
The Department of Defense has officially released three declassified videos showing Navy pilots interacting with “unidentified aerial phenomena,” aka UFOs.
In a statement Monday, the Pentagon said following a “thorough review,” it had determined that the videos do not reveal “any sensitive capabilities or systems” and that their release “does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of [these types of] military air space incursions.”
Of the three incidents seen in these videos, the first occurred in November 2004, and the other two in January 2015.
In its statement, the Pentagon acknowledged the fact that these clips had been leaked into the public domain years ago.
A Department of Defense spokesperson said they were releasing the videos “in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos.”
The 2004 video was brought to light in a New York Times story published Dec. 16, 2017, which included interviews with the two pilots who observed the encounter.
The pilots described seeing an oblong object about 40 feet long hovering about 50 feet above the water.
When they approached, the object rapidly ascended into the air and out of sight. “It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” one of the pilots said in the interview.