#98 Ryan Graves, ASA: UAPs as a wake-up call for airspace safety and innovation

Ryan Graves is a former U.S. Navy F/A-18F pilot and the first active-duty pilot to publicly report regular UAP sightings. In this episode, we explore what these encounters reveal about gaps in our airspace sensing and safety infrastructure, and where the opportunities lie for better detection, data analysis, and aerospace innovation. Ryan also shares insights from his work at Americans for Safe Aerospace and AIAA, where he’s helping bring scientific rigor and policy attention to a long-overlooked issue.

Chapters

• 1:16 UAP is a budding industry
• 2:17 Ryan's Background and Initial UAP Encounters
• 3:13 Radar Upgrades and UAP Detection
• 4:36 Challenges in Visual Confirmation of UAPs
• 6:43 Data collection and quality
• 17:07 Lessons learned on sensing capabilities
• 24:29 UAP flight characteristics
• 28:32 Debriefing and Cultural Shifts in Reporting UAPs
• 31:22 Advocating for Data Aggregation and Analysis
• 36:26 Patterns in 850 collected UAP encounter reports
• 46:10 Government and Agency Involvement in UAP Research
• 47:36 Pilot Reactions and Reporting on UAPs
• 51:04 Technological Solutions for UAP Detection
• 55:01 New Jersey sightings
• 1:00:45 What Ryan Looks For In The Data
• 1:03:47 2015 USS Roosevelt sightings
• 1:12:55 Opportunities for Entrepreneurs

Transcript

Ryan: 0:00

I think as general pragmatist here and rationalist, but you know, there are a number of pilots, in the hundreds I would garner, that have seen things that immediately change their worldview on this topic while flying an aircraft with hundreds of people. Is that, an environment that we want to continue or is that something we want to mitigate the risks associated with, right? It's not an easy thing for someone just getting in this conversation to consider because it sounds like baloney and fantasy, but that's the mental state that professional pilots sometimes find themselves in.

Luka: 1:36

Welcome back to The Vertical Space. Today's guest is Ryan Graves, a former US Navy Lieutenant and FA 18 F Super Hornet pilot, who deployed twice in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Inherent Resolve. Ryan was the first active duty pilot to come forward publicly about regular sightings of UAP unidentified anomalous phenomena and has been featured in 60 Minutes, the New York Times, and the Joe Rogan experience. In 2023. Ryan testified before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee regarding UAP Incursions on the East Coast and experiences of his colleagues in commercial aviation. Ryan serves as co-founder and executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, ASA, a military pilot led nonprofit dedicated to aerospace safety and national security with focus on UAP. Ryan volunteers as the first chair of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics UAP Integration and Outreach Committee, which serves as a neutral, scientifically focused group, enabling greater aerospace safety. This conversation is not about sensational claims. Instead, we focus on what Ryan and others have seen and what these encounters reveal about gaps in our current sensing capabilities, airspace awareness, and the broader technological opportunity to make our skies safer and more transparent. Let's get into it. Ryan, welcome to the podcast. It's a real pleasure to have you here.

Ryan: 3:44

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Luka: 3:46

You're a highly accomplished individual, a former Navy F/A-18 fighter pilot. but you are perhaps best known for your courage in publicly speaking about your encounters with unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAPs during training missions off the coast of Virginia. Now UAPs are a bit of a polarizing topic, and there's plenty of forums that speculate on the origins or more sensational aspects. This is not our focus today, this show is about the intersection of technology and flight. Our audience includes innovators across the aerospace ecosystem, from startup founders and engineers to industry executives, regulators, defense professionals, academics to name, a few. So in that spirit, we want to explore the UAP issue through a different lens meaning, what do these encounters reveal about gaps in technology? What are the implications for airspace safety? Where do they point to opportunities for innovation? Sounds good.

Ryan: 4:46

Sounds great.

Luka: 4:48

Okay, perfect. Let's jump in. to start us off, is there anything that very few in the industry, meaning aerospace or, choose your industry, agree with you on.

Ryan: 4:57

Yeah. So, I, I would, I think there's a lot of different ways I could answer that. and I'll try not to be too verbose, but I think actually the, the right answer probably is, is that. I don't think most people realize is that there is a budding industry, if you will, around this topic. it's no longer just, a few folks with some stories that they're willing to put forward for entertainment value. but there are, real requirements and needs within the DOD and other organizations in order to fulfill their congressional mandates, and their responsibilities to preserving our national airspace and our national security and that doesn't just stop with UAP, that stops with any small form factor asset that happens to be penetrating our borders, whether, we know where they're from or not. and so, I think people need to understand that, that, there's a real way that you can contribute and move the ball forward for national security in this topic. and so, yeah, I would say my disagreement is that there really is, I think that budding industry, that people, need to pay attention to.

Luka: 5:53

Great. We'll get more into it, during the course of the conversation, but let's start with where it all happened. walk us through how you got, connected with the UAP phenomena and tell us about your UAP encounters, your regular sightings off the coast of Virginia.

Peter: 6:08

And, and first walk. Walk us through your background,

Ryan: 6:10

Yeah, certainly. Yeah. Thank you. so, from a small town, Massachusetts went to school at Worcester Polytechnical Institute, in central Massachusetts. Got a degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and then immediately joined, the Navy with the hopes of flying fighters and was successful in doing so. My first fleet squadron was, the VFA 11 in Virginia Beach where I was flying the F 18 F Super Hornet. that's the newer two seat variant. And we had just returned from my first deployment aboard the USS Enterprise and this was in, 2012. So I was a fresh, a new fighter pilot, had the, the rare honor of, conducting my first combat mission about three weeks after finishing the training program. and did that for about four or five months before we steamed home. And when we got home, we began to go through various system upgrades, including our radar system that we upgraded from the AP G 73 to the AP G 79. And I'm sure we'll get into it later, but you know, it was a significant increase in capabilities and as soon as that happened, it did take about eight months for that, for all of our jets to get upgraded. But as soon as we got the first radar online and we were flying with it, I flew with it. We were immediately seeing objects that were within our working areas off the coast of Virginia Beach that we hadn't seen, with the previous radar or even our wingman wasn't seeing, with an older radar. And so I wouldn't say that was my first introduction to UAP. We didn't know what we were dealing with at that point. And in fact, the primary consensus was that we were most likely seeing some type of software error or radar error. often radars can, get a bounce back from certain weather formations or reflections from the ground. This new system wasn't supposed to have those deficiencies, but you know, yet what was the better explanation? but it was not long at all until we started having correlation across multiple sensors on our aircraft or across multiple aircraft as well. the electrical optical systems, the, uh, AIM-9X missile system, and other systems confirming that yes, there was something here. This wasn't just a software glitch itself. And that was kind of our introduction at that point. We didn't get answers immediately. I'll say, our next, decision was to go try to see them with their eyeballs, right? So gotta, there's something there. What is it? Let's go try to find out. and so we'd do, so we'd slow down, we'd find one that was stationary. We'd step below it in order to get look up against the sky and. We'll have, all our raters or all our sensors on it, as I just discussed, and that data is getting pumped and fusd into an augmented reality system in our helmet. So, as we're looking out and approaching this merge, we know precisely where to be looking for this object. It should be very simple, and we often do this at 1200 knots of closure against an enemy fighter. So 200 knots should be pretty easy, and yet as we'd approach that merge and passed it, we would not see, anything with our eyes. When we turned back around, we'd re-acquire the object on our sensors. It would be displaced a bit, but unable to pick anything up with our eyes. That changed a couple weeks later, however, when two aircraft from V FFA 11, the squadron I was in, were entering the area, standard location where they enter standard altitude and as soon as they crossed that threshold, one of these objects went between the two aircraft, which were about 150 feet apart at that time. came within about 50 feet, of the league cockpit. and this is when they visually saw it for the first time we visually saw it for the first time.

Jim: 9:35

Ryan? Did they pick it up on radar before they visually saw it when it came between the aircraft?

Ryan: 9:40

No, and that's a good question.'cause, you would assume they, we, we knew they were real at this point, or at least something we had to respect. But, he actually, as was somewhat common with the radar at this point, was executing a radar reset after takeoff because it was in degraded mode. And so it takes I won't say how long would some time to reboot. And essentially he got out there, had this incident, still didn't have rebooted, and that was a justification for canceling the flight at that point.

