Congress held a historic hearing on UFOs last July. The hearing, which featured testimony from two former Navy fighter pilots and a former senior intelligence officer, garnered a notable amount of attention and interest not seen on Capitol Hill in years.
In one remarkable exchange, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) described how his office received a “protected disclosure” from Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, regarding a January 2023 UFO incident over the Gulf of Mexico. After being stonewalled by the Air Force, he delivered a tense, on-base reminder to the military about “how authorities flow in the United States of America.” The Air Force relented, permitting Gaetz to review sensor data gathered during the encounter.
According to Gaetz, fighter pilots tracked four unknown objects flying in a “clear diamond formation.” Notably, the incident occurred on a training range typically conspicuously free of any airborne clutter.
Still imagery indicated that one of the objects demonstrated capabilities that Gaetz, who has served on the House Armed Services Committee for nearly a decade, was “not able to attach to any human capability, either from the United States or from any of our adversaries.”
Radar data, according to Gaetz, showed that the four objects moved in a “very clear formation [with] equidistant” separation.
As Gaetz noted, and further documentation confirmed, the fighter jet’s radar stopped working as the jet closed within 4,000 feet of one of the objects. The jet’s infrared camera malfunctioned too, requiring the pilot to take still images of one of the unknown objects manually.
In a case resolution report published last week, the Pentagon’s UFO analysis office concluded with “moderate” confidence that the object observed by the pilot was a balloon, likely “a large commercial lighting balloon.”
This so-called explanation insults the intelligence of any reader who takes a few moments to review the details of the incident. It did not convince the world’s most prominent UFO skeptic. The pilot’s sketch of the object, described as akin to an “Apollo spacecraft,” bears no plausible resemblance to the design of any known industrial lighting balloon.
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