. And as I turned out, we didn't just file the one safety report that time we backed and filed about five how to reports all the same time because other pilots came forward saying that they had near misses with these objects as well that went unreported due to the signal.

And this is an and guy touched down at the moment ago, train, David, or are very cold in the fact that communication to resource management, Operational risk management, these are key things, key tools that we have in our toolbox issues avoid promoting ating small issues and the larger issues as they compile up on each other. And when I started speaking the commercial pilots about this back in twenty twenty or so, if, say, the the guy in the left see the pilot saw something inexplicable, he would often not even report IT to the guy in the right sea. He was too afraid to, especially if I was a junior senior type situation where he didn't want to uh you know come out you know potential and be highlighted as incomplete or or you know what you or whatever the sigma is going to lead for the conclusion there.

But one of you know one of my great pride in advancing this conversation is that not only a pilot started to share within the cockpit t to enhances you know their their Operational awareness, they're also now going out to F A controllers, which was another big hurdle where they didn't want to share that information because now that tags their aircraft and and themselves to that issue. Uh, but now I have countless example of a pilots that not only in one aircraft, but they are reporting to fa, the air traffic rollers and other airliners are are radio say, yeah we see that too. We don't know what that is. There are some major airlines that have started collecting these reports within their Operational centers and have been proactive with funding that information to upcoming traffic to areas where pilots have reported these instances. And so we have seen some, some massive progress in pilots awareness and communication on this topic, which I think is is very key to being able to not even just understand this, but at least to have the acknowledged and tracking capability for where these are and to mitigate any type of uh, safety issues that might arise because of IT.

I think that lays IT up well and lead into my next question is, know, how do you scientifically investigate this? You, as a military pilot, have procedures for investigating, uh, whether might be an adverse crater, something but nine and you you went through that. We're talking about using your RAID r and your your flare and doing a pass.

And so what but h commercial pilots, their procedures a little different. There are little. They're not flying off course to go investigate things. Air travel controls get its own thing.

So how do you bring all these people together?

Stablish like a scientific procedure for collecting information and sharing IT especially how do you do in a way that so you're not getting a lot of false positives, are getting, you know, collecting a lot of junk because there's a lot of drones out there. There's you know there's just a lot more stuff in there and you are going to a get a lot of noise. So how do you establish a science fc precision? What do you guys doing as like a as an .

noticed to do that? Yeah that's a great question to your point in that eighteen, we have a lot of tools that help us identify both within visual range and beyond visual range what the platforms may be. But of course, uh, the commercial aviation community doesn't have access to to those tools um and so we're not there to have a complete solution quite yet.

In the opinion of uh my on profit americans for safe area space as well as the U A P integrated tion and not reach committee, we believe an increase in reporting on this topic is one of the first key steps that we can do. And tied to that is a reduction of stigma. And i'll push back slightly about um the junk piece as well. I think we need to collect all this information and there is some very powerful tools out there now that can be used after the fact to be able to pass through the various data points to be able identify, okay, is this something truly exceptional? Is this potentially new phenomenon we're seeing due to the proliferation of satellites in low earth orbit in orbit?

Um or is this tear point, you know drone, which is very much a safety issue as well, that needs be reported if there is A A drone that is exhibiting capabilities that may fool the violence and in some sense to think it's exceptional when it's not still very much poses a aviation safety risk and if those are going unreported due to the stigma, that's very much a problem as well. So what we're doing at my nonprofit is serving as as a neutral, trusted resource for professionals, commercial pilots and veterans to be able to report their particular instances. And by gathering that database, we're partnering with scientific organizations, uh, especially those associated with engineering special teeth ever related to aviation safety, cognitive scientist, human factors engineers and like and were allowing them access to a portion of that data so that they can put for papers recommendations for future reporting systems within, say, the NASA aviation sector reporting system or perhaps custom solutions that are going to have a centralized data base where the scientific community more broadly can evaluate these cases before recommendations.

And then you know, once we have those recommendations, I think we can go forward with tertial solutions for not just detecting these objects but for characterising them further through their performance characteristics using machine learning, perhaps combining that with algorithms that uh provide situation awareness to uh, satellite in orbit to be able to dismiss them. So the part say, hey, this isn't an aircraft off my nose, this is a far away satellite that just happen to be as break as a landing way. Ah and so that's the type of analysis that I think we will get to as we continue to reduce the stigma. We build up the number for port we have and then we implement those other tools. And that's work that we're doing both at the U A integration, not reach committee as well as americans for a fair space.

Can jump in here with a question on terms of the or looking at what has been officially established already, just thinking about in twenty twenty two, the pentagon created the old domain and Normally resolution office, which works with the office of the director of national intelligence, to attribute in of these reports that it's been getting in in currently.

Arrow worked with the military services and nowhere and the coast guard and the department of energy to the sort of streamline ways of reporting incidents. And I think this was the reported by one of our colleagues. Brine, every time last year. Uh, are you able to work at all with oro or or any of the official government set of organizations like this? Or do you to do feel like gets time to take a different attack on the on this old subject?

So there's really two avenues there. There's working with era, which I do in in a number of uh areas to be able to provide them with information they may not be receiving to their channels as well as to help them provide uh write them with with Better tools to to understand the cases that they do have.

But the case is that they are receiving an era are, uh, at least on the aviation side, primarily from military aviators who now have official reporting mechanisms uh, that have been promoted ted down for them to report. And there's a very interesting stories uh, that military pilots have had that they had experiences and even just, you know, just the other day I saw a new podcast with an f eighteen pilot. Hooo thought this was a bit nonsense until he had his own experience learn that there was a form uh, and then the quality and received a briefing h from that office as well.

Uh and so I think there are still some severe limitations to the within the military aviation community about both the aviation safety and national security risk of this and what they actually do with that information. I was at tail OK at a conference for naval eventers at land on aircraft Carriers about a months and a half ago. Uh, and you know I I got the opportunity to speak with a lot of people that have had uh issues and instances with U A P. And the course of their Normal Operations and I would say was about fifty fifty, uh fifty percent of them knew that there was a reporting mechanism, did so in other fifty percent rather unaware or chose not to report IT um because they didn't want to put their their credibility at risk .

right and and it's interesting you mention that I think I probably had the same h interview, but I what was interesting to me about when the comments he made was you're quite right. He went through through the Normal reporting channels and he said the just of the brief thing that they got back was we just don't know one of IT was I thought that was interesting, that, you know, obvious ly people are coming at IT from different directions.

The answer always seems to be we just don't know at this point, which is another basically back to get its question about, know, where do we go with this? How do we scientifically investigated? And perhaps one of the ways through is to broaden the community, which is part of what the aida involvement is is involved .

into as no yeah absolutely. We work uh in two main segments. We have a harvard factors and a human factors subcommittees. And those are aviation safety terms that a lot of people might be familiar with.

Our harvard factors group is primarily focused on how do we detect these things, right? So how do we detect, characterized and evaluate these these objects? And the two groups very much work hand in hand, because once we have a Better understanding and buying on how much this is happening with military and commercial aviation communities, that's gonna help inform our decision making going forward on what tools that we need in order to be able to do that detection, characterization and evaluation.

And we've talked a lot about aviation safety, but the next know massive concern after that as a national security concern, having objects that are Operating with the close facility of our training ranges, our military bases. And we're hearing more of that. Now in the eastern sea board, we've seen the effects of small foreign tor A U A V S.

In ukraine. And we cannot ignore the fact that we are having this large issue with an identified objects that have interesting performance, characters that are seemingly Operating. You are.

Sensitive airspaces in our bases special in east coast but on the west coast as well. To your point, we don't know what they are. That was the just of their briefing. Oh, that puts us at a at a pretty significant uh strategic disadventure here in the homeland. And we need the investor resort into the capabilities are going to allow us to identify and mitigate these situations before we start losing assets.

Yeah so what I mean you're talking about lowering the stigma s we just get more information flowing. But yeah, in terms like formalized reporting, you know how are you going to present your findings? What's what's the plane going forward to quantifying all of this?

So the work has been conducted at the U A P. Integration reach committee. Within the AI double a, we participate in two conference year, the aviation and a send conference. At the aviation uh conference, we have a paper session where we invite academia as well as our own organization to be able to a present papers on this topic.

And so the work that i've discussed about uh especially within the human factors engineer, but the hardware factors as well, that's where we will be entering that into the corpse of knowledge within the the A I W A community. But more broadly speaking， american stay feral space never intended to be a reporting organization per say. We just we're filling in need that was presented to us.

We were started receiving reports via email from pilot, didn't feel comfortable reporting else where we had their trust. Um but ultimately this this should be held by the government. This should be held with a Normal aviation safety channels. And so americans should say feral space has vised on and uh conversin grown and conversin Garcia and the house have introduced legislation that requires F A to accept these reports, requires them together additional evidence that may be available, such as communication data or radar information and IT requires a NASA to modify the aviation feature reporting system to be able to accept this type report or create a separate system specifically for this issue. And so moving forward, we hope that that legislation ultimately ts past totally in twenty twenty five. And we have a official channel that is not classified that there will be a wide corporation of knowledge that will be available to the scientific community uh, for analysis uh and that the signal reduction is such that pilots will understand in the system existing will use IT together this information going forward. And I think that's going to be key to both understanding the scope in the severity this problem and for enabling the scientific and engineering community to think of solutions for what we're seeing.

And right, you you had some thoughts on the, for example, that the chinese a spy balloon incident, which I I think kind of brought a lot of actually friendly, a lot of attention to this whole subject, didn't IT? I know we one of our colleagues state trimble broke our website. I think with a story, with one of the stories are on on the chinese balloon incident.

So but do you think it's a hindu or help really when this sort of thing happens? Are we we talking about the same thing? Or is IT really confusing the issue?

No, I don't think it's confusing the issue at all. Um the reality is that these things were overflying the continent, united states, and the reason that we were able to detect them the future because of the reports that were made, suggest that they were very slow speed moving objects that were Operating in our working areas and because of that in this you know this was stated by um the fence press secretary uh during a um a new school reference that they had lowered their speed gates on their radar systems order to try to identify these objects and what popped out of that was uh avh arial platforms that were overflying the united states and so this I think you very much IT helps the overall conversation because IT, I think showed the american people just the type of rip that we are talking about. When we say that we can be comfortable thinking that just because their objects out there, we can just dismiss them as uh as something that they think is you know silly or signalized that our every series will take advances of that they might already be in. There was evidence that they might happen riot.

And of course, the other thing that I am always curious about is the fact that some the number of uh reports, uh Sunny that have been released by the O D ni um you know say that does the numbers of increased at least uh you know for example, competitive to previous so and and i'm kind of wondering whether that is is is that more of recognition of a the phenomenon or be the fact that our senses are getting Better, as you mentioned, with the upgrade on the on the super on IT RAID out, for example, is IT a combination of that? Or do you think there really is perhaps the gradual reduction in the stigma surrounding reporting on this? perhaps? Bit of all.

all of that. Yeah, I think I think it's a bit of all of that. I think our sensors are getting Better. I think the reduction of stigma has open this conversation. The more professionals to be able to report IT instead of just ignoring IT.

I mean, anyone that spent in a navy squadroom, especially one that utilizes sensor systems like we do, you know the stories of strange objects and and things that are inexplicable are always talked about a bit in hush voices. But the motive information that we have coming in now appears to have increased. Now my overall sense is that, yes, perhaps it's happening more, but is very hard to set.

So how much of that is based off of the sensor is the stigma reduction and like and how much of IT is an actual increase in activity? But IT certainly does appear to least a certain degree. There has been an increase in activity.

What is your end goal for all this?

We are filling the gaps that are being left unfilled because of the the stick, but and the lack of government involved in this topic. We've introduced the legislation, americans for safe airspace, that would theoretically put our reporting system out of business because it's the right thing to do and it's the right way to introduce more people and more data into the conversation. The U A P.

Integration outreach committee. Now I don't think that will necessarily you know concrete go out of business per say because this conversation next stands very much in the space and space drain awareness as well. But we're neutral to what the output of this is.

We're we're not necessarily looking for the U A. P. We're dealing with the uni dentists ed object are slipped under the rate are due to the way this conversation has been held back in the public and within professional circles.

And so we're more than happy to be able to uh, stop particular activities if the the rest of the community steps up to the plate and starts painting attention to this from aviation and safety and national security concern. Now with that being said, with the amount of data that we have, I truly don't believe that this is going to flush out as uh, drones and starlink. Uh, some of the cases are are quite unexplainable and I think we'll be trying to figure yourself for quite some time.

Yes, indeed, it's probably a great, great place to to stop. I know we could continue chatting about this for a long time, but ryan, thank you so much for for coming on with us today. And that's a rap ready for today's shake six.

Thanks to our ready to in london, guy finny how and don't forget to followers in your podcast APP of choice. One last request, if you're listening to us an apple podcast and want to support this podcast, please leave us a star rating or or right to review. Goodbye for now.

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