Peter: 10:06

Interesting. And have you ever, experienced a situation where you had a, something that you could sense on radar or on infrared, and that when you closed with it, were unable to see it visually? Is that something that is rare, but that it happens, or is that something that had never happened before?

Ryan: 10:24

I'll say the modern, tactical environment and a fighter jet is full of electronic warfare and things of that nature. so false radar tracks or radar tracks that we can't trust, is, something we live with, but also we have a number of systems that help us mitigate that as well. Right. And I'm purposely staying vague, So those are an example of a time we might have a radar contact that isn't really there, but they're also very fleeting, very what we would call low quality. and what we're describing in these scenarios are just perfectly stable track files, highly high weapons, quality track files that are being correlated by multiple sensors that are in different, spectrums as well, including EOIR.

Peter: 11:06

So if, I'm trying to think of the, the data quality question, maybe I can frame it in my mind this way. one dimension is the quality of the individual track, which you're describing as stable. a good quality track. Number two is do you have multiple types of sensors on board the aircraft that are corroborating an object at the same location perhaps moving in the same way. Number three would be multiple aircraft, seeing the same object at the same location. And then the fourth layer of data quality might be, other sensors in the area on ships or on the ground or on completely other types of aircraft that are also seeing that those, those are sort of like four layers of building up the quality of the information about this, about, about this target that you're tracking or this, this object that you're tracking. is that a fair way to approach this question?

Ryan: 12:07

It is, I'll just answer in that brief format, to avoid going down too much data fusion type conversations. But generally speaking, that's a, an ideal framework with, increasing accuracy and confidence. as you go up that scale, I would assume. and, even, perhaps amount of increase in quality might be questionable to some degree, right? if you have two fighter jets with weapons, quality track files, utilizing a data link fusing all their data together. If you get a ships radar on there, that might be beneficial, their systems. But you already have the 99.9% solution, for what the jet can provide. Now I'm saying for detecting UAP, now I'm not saying those systems are optimal, right? But for what you can gather from a jet and the modern battle space, like around a carrier, that's pretty good. Now if you're talking about national assets in space or bringing different assets with different modalities, that of course, I think would be beneficial. But as far as what's in play on the average day,

Jim: 13:07

Ryan, in that situation, in that sighting, were there any other detection methods, radar, whatever they would be that conflicted with what you saw or conflicted with the sensors on your aircraft?

Ryan: 13:20

I received no data that what we were seeing was or was not being seen by, other agencies. So out there there's something called Giant Killer, and they provide basically the range control for that entire area. When we enter the area, we essentially check off with them. And do our own thing and they kind of monitor and look for traffic. On occasion, they would detect and vector us to one of these objects, but rarely did that happen in my experience. even more so in the earlier days with older radars, I have numbers, stories of pilots who were vectored onto objects, essentially had to zoom their radar in to put more energy there, finally broke out the target and were able to go intercept it before it would, shoot away at very rapid speeds. so I think in the earlier stage people were more likely to get vectored on, whereas with these more sophisticated systems we have now, we're just detecting more and integrating into our management now a missing data piece here is what Giant killer has seen, right? It's always been a big question that myself and others like Chris Mellon have posed. What about these sophisticated systems that we have in Cape Cod and down the East coast that are, used for ICBM tracking other things. There's some of the most sophisticated sensors on the planet. These should have been detecting, these objects as well. Why can't we integrate that data into our understanding? I don't know to what degree if that data exists, if it was preserved or not preserved, never collected. I have spoken with folks who have confirmed to me that national assets were used in order to validate my story and were able to confirm my statements. if I, that's as far as I can go on that side.

Luka: 14:55

okay, so why weren't you able to obtain the data? Is it just because. Is it the siloed and classified nature of this? Or was there something else at play?

Ryan: 15:02

Well, the question is who's collecting the data? Right. whose data is that? It's, I can't collect it's government data. The problem that you're identifying here is the, the crux of the issue is that. In the past, this data was just never preserved. the radar data was never preserved, the tapes were never preserved. there was no coordination amongst this. and often, people just had this cognitive dissidence that, well, that was weird, but, back to work. that's one of the biggest changes over the past, eight to 10 years or so, is that people have said, well, wait, this actually might be important either for national security reasons, or for other reasons. And maybe I'll preserve it. Maybe I will bring it to someone. Maybe there is someone that can do something useful with this now. and so thousands upon thousands of, gun cam footage, radar data, other information like that now resides on the normal classification systems, because they are not getting dismissed or thrown away or deleted. And that's now one of the things that AARO, the all domain anomaly resolution office within the Pentagon, is charged with assessing or resolving the cases as per that data, they are right now the congressionally mandated group that has the legal and classification authorities in order to receive that type of information.

Peter: 16:16

I wanna linger a little bit on the original encounters or the original observations and understand a little more. when you upgraded to the APG 79 radar, how can you characterize the. the jump in capability that, that, that gave you, and was that something where on the first day that you start flying with that, that you started seeing these things? Or was it only after a period of time? help me sort of build the right picture of, of what this upgrade and radar meant in a practical sense.

Ryan: 16:50

Yeah, so, from a practical sense, it was almost like using, old school analog TV technology that's been improved and made more efficient over time to jumping to, an oled, TV, high resolution 4K, range breakout ability, precision EW capabilities, everything is modernized with the best capabilities compared to incremental versions of the past. So this was a, a big leap change in capabilities in our modernization. I wouldn't even call modernization, but advancement of the modern, of the state of the art in airborne, radar capabilities. so it was quite significant. And the, the effect is that okay, we can just see, I'll just say everything right in front of us. whereas before you might have to, pay more attention to the, the radar mechanics in order to break things out where that basically goes away now. and so it's just like, oh, eyes open. Why are all these things in my area very easy to see, very plain as day, and pretty much on the first flight as far as I recall it,

Peter: 17:50

Was it clear in the radar data that these, new objects that you were observing, based upon what you were seeing in the data from the A PG 79, was it clear that, oh yeah. we would not have seen these with the prior radar, with the APG 73 because of, X, Y, and Z, characteristics.

Ryan: 18:07

There is, some hints that. Why that is, of storage, of how pilots have I set, like I said, kind of neck down or zoom in the radar in order to put more energy on a single spot. The new radar essentially does that constantly, automatically. and so there's an argument about the amount of, energy you're putting into a, a finite area for the detection, or for the radar versus these broad sweeping, radar systems that are putting less energy out and over a wider area. So that's anecdotal. but the problem is again. Who looking at the radar data specifically, right? So I mean, where is that group of scientists and engineers that have the ability to answer that question as a pilot? our radar data is the card which has the raw data on it, but also a recording of the radar screen, right? So what we're actually seeing in the jet, and for us that's everything we need to be fighter pilots is on that display. We don't have access to like raw radar data, right? That's something for the mechanics and the technical crew. So again, all that was just getting thrown away and deleted, which was part of the major issue because again, if you look at this more broadly, my organization, Americans for Safe Aerospace, operates under the presumption that, credible people are telling the truth when they say that they are seeing, things in the air and space and underwater that are operating with capabilities that appear to be beyond the state of the art. we don't make any assumption about necessarily what that means. We have arguments for, what those logical conclusions could be or should not be. But, regardless that data is a potential national security flaw that needs to get fixed. And the fact that we're not even preserving that data, just makes us weaker, less safe as a country entering.

Luka: 19:42

Ryan, quick follow up. Have there been other Super Hornet squadrons that upgraded to the AN/APG-79 prior to you that were flying that same area that saw something? Or were there any other participants that were in this, shared airspace or this training area that saw the same thing? Any other platforms, airborne or ground-based or naval based that, either at that time or since then you were able to corroborate?

Ryan: 20:08

So there's our sister squadron, if you will, VFA two 11, was in our air wing and there's a couple Air wings at N naa. And I, I honestly don't know the radar status of all the different radars on those Air Wings, but in our Air Wing two 11 got upgrade at the same time as us. and we weren't really communicating about this as one might expect, but eventually it did come up and we were learning, they were having the same issues with the AESA jets as well, some of which I've had, introduced to the Senate Armed Service Committee, New York Times and others to help validate my story. and it's more in just a few people. I mean, it was basically everyone in our squadron, anyone in any other squadron that had significantly powerful enough radar

Jim: 20:48

ryan, what have you learned about our sensor capabilities that you didn't know at the time of that sighting? So you've learned probably a lot more about our ability to detect things, some things you can talk about, a lot of things you can't talk about. But what have you learned and maybe been impressed by, as a result of the last several years where you thought, I didn't realize we had these sensor capabilities. Where at the time all you understood what you understood, what have you learned?

Ryan: 21:19

So, I will say this, that the, United States Missile Defense capabilities are a well kept secret. Even as a fighter pilot, I was not read into any of our capabilities. Right. so it's just something to keep in mind here. But I will say, I have learned a lot about not just what the government, how the government operates, but also, how advanced the capabilities are within the commercial market space to advance various, sensing problems and solutions and why that's often a better solution than trying to in-house it at the government. But I'd say the biggest thing I've noticed is that we've have various powerful systems. But it seems they're not always the most sophisticated. and I say that in the manner that the amount of data that they collect is so tremendous that the opportunity loss of not utilizing that data is, I think, very massive and that it allows adversaries to utilize new, signal management systems in order to penetrate air spaces that we thought were secure. And we see that, in what, in New Jersey and other places, the United States where we're having drone incursions deep in the United States off the coast, and everywhere else in between, and we can't even attribute them to anyone. and so, I don't think it's a deficiency of the capabilities of the system. It's just the processing and storage and the ability to adapt to new threats on such a big pipeline, is, is a, is a problem. Yeah.

Peter: 22:47

I think you're highlighting a really interesting trend that's probably been at work for a long time, which is few numbers of very bespoke, very capable sensing systems that capability starts to proliferate and it shows up in. F 18 radars. And then, looking ahead, this type of sensing capability, between advances in radars and advances in software defined radio technology and other areas is going to, proliferate more and more. We're gonna have so many more data sources for understanding the, the air environment, around us and seeing observations like this. and it's, it's a question of, okay then, how do we capture that data and how do we not drop it on the floor, so that we can take, a question of these types of observations and break it down into tractable questions that we can answer that become building blocks towards a bigger understanding of what it is that we're seeing.

Ryan: 23:46

And, those type of sensors I just talked about, that's the, threading the needle approach if you will. Right. You have a very powerful system looking in the right place and you're able to do something with that. there's another context of, what are the really, the challenges to detection, right? You can have that very sophisticated sensor if you know what you're looking for and you know where to look for and you detect something. The other side of that coin is to build, a wide net, more passive system, whether that's a, space-based or a ground-based, passive system that can dig through again, that very large amount of data sets to look for signals that you aren't expecting. pa there's passive RF technologies, even ones that can be applied in space. there's new detection algorithms and the implementation of, realtime vectorization into sensors to be able to build a realtime contextual awareness of your surroundings. that also allows for, different types of semantical analysis on the data that you're, you're vectorizing. And so that, what that unlocks for us is the ability to look for novel signals and high noise environments where now. One of the big walls is that we have to do a lot of signal processing or remove a lot of, what we assume is noise, and then look for the specific signals that we're looking for. And that's again, the default state of military systems looking for specific signals versus a broad scope, multimodal system that can semantically understand those signals again, in high noise environments before that initial filtering would be, I think the ideal state.

Luka: 25:09

Ryan, just a quick follow up to your, personal encounter. how do you explain the fact that you weren't able to pick up this object visually after, several sensors on the airplane corroborated that contact?

Ryan: 25:22

Yeah. there's a few ways that that could happen. One, it's not impossible to miss something that's relatively small, even up close. especially something you've never seen before and might be smaller. when there's very little range and you're not sure of the size, you know how, or when you're not sure of the size, it can be hard to tell, the range or where to focus your eyes. And so sometimes something may seem as so obvious in your vision, but you can't see if your eyes are not focused correctly. It's a weird thing of being a pilot in a infinite, background. so there's some tricks you have to do to focus on things that actually get your eyes to be properly focused. So it's possible you could just miss it that way. I think that's a little likelihood based off of the, the augmented reality system that we had, as well as the fact that this happened to numerous people. But it's possible. It could be that the object displaced, as I transitioned from my sensors approaching that merge, at a certain range where eyes out and now transitioning, trying to build that mental model of where it is and, keep ourselves safe and fly up to it, it's possible that, it maneuvered in a manner. And, as I'm approaching that merge, right, my sensor are having lower quality as it kind of gets outta range, right? So it's possible that it could have maneuvered and I never really saw maneuver my radars'cause I was looking outside and thus it was not where I expected it to be. They were displaced after we maneuver back around. So it's at least logical to me, and of course a more exotic explanation as I was using some to type of signal management in the visual spectrum in order to shield itself, from us. and that could simply be reflective paint, right? in a blue sky that might just be enough, right? So, those are I think, the most logical options.

Peter: 26:56

For these objects, what, which sensor was providing you the more useful information? Was it the infrared or was it the radar and I assume, I guess the infrared is directed by the radar, so it's relatively nAARO boresight, right. And so the radar would find the object first, and then the infrared would point towards it and provide you more information, but. Okay. Which, sensor stream was for this observation was most useful to you and most informative.

Ryan: 27:24

I would have to say the EOIR, electro optical infrared, the radar obviously is our primary tool and, and it provides a lot of kinematic information, all the kinematic information. So obviously I can't say that's not important, but, that was confusing to us, but it was very weird to us to see it, on EOIR and be like, okay, that's not. A normal shape's not an aircraft. it shouldn't be operating at those speeds. What the heck? and even the IR signature itself, typically emanating equal IR energy across the whole surface of the object. so, it's hard to, visuals are what they are with us humans, right. So it's hard to say that wasn't a huge important data set. Now, is that the scientifically best tool? I don't know. Right. Maybe like a hyperspectral sensor would be a good choice?

Peter: 28:10

Right, how, how many of these would you guys see when you were out in this training area, typically? And where would you observe them in terms of like what altitude?

Ryan: 28:18

typically about four to eight to 10 of them. And they weren't really operating together typically. They would just kind of be interspersed in the area.

Peter: 28:26

were they evenly spaced out or were they just kinda randomly,

Ryan: 28:29

It just seemed random. Yeah. They weren't, like in their own area, they were not respecting the internal boundaries within the working area. They would even spill out of the primary boundaries, into where international traffic lanes are. we'd see them, down around 3000 feet, sometimes lower. I've heard, up to typically, 35, 40,000, wouldn't surprise me if they were higher. We're just not typically looking there. and everywhere in between.

Peter: 28:55

And, and what speeds were they moving at?

Ryan: 28:57

So they would either be stationary, and I mean like stationary, 0.0 Mach, completely steady, and very high winds, often a hundred twenty, thirty, forty knots. and, F 18 going to investigate it, struggling to even stay in the area'cause of the winds. And yet this thing's, perfectly stationary and seen visually, right? So not just a weird radar issue. and these are some cases, that are out in the public sphere, which is why I talk about them. Like they're obvious, but it's just, they are out there. You can find these, these were FOIA as some of the safety reports from my squadron, during this time period. we'd see them, when they were, trucking along. They'd typically be somewhere around like 0.6 or 0.8 m about 240, 350 knots or so. so kind of general operating speeds that we operate out there when we're not, hustling.

Peter: 29:43

Would, would you see these really explosive accelerations or abrupt changes in direction or, what

Ryan: 29:50

I never saw that specific. I mean, there were certainly abrupt changes in direction, but I never saw it like, go from stationary and accelerate, to crazy speeds. we, I did see a few that were 1.1, 1.2 Mach. I was heading east, but I didn't see'em accelerate. I just saw them when they were already out there.

Luka: 30:07

In retrospect, what data do you wish that your sensors had captured, that would've made the biggest difference in understanding what you were seeing?

Ryan: 30:16

I think I, I, I get where you're, where you're going with this, but honestly, I think if we just had the data that was available in the jet, it would give us so much information, right? I mean, the kinematics, signals that we can use for, future detection capabilities. So, I don't think the path is to upgrade the jet, per se, but I think it's to identify, various systems that can be used on the ground or in space. proverbially both, right? and get a, be able to track a target. crossing domains there would be pretty ideal. But, there's no secret sauce when it comes to the sensors, right? I think you wanna like approach this topic in some sense if you're coming at it cold from taking the perspective of proving what it's not. Right. and building a sensor suite around what you can prove, it's not right. So, it's not a satellite, it's not, solar flare or something else. It's not, meteorite. It's not, air traffic. It's not skydiver, it's not flares off a helicopter. And you can, eliminate all these somewhat automatically, through various data, publicly available data sets. And then what you're left with is, the signals that you want to better work on. And, typically long range ir, IR is a key sensor for detecting these. often people have luck in various areas in a repeated fashion, even just with night vision goggles, going out. But, specifically IR sensors, are good. Hyperspectral obviously is gonna be able to provide you a lot of information about the makeup of the object or the environment close around it, right? Which might tell you information about, propulsion systems or mechanisms, material structures. Of course, there's some exotic sensors out there. One might look to gravimetric sensors, right? If you have a potential theory about how these are being propsed, you might expect large, not large, but high frequency, gravity wave generation, from certain type of propulsion systems, which could be detected through a number of systems. But, and these, these sound kind of like speculation, but these are things that, people have looked at in this domain in order to, rule out or to validate, some assumptions.

Luka: 32:11

So Ryan, you have these encounters. You land, you go to debrief. What was it like in that debrief?

Ryan: 32:17

Well, there was just no culture around it. We wouldn't even debrief about it, which was like the most disturbing part to me as a pilot. It's like, Hey, we just had these incidences. We debrief everything else. Why are we not debriefing this? And then we walk into the ready room and then, we're like, oh, what the, what the heck was that thing? Right? It's the first thing we wanna talk about once we've done the formal debrief, right? Because there was just this culture of ignoring it and, and pretending it didn't exist in a lot of ways. So, sadly that was the experience in the debrief that has shifted, I've learned over the years and, at least since I've been out and squadrons are briefing to this, there, there have been, especially when there's an uptick or a recent incident, it will get briefed in the ready room. I was at Tail Hook and Naval Aviation Conference, last year. guys are coming up to me telling me how they're, briefing it and the sightings they've had. So one, it's still continuing out in the areas it seems. and two, there is a general awareness that seems in the community that, hey, this is kind of like a cool thing that they can be part of to try to better understand versus this, toxic topic that it used to be.

Peter: 33:17

Have these observations gone on since 2013? Since the first radar upgrade? Because the radar in that aircraft has gone through some smaller upgrades over the years. but have, have the observations continued? Has this become a matter of course, and is, is the data being captured in a more thorough way now versus 2013?

Ryan: 33:39

It is still occurring, it is a more accepted topic and. More data capture is occurring, but it's still widely under reported, and under collected on, and that's, it just goes to a lack of education on this topic. There has been official guidance and instruction that, informs, service members on where and how to report. But of course, sending a message to 500,000 people doesn't mean it's gonna be enacted on a daily basis, right? So they really haven't done the investment to educate pilots on this. Why it's important they haven't provided any feedback to the people submitting, right? So if you're just sending reports into a black box every day, you have other priorities as a fighter pilot out there. So eventually you're gonna wane off. and so. So it's still happening. There is, more data available, but I sense that a lot more could be done, when it comes to AARO approach to engaging service members to make them aware and what to preserve. Now I have heard isolated cases where there has been incidences in 2023, there was a, an incident, in the Gulf of Coast with a couple f eighteens and a sphere, AARO I think after that, after they reported that, ended up coming down and giving the squadron a brief, on the topic. So there has been progress to some degree, but I think it's been sporadic.

Jim: 34:56

Ryan, forgive me if this may not be a point you were trying to make earlier, which I was intrigued with, and I've listened to you a lot and I've read about you a lot. So is one of the areas you're advocating for better data aggregation to allow for better analysis?

Ryan: 35:09

Absolutely. And.

Jim: 35:11

what's interesting about that is, I mean, even when you consider, I'm sure we're gonna talk about the sigtings around New Jersey, but a lot of our guests listening right now will say it would be awfully good if we had some kind of a, whether it be commercial or military, government data aggregation so that we can disprove things that, our industry, the drone folks and all are concerned that if we don't get some clarity around what's really happening, we're gonna get blamed. It would be good to have data aggregation, better data analysis. Then it leads me to that government's been doing this for a long time with radar data and what is it that I should be holding onto? What is it that I should be sharing? And over the last 10 years or so, they've been very open in sharing radar data with responsible parties because it's been valuable. So talk a little bit more about the value of data aggregation and also Ryan, who should do it.

Ryan: 36:05

Yeah, so it's all great questions and there's different cohorts that I think have access to different data, and there's really two types of dataset I think, that are generally out in this conversation. there's this whole disclosure conversation that occurs about what the government, may know or may have collected. There's potentially data sets that the government has had. That's not our area of expertise. I was never involved in any programs like that. I've never been made aware of them. our focus is on discovery and what could be done in the public sector. and so, through that we've engaged with the FAA, to help support pilots who have been seeing this on a regular basis near nightly, in various parts of the world. and we've been advising Congress as well, on the creation of the Safe Airspace for Americans Act. and this legislation would require the FAA to modify the Aviation Safety Reporting System, that's managed by nasa. In this system, if you're not familiar, is an area where pilots can go to report various safety incidents or, self-inflicted, aviation errors in order to, preserve the safety of the skies. And it's a very well-respected and trusted resource with publicly available data sets for study. And so in this legislation, we've advised that that system be modified in order to support, UAP related incident reporting and make it available both for those, studying it at the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, as well as for the general public who can access those reports. Now, that's just one cohort. aviation professionals, and that legislation has not been, voted on yet. Although we're optimistic we're gonna be able to get it attached to a piece of legislation, in the near future. and very quickly that legislation would also protect pilots, on their existing whistleblower laws for reporting, safety incidences in the workplace as well. many pilots fear coming out on this topic. if I had a penny every time I heard it, but they're like, I got five years left to go. I'm not saying anything until I'm out, but I'd be happy to talk about it then. It's just all risk and, no reward for them right now. So at least they would have that protection. so, that's aviation safety data. What about the general public? Right. And, there's qual you might need more from the general public to, build an understanding of the data that has value versus from a small professional cohort of trained observers. And that's fine. my understanding is that, again, AARO, the all-domain anomaly resolution office is preparing a national reporting system, that would be available to anyone to utilize that system. The problem with that is that, as I would understand how that would be operated, is that that data would essentially sent to a black hole. where it would enter their, their repositories for their own internal purposes with, similar levels of public engagement as they've demonstrated in the past. so while that might be effective, I don't think that's necessarily the best option to move the conversation forward. and that's, one of the reasons my organization has stepped in and started to accept these reports. One, because the legislation, has not forced a SRS to conform to what's needed in the UAP realm. And also because people simply haven't had the trust and AARO to go to them to bring, their incidences to them. And so we've served as an intermediary for, over 850 people at this point, who have had, various, reports that are often accompanied with data or accessible. Evidence within classified environments that need a transition to a proper custodian involve in this conversation, which is not us. to be clear, we don't accept that information. so, I'm not answering your question, quite yet, but I am laying out why it's such a hard problem at the moment. and I don't, I don't know necessarily what the right answer is. My organization is going to start publishing the reports that we've, gathered and that we've assessed and we've quietly used these reports over the past year and a half or so, to motivate members of Congress, right? We always hear how, we've talked to various pilots and they've seen pretty incredible things. It's not just me anymore, it's other witnesses that we've been able to bring forward, in this area.

Luka: 40:07

So Ryan, the 850 reports that you've collected, can you speak to any patterns or anomalies that have been emerging, over the years, since the time that you got involved with UAP? and specifically, are you talking to, F 22 or F 35 pilots, or some of the other platforms that, have the radars that are even more sophisticated than the APG 79. are you hearing similar things from them?

Ryan: 40:33

Yeah, they, they didn't, the upgraded platforms are having similar experiences. I'll just surmise it with that. So, it seems to be a consistent trend. sorry, can you please repeat the first part of the question?

Luka: 40:45

Yeah. what patterns are emerging from the 850 plus reports?

Ryan: 40:50

yeah. Gosh. Great question. So, I hate to, it's gonna probably get a little weird here to some, some degree, but, there's, there's a couple cohorts I talk about. So we talk about high atmosphere, observations. these are a often a low confidence type of report because it, many people might get confused with starlink or satellite flares. but there's often a core of reports from aviation professionals who have been watching starlink since their first launch and been seeing satellite flares since the eighties, are seeing just brand new behavior in ways that are very hard to explain. and not in the windows one would expect LEO satellites to be flaring. and these consist of, an object that's continuously illuminated, that kind of flares up, stays illuminated. And, often in very large racetrack patterns in the sky, so large that, assuming the altitude is, greater than 70,000 feet. These things would be moving at tremendous speeds. performing, right angles. Again, while still illuminated, there is some trickery where lights fade in and fade out, and it appears like they're maneuvering aggressively, but it's just, alignment of various satellite flares from starlink and whatnot. but when you do see ones that are continuously illuminated for long periods of time, somewhere upwards of hour and a half, displaying these behaviors, alongside an aircraft, it's very hard to dismiss that as, satellite flare or some other system. so we are seeing a lot of reports like that. That, ones might be potentially starling, but ones that are, as best we can assess are clearly not. some of these high altitude objects have dropped down co altitude with aircraft, and then shadowed them for a period of time, that has been reported of that coming within 10 miles of the, the aircraft. more generally, o objects are being seen in the atmosphere as well. Sometimes at, close proximity, within hundreds of feet of the wing, going underneath the aircraft, coming up on the far side. some of these are described as, in the daytime spherical, metallic spheres, about 10 feet of diameter or so is very commonly reported. one might imagine that's what the, colored spheres are at night that are observed, right? it's not just point lights, but you know, it seem to have a center mass. amber, red, white. Blue. these are all, various colors. Sometimes they'll be seen operating, as a group next to an aircraft in a playful manner. It seems, just kind of zipping around each other off the wing and then shifting sides, going in front of the aircraft at on occasion. there's this kind of sphere and daytime sphere, nighttime sphere. Is it a high alt two sphere, all kind cohort. We don't really know what to make of it at that point. another trend is black triangles. all almost exactly describe the same as far as three lights on the bottom at the apex. slightly non equilateral triangle, with the two sides being longer than one. I guess obviously, but I, I guess kind of do with my hands. But, so that's very consistent description. these have been seen South America, military bases in the United States, over the Pacific Northwest, near Australia, Europe. all very consistent reports. One coming within 500 feet of a commercial airliner fully loaded. 7 37.

Luka: 44:02

How many of these reports would you say, are the level of quality that your story is, or Commander Fravor story is where you have, multiple, eyewitnesses, visual identification, sensor data, corroborating sensor data across sensors, across aircraft ships, et cetera.

Ryan: 44:23

While we don't always have access to the corroborating data, we may know where it is and can inform again, the proper agencies on how to collect it. I'd say, within our holdings, we probably have about, 40 cases or so that, what I would consider similar to David Fravers, where again, you have, highly respected, air crew or professional, a trained observer, seeing something spectacular, in broad daylight, with corroboration from multiple people as well as sensors. now David's case, the radar data wasn't, retained, right? We don't know that's the case for all these, some of these are modern cases to a point where people were interested in preserving this data and does exist. Others, there's a high likelihood that data still exists if, you know the proper person with the right clearance, can go and dig. But 100% of them are incredibly fascinating and a bit stirring, frankly, when you hear the level of professionalism from these people, and they're often very reluctant to have this conversation. this is often something they tell me that, they had this experience eight months ago and haven't been able to stop thinking about it and only shared it with their wife, and now they're telling me, or something that ex experienced in the eighties, in the Navy, that again, they never shared. it's just incredible how these people have been holding onto what are such incredible life experiences with no one to share it with and nothing to be done about it.

Peter: 45:44

It's interesting that there's been a diversity of observations of different types of objects and behavior, but clear clustering in that data even across time and across geography is what it sounds like.

Ryan: 45:59

Yeah, across time is key too. I mean, the black triangle reports, go back to the sixties it seems. And yet they're also having near mid airs with commercial airliners in the mid, early 2020s. I don't know how you rationalize that, but, and these pilot, I mean, these pilots, again, they didn't, they're not comfortable sharing this information. In fact, this particular pilot, after he landed, him and his co-pilot self-administered a drug test to themselves, simply'cause, going down the, the decision tree there, couldn't really find any other rational explanation for what they had seen.

Jim: 46:29

Ryan, I worked at a commercial sensing company, and many years ago we picked up from our radar data, commercial radar, behavior of an aircraft that was involved with a major accident. And we would always go to the government and say, are you okay with us, providing this information? Would it be helpful? And in this situation, they actually said, we would like it if you could provide that data, because we would prefer that we not provide what we have. And we always did what, the US government wanted us to do. Given your situation, in what situations do you think the information you're providing, the government's glad you're doing it because they couldn't otherwise do it on their own? And what situations do you think they're thinking, I wish he wouldn't have done this.

Ryan: 47:17

yeah, that's the last one's a dangerous one. so, I understand. It depends on its motivations, we, early on when after the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution office was formed, we were bringing witnesses to them so that they could fulfill their congressional mandate of investigating, these cases. these are also cases that we share with congressional members and their staff and others on the Senate Armed Service Committee, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. And now AARO is here to do this work. And so we bring the cases to them. unfortunately our witnesses had somewhat of a universally bad experience, through that, off pretty much every time was reported the interviewers, were not taking notes. kind of just listening and then trying to dismiss at the end of the conversation, there was no follow up. There was no rundown of the information that was provided. Emails going unanswered, so it didn't seem like it was a very earnest effort to investigate this on the human intelligence side, if you will. And so, what we ended up doing is taking a number of our reports, to a group that a, a few agents within the FBI that had expressed interest in investigating this topic, from a national security lens. And it was very productive. We would, inform the witness that this was an option for them and they would, either agree or not agree. And if they agreed, we'd have a call with agents who would utilize their, their training and experience and investigations and resources across the nation to conduct an interview and run down additional leads and information and witnesses. and, that grew over time to the point where we had, we've done over a hundred reports with them at this point, and their internal work has grown to such a point where they're on the cusp of, really solidifying, their work and growing it within the organization. So, the value of these reports. I think, and I again, and I realize I'm slipping from the original question, but you know, the value of some of these reports aren't always in what can be aggregated from data for a scientific investigation. But at this early stage is getting those investigate people interest in those investigation by providing these incredibly compelling narratives, which have fueled a lot of this researches that's gone on. And the work that the FBI is doing now is providing an incentive and a competitor, for AARO. AARO can no longer say we don't have the receipts if someone else is running a similar investigation and has'em as well as the receipts. So, that's one of these significant changes that has occurred over this time. It's not just. you hear DOD getting involved in Congress. the FBI has been very involved in doing, I think very good work. the National Science Foundation, is, eager to explore this topic. There are a number of, technologies that, they've identified that, would be part of A-A-U-A-P program office, if you will, that they proposed and, are in talks in the Senate in order to hopefully get funding for, of course NASA's had their office as well. But, there's this balance between this top down approach in Congress and executive branch and this upward swell that's going on amongst the agencies and the public. and I think those two interplays are gonna to meet here in, in the next couple years. And we're gonna see some serious progress.

Luka: 50:29

Ryan, based on all your collected knowledge so far, how big of a threat are UAPs to the safety of the air transportation system?

Ryan: 50:38

The biggest threat I perceive from UAP to, aviation safety is twofold. First, it's the pilot's reaction to what they're seeing when there's uncertainty in the airspace, whether that be, a Cessna off their left wing that they dismiss because they thought it was nothing, or, thought UAP were silly and that looked like a sphere and they don't look back. And now they have a, an incident with a 7 37, or they do have an incident and they, are approached by a fear and they have a violent reaction with a stick displacing the aircraft because they're seeing something totally unexpected. nevermind the psychological implications of seeing something that really doesn't fit your worldview. I know it sounds, kind of hard to imagine. I think as general pragmatist here and, and, and rationalist, but you know, there are a number of pilots, in the hundreds I would garner that have seen things that immediately change their worldview on this topic while flying an aircraft with hundreds of people. Is that, an environment that we want to continue or is that something we want to mitigate the risks associated with? Right. it's not an easy thing for someone just getting in this conversation to consider. because it sounds like, baloney and fantasy, but that's the state of, of that's the mental state that, professional pilots sometimes find themselves in. It seems as reported.

Luka: 51:53

what's the message to the CEO of a major airline? What kind of message would you convey to them?

Ryan: 52:01

say that, you guys are absorbing risk right now, right. Are, are they UAP, do they end up being this, space alien from somewhere else? Or do we learn later on that China's been testing sophisticated surveillance technology on our coast and our airlines get taken down by one of them, and I don't think China's really gonna care that much. Right. So I mean, that's the risk. It's the risk of the uncertainty in the airspace in a growing contested airspace.

Peter: 52:26

there came a point in 2013, with your squadron that you began to treat UAP as a safety issue. Right? And so when that happened. What was the, the change in the way that you guys flew in that area and have those lessons learned or those policies been implemented any more broadly in the year since, across the Navy? is this part of, of policy or of training at this point, or is it still on a case by case basis?

Ryan: 52:56

It's on a case by case basis. There's been no formalized training that the Navy has put forward as that I'm aware, on this topic. but you know, our procedure essentially, once we determined they're real and pos a aviation, midair hazard that we essentially just stayed away from them, right? So the personal investigation ended. if they were working in an, operating an area that we were supposed to be in, we would move our flights sometimes had to cancel a training mission because there'd be too many of'em out there and the areas were too full. and so that was the general tack, but that only works if you're aware about it and it respecting the issue. And that was just our squadron. we left in 2015 to go on deployment. I left halfway on that cruise to go to Mississippi as a flight instructor in the Navy and. I ended up talking a few years later with the guys that went back after that deployment, and they said yes, they were still there, after we had left. And the only real fix that was implemented was that the base commander put out a notice to airmen, a NOTAM to say, unknown objects operating in the working areas and to use caution. So I wouldn't say that's the, the best model for how to mitigate the situation, but that was the best that they came up with during that time period. whether there's specific training on mitigation now, I highly doubt it. I haven't heard of anything.

Peter: 54:12

Okay.

Luka: 54:12

you heard of any actual collisions?

Ryan: 54:16

there's rumors of various incidences, across the literature, if you will. Right. I mean, going back to, Iran in the eighties and nineties with some, aircraft pursuing UAP. Becoming disabled and crashing. that's, it's a whole different thread than, I'm not an expert on that particular case, but in the modern cases I've assessed, no, I haven't heard of a particular incidents like that or haven't heard of midair.

Jim: 54:41

Ryan, given the potential threat to commercial aircraft, that's a big deal. What would you advocate from a sensor perspective that we don't see today? I mean, A DSB it's a cooperative program. You have the, existing radar today that's both passive and active. And the active will pick up on some of what you're talking about. I assume it won't pick up A lot of it. What would you advocate to the commercial airline executive that we should invest in to be able to pick up these aircraft or going towards, the future whether it be drones, any given any thought to that as far as future radar capabilities.

Ryan: 55:19

Yeah. And so I think there's really two ways. I think right now the best answer for the executive is to implement reporting for this amongst your pilots, right? It'd be very easy to, have an app that's built right into the digital, flight iPad, right, that the pilots fly with, allows'em to, potentially take a photo or enter the report right there for what they're seeing, in commercial airline ADS-B is course cooperative. So pretty non useful here for, I'm not aware of any commercial enters that have any significant radar capabilities other than perhaps a weather radar, and perhaps there's a signal in there. But, I don't think that would be an area that would be too feasible to play around in. Right. And so that's kind of the other part of the problem is that, implementing a new sensor for something that isn't a demonstrable, flight safety risk. And I mean that through past accidents, it's hard to get, new equipment into a cockpit, especially industry wide. So I think that's why that iPad personal, reporting from the pilot itself within the cockpit would be so huge.'cause then you get an understanding o of the issue space. And I, ideally lower the scope of whatever the solution needs to be. But going into the future, especially with, eVTOL, these other systems, there are sensor packages and capabilities out there around, detect and avoid capabilities. I think the industry standard right now is moving towards an acoustical queuing system, with onboard sensors in order to, get the bearing in range for potential detection. acoustic signals may not always be, the proper choice, especially for objects that have often reported as being completely silent. so I think, the standard systems are still going to apply, optical systems, small, swap. there are small swap radar systems as well as, Phase array radar systems. And I think that technology has become much better moving from like your group five to four aircraft or drones down to your group two, and maybe even group one in the near future. and especially if you start to fuse that data as part of a swarm system as well. Right. And that's, I think, where the real challenge comes is that high bandwidth data fusion across multiple systems into a coherent picture, but that's also the future of all autonomous systems in the air, at least in the defense world.

Jim: 57:28

Ryan with all the conversations you've had you get picked up a lot. what conversations have occurred that have been triggered by your conversation that you're not thrilled with?

Ryan: 57:40

Hmm. Well, I think it's, it's easy to hijack my message a little bit in the direction of, thinking I'm taking a path of belief here, or that I've crossed the threshold of major assumptions that I haven't, right? I don't know what these objects are. There's some very interesting data, and if you trust the people that are telling you that stuff, it does kind of narrow your options of credible options of what this could be. But, I don't judge information the moment I receive it. I, I take it in, I tack it on the wall, and I use that to integrate it into my understanding of the world. but I, I'm not there to say that's good or bad information. That's, you're trustworthy, you're not trustworthy. It's all data that is kind of getting dumped in the database to update my model slowly over time, which I think is the most effective way to engage this conversation. And sure, some junk might slip in, but you know, the trends are the trends. Once you hear enough data and it's easy to focus on, it's obvious to see that there are signals rising up, in that, that database of strains where anyone could almost be dismissed individually.

Jim: 58:41

When you heard of, the air vehicle sightings in New Jersey, where did your gut go? What was your initial feeling about what was going on? We've asked that of quite a few guests, but what was your first response?

Ryan: 58:55

here we go again. this, this happened, these events has happened every year since, I think 2021, within the same five to eight week period, of the year. Starting in Langley around 2021, there's an argument that goes back earlier in Wyoming and Colorado with these, strange drone. It seemed formations occurring over farmer's field that were never resolved. but you know, they had the incidents at Langley in 21. I believe it was reported by Washington Post second year. they had the first kind of public issue, or they, I believe I might be a year off. But, but the, then the second year they had the incident where they had to move the, the F-22s from the base and the third year everyone's looking towards laying to see what happens this year. And, then the whole issue expands. up the coast into New Jersey and then, I think it was more of a matter of people actually looking up and seeing what was there. And of course, a lot of, the data quality degraded over time, right? As the media cycle picked up. But, the reality is that there was 300 and I think 40 incursions of, UAVs, over military bases, in 2024 from unknown actors, right? During this, during this window. So, I think, if we actually start paying attention to what's flying, we, hey, we're gonna realize that there's a lot more going on up there, both, adversarial and otherwise. I think there was a core heart of weirdness, right? We've, we received a lot of reports when it comes to that around New Jersey. and we're gonna be releasing some data and information we have on what we've received in regards to that in the near future. safe aerospace.org. but then again, the quality went down and they, they got so many tips within the law enforcement community on this, like six, 7,000 that they essentially couldn't do anything. And then it showed the real weakness in some of our policy, right? The FAA wasn't responsible for it'cause it was so low or it was over military bases and our military commanders couldn't do anything'cause they were, well, 10 feet outside the gate and someone might get hurt and we don't really have the right equipment. Local law enforcement didn't know what to do with it'cause it's a federal issue in the sky. it was a mess. And no one really knew how to respond to this. And we, it was, I think, a very useful forcing mechanism for policymakers to say, okay, we clearly don't have the proper way to mitigate these large form factor swarm issues that, we're building on so we can use in other countries. and so that's, that's been helpful. And I, I, I hear there is continuing legislation on that front and I'm expecting the marketplace for, drone detection to open up significantly in the United States based off some of this legislation.

Peter: 1:01:29

Yeah, I, I feel like I didn't really pay enough attention during November and December of last year when that was happening, because I saw it just kind of go by in the media cycle and looking on social media, seeing more and more people posting pictures of the nighttime sky, and it, it,

Ryan: 1:01:48

the moon. Yeah.

Peter: 1:01:49

I mean, it was so hard to, it was so hard to separate signal from noise. the way that we've been having this discussion around, the observations from, training flights that, that your squadron had compared to what I was seeing in that cycle, people would be posting pictures of, what looked like general aviation aircraft or aircraft with, position lights, green light, red light, flashing white light, stuff that we're all super familiar with, that you would see on a, on an airplane or, or on a drone. And so I just became, I, I didn't pay enough attention to it. Like I said, I became kind of confused about, okay, well are we talking about a drone issue or we talking about something else? And, and how do you separate all of the information coming through from, those weeks, during that time over New Jersey? and is it really the same thing as, as what we've been discussing here?

Ryan: 1:02:41

Yeah, it's hard to say. And I don't think it's been very helpful, the commentary we've gotten from both the last administration as well as this administration. Basically it's been the same story that it faa, even though the FAA has testified that they don't know what they are, and have publicly reiterated that. So we're kind of at this information stalemate, but the good news is, is that perhaps we can just look forward to this next fall and see if we can make it, four or five years in a row. and as a quick reminder, this, this area Langley and up that coast, you know that the southern most area at Langley there, that's the adjacent area to where we were working in Virginia Beach. That's just 80 miles north, that's essentially right next door. And in between there is, Norfolk. Naval station where various aircraft fly out of, not fighters, but the big wings. I've had a number of them report to me that they've seen out in that area, like in between over the bay, spheres day and night often with metallic apparatus hanging from the bottom of them, perhaps with some sensor unknown. so this whole area is very congested. It seems to be a very interesting area for whatever these are.

Peter: 1:03:46

What are the things that you pull out of those observations? Because you've, you, you've been collecting a lot of this data. What are the things that you pull out that, that you can kind of separate and say, okay, well these are the interesting behaviors or observations to focus on, for instance, aircraft coming in from the ocean and then heading back out over the ocean during the course of their flight or aircraft that are taking unusually long flight paths that would challenge, what we would think of as battery capacity in a drone or other aspects. Where are the things when you look across that data, that, that stand out that you can grab onto and say, okay, well this is our starting point.

Ryan: 1:04:26

Yeah, that's exactly right. So that's a good way of thinking of it. So one, just like you said, origin and, and destination areas combined with a very long loiter time are, are a bit challenging, right?'cause these things are coming from, I don't wanna say over the horizon, but you know, a decent way out. They're popping up, they're flying over Coast Guard ships, apparently continuing in land, and then operating at very low altitudes for an hour and a half, two hours, and then flying back out. doesn't, doesn't jive with most systems. But I will say obviously there are some, more exquisite systems or you could imagine the design that would enable that, especially considering the relatively large size that these objects are being reported as well. so that's, one data or one interesting point. Another is, signal management capabilities. so, a lot of reports of these not transmitting any rf, right? So unable to really track via RF or anything there, both from commercial folks as well as law enforcement officials. I've heard that from. Of course, one solution is that this thing is self-contained, autonomously driven, visual navigation perhaps, passive sensors. so that, is conceivable that an adversary could be utilizing some type of tech like that in order to mitigate tracking. It doesn't explain why they would be illuminated. but, if you're doing signal management, why, you know you're illuminated. But, so anyways, that, that's one another is, is radar. again, civilians as well as law enforcement have received reports that these things are not, showing up on traditional radar systems. same with electrical optical systems. spoke to, a government pilot who responded to some of these incidents airborne with FLIR systems and EOIR unable to track these objects, although they could technically break it out with their eye on the sensor. They couldn't, the system wouldn't track, on a number of these objects.

Peter: 1:06:14

Okay. So they could see it in the raw feed from the sensor, but they couldn't a track on it. Okay.

Luka: 1:06:20

And when the FAA was saying, we don't really know what this is. Do you know what kind of data they had at their disposal?

Ryan: 1:06:26

I don't know how much research into their data they did. When I say data, I mean like radar data or, if they talked to people or what I, my guessing that the majority of their data was going through to make sure there weren't registered tests or flights in that area. Right. So log data, stuff like that versus like technical data. That's an assumption

Luka: 1:06:49

Despite the geographic proximity, it sounds like those are different examples of what you were observing in your training area versus what you're talking about here in the New Jersey area. Is that correct?

Ryan: 1:07:02

is potentially, I, I'm not super educated on the exact systems that this pilot I referred to was using. There's a difference in sensor performance. Me looking at something at 20,000 feet, that's at 10,000 feet versus, helicopter like looking at something right above the tree lines and the thermal gradients and all that, right? So there's a lot of complexity in there that could account for this, but, but generally speaking, yes, it seems like, there was more signal management on these systems.

Peter: 1:07:28

Yeah, I would, love to see more radar EO IR data from, New Jersey and late 2024 that's in the public domain. that would give us a, a starting point. and a way to, draw parallels between, the observations from 2013 and since. And then also, we haven't talked about the, the workup that you did with the Roosevelt, in 2015, but what did you see there and how does that contribute to the picture of, of the data that we're gathering?

Ryan: 1:07:59

Sure. So in 2015, just to remind people, the squadron I was operating with, we. Went aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt get ready for our deployment. we cruise down off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida to do a large training exercise that takes place over several weeks with multiple ships and multiple squadrons all launching from the aircraft carrier. it's a big training evolution and one of which that qualifies us to actually go out on a combat deployment, right? So we don't complete this training it's a pretty big international hiccup, potentially. so anyways, we get out there and, this is maybe, I don't know, six, 700 miles south of where we're operating in, off the coast of Virginia. Now we're off the coast of Florida and, we get down there, the objects are there. they either followed us or they're already down there. there was, one particular night where, we were doing a large air to air mission. I'm basically going to fight against each other and then come back and land the boat. The way that works is once you fight until you kind of get to a, a certain fuel number and then you gotta stop being an afterburner and chill out and hang out for a bit until the deck opens up. And so, one aircraft from my squadron were in that state. They went back and, they start detecting a bunch of objects outside the fight. Now they, at the moment to to breathe a little bit and look around and they're like, what is this? And during these training evolutions, often they'll launch fighters from the shore to try to penetrate the airspace of the carrier. and we, try to intercept them before that happens. Play that little game. this was strange because these objects were east of the ship. Were already several hundred miles out east of Jacksonville, Florida, and these objects are now on the other side, the east side of a 15 nautical mile, no fly area around the carrier. So, how did they get out there, where they come from? But either way that's the assumption. Is that what they must have been?

Peter: 1:09:46

This was 2015 were, there F-18s or, or really any aircraft equipped with that type of radar flying out in that area? in 20 13, 20 14 that we're seeing this, or was it 2015 on this exercise, that was the first time these objects were observed in that area.

Ryan: 1:10:03

I don't have the information to say whether it was observed there in the past. we often conduct flights there. this was our first workup cycle with the new radar. so I, I don't know the answer to the question ultimately, but, it's possible. and of course there's all sorts of radar systems over there that if we had data, radar data too, we'd be able to tell that short order presumably. So anyways, they're, they're coming back and they detect multiple objects on the radar, point their nose at what appears to be the main group, and goes to fly over to investigate it. there's two groups, there's one east of the carrier and one a little bit more to the northeast. Northeast and southwest. So F-18s coming here. They're tracking. They see this, this group up here, they record that. They have a hard time capturing it. It's called the Go Fast video. you see the, this is an example where the pilot uses radar to cue the sensor. The sensor get dropped off, but it wouldn't execute the auto lock and they had to transition in different mode. So whether that was because of the water rushing underneath it or because it was exhibiting some signal management capability, I don't have the answer to. But, eventually he does, ascertain a lock. They celebrate a bit end of the video. what you don't see is that there's three other objects flying parallel to that one object, essentially in a wall formation about a mile apart, that, that are essentially proceeding in that singular direction.

Peter: 1:11:24

What altitude was the aircraft and what altitude were the objects roughly

Ryan: 1:11:28

if memory serves, I think the aircraft was about 20,000. The objects, it's not displayed because they, um, I don't wanna get it a little technical, but I believe the radar like lock dropped on that once they went into that new acquisition mode. And then it estimated the range based off of the, the pods internal INS essentially, right, to provide a range, which is not something we use in combat or really take a lot of credence to. It's not very accurate. so there is a range on there of like three and a half, four miles, which would put it around 15,000 feet I think, or so, but slant range. But, I don't know how accurate that is. yeah,

Peter: 1:12:08

I remember watching the video, so they were below the aircraft, the aircraft's at 20,000 feet. we don't know exactly what the range is, but it's in that sort of rough three, four mile range. And they're, are they super close to the water or are they

Ryan: 1:12:22

No, they're about 15,000 feet altitude. Yeah,

Peter: 1:12:26

Okay.

Ryan: 1:12:26

Yeah, it is just a perception, we see that all the time over the water. It's so hard'cause the fractal pattern of the waves, you know? So, so they continue on to the, the other group. there's one main object and then there's a, formation of four to six objects behind it, essentially in a V formation. they capture the gimbal object on the FLIR referred to as the video's called the Gimbal video. you see the object rotate in there. The crew, mentioned it. they talk about a whole fleet of them being on the SA page or the situational awareness page. and then essentially the video cuts out.

Peter: 1:12:59

So we're talking about two formations of objects, four that were lower, that were first observed in go fast, and then another group of objects that were at roughly the same altitude, but were right nearby. And that is the, the video referred to as the Gimbal video. Is that right? Okay.

Ryan: 1:13:17

Yes. Yep. And so I'm, I'm reciting all this because they were recording their situational awareness page, which is a God's eye view with the aircraft in the middle of all this data I'm telling you about, right? So I can see that formation. And what that formation did behind the gimbal object is that they're essentially in a wedge. They flew straight and then they turned 180 degrees to fly in the opposite direction. But their turn wasn't like a standard aviation formation turn. They basically just scattered and it was like chaos and then just kind of like rolled out in the same position, almost like a animation of a swarm, but not like practical swarm mechanics. And, and once they've reformed into the opposite direction, that's when the gimbal object, from my memory, essentially it was going across from that God's eye view stopped it bounced and followed in the other direction essentially. So an instantaneous direction change. after later analysis, I learned that the object didn't bounce instantaneously change direction, but they actually conducted a very tight Vertical U-turn. Right? So, which appeared as a bounce from a god's eye view to follow that formation. And that's precisely the time that, that the object seems to rotate in the video. yeah. And so, the crew came back. They, I, I had just landed, I went in the ready room. They, Hey, your buddy got something interesting on camera. I went down and classified space and I watched That situational awareness page and the, the footage that I just mentioned to you, along with the whole plethora of intelligence officers who were watching. and then shortly after the admiral came down, he just went, Hmm. Walked out after watching for about six seconds, which I interpreted as he had been dealing with these for a bit. and I later learned I was correct. After he walked outta the room, he went upstairs and emailed all the major commands on the Easter seaboard, with the title Urgent Safety of Flight issue, basically saying whoever's operating these, these objects, off the coasts, you need to stop immediately'cause we're considering cancel a mission. There have been dozens of instances apparently. I wasn't even aware of all of them at the time. but apparently there've been over a dozen.

Peter: 1:15:17

From your perspective, that was the first time you'd seen this type of formation behavior from the objects as compared to what you saw off the coast of Virginia, which was more individual objects. it, it, kind of scattered around or doing their own thing.

Ryan: 1:15:34

Correct. Yep. And interestingly, there's been some data that came out from Sky Watcher, although I don't know if they technically released it or not, or it was leaked, but, their organization that's been setting up equipment to, study some of this data and have some high quality recordings and whatnot. But you'll see in their videos these formations of objects and then them break apart and kind of scatter playfully is how it's all seemed to be described, but very similar. I I was struck by how similar that was to what I'd seen in that turn, that formation where they just kind of scattered and reformed in the opposite direction.

Peter: 1:16:07

And, and in the 10 years since, has there been a lot of additional observations of these types of things?

Ryan: 1:16:14

Yeah, I mean, gosh. I mean, I only know what we get of course, and I know we only get such a small portion of all the reports, but every time I talk to a pilot it just, it'd be like, you would not believe how common this is. And everyone's talking about it now. It's not this dirty secret anymore,

Luka: 1:16:30

And it's not just military, it's commercial

Ryan: 1:16:32

commercial. Absolutely. A hundred percent. Yep.

Luka: 1:16:36

Okay.

Ryan: 1:16:36

a ton of progress.

Luka: 1:16:37

Again, how do we mitigate this threat? how can technology be put to use? We talked about detection, we talked about, signal management. what else should the entrepreneurs in the audience think about innovating around? I.

Ryan: 1:16:53

I think there's a lot of different opportunities to provide solutions spaces that advance the UAP understanding while still providing capabilities that are congruent with normal national security needs. Right. so for example, space situational awareness, very hot area, could become more important with Golden Dome and everything that's gonna be going on in space. Having a grid of resilient sensors for detection of space debris and adversarial satellites would obviously potentially have significant value in the understanding of unidentified objects operating in our orbit. or being able to maintain custody objects that are leaving the atmosphere into orbit. Right. being able to track those transitional domain objects, ground-based, I think. the rational way to explore detection as a business model is around UAV and drone detection, right? There's not many government contracts I've seen out there for UAP systems, although I would encourage people that wanna engage on this topic to, try to engage, to provide their capabilities to AARO because they are actively looking to, solicit, solutions in this space. but there's obviously a lot more resources around drone detection. Than there is for UAP detection. Right. But they can both solve the same problem. Right? So, I think that's going to be a massive, massive, market in the coming years. It's gonna be, I think, a commercial market as well, not just a military and law enforcement one for private security and venue, protection and things of that nature and all that can serve as a backbone for better understanding the anomalous objects as well. and then of course, and then there's the whole argument of, bringing various sensors together, better data fusion faster, fusion across multimodal sensors, the integration of, advanced, machine learning techniques into data for unique on-demand signal processing that we can't, that we don't necessarily do now. Right? So having that, that cognitive understanding that, we call it, cognitive RF and whatnot, where you're able to adapt with software, some of the some you can adapt with software, some of the detection and transmission modalities of some of these sensors, to respond real time in the environment. So, I mean, there's, I honestly, I think this is like a super exciting time for sensors, right? With all the advancement of AI and data management and vectorization that, it's in my eyes, it's just like an open wide market for providing these, massive advancements in sensing capabilities using standard systems now, right? We don't need to reinvent new sensors. We just need to better utilize the data that they're generating.

Peter: 1:19:23

Essentially we have, radically reducing cost in EOIR sensors that are becoming commercially available and we have advances in RF sensing, on the back of maturation and software defined radios. And so we can, collect a lot more data and we can also, do it in the commercial sphere, because, because the capability is, is getting so much better and so much less expensive. And how should we think about, using that capability? And then also from the, from the other side of the question, taking this big question of, okay, well what are, these UAP that we're observing, how do we break that down into smaller tractable questions, where we can answer them, where we have, building blocks in our understanding of what it is that we're seeing, and observing to, move our knowledge forward.

Ryan: 1:20:25

I think those trends that you highlighted are really key to progress on this, right? So we talked about before, do we concentrate exquisite sensors into a one area because we have certainty they'll be there, or can we have a low cost distributed system, that is providing, enough or sufficient or the right type of data in order to answer those questions that you just talked about? And I don't think that the answer is necessarily there about the perfect sensor package in order to answer those questions, but it's about getting one that's broad enough, low cost enough, and yet still effective enough that they can be distributed out widely in a manner that allows us to say, okay, we can really identify that this is happening in this area versus here, right? Like negative data for us is, I think, very valuable at this point. So we can understand the scope of the problem, and the spaces that we want to pay attention to and perhaps, use that distributed grid to, then hone in with more exquisite sensors that might be able to tell us something specific about, perhaps the technology being used or the signal management capabilities being used. we can make the, for fun here in some sense, we can make the assumption that, some of these must be utilizing some type of advance. Or non-public propulsion capability. How do we, know that? How do we learn that? Right? So maybe we wanna measure the type of, heat energy coming off of it and model where it's coming off. And what does that indicate for a propulsion system? Do we see it getting brighter? Do we see the frequency change? And when we see an acceleration, these can give us clues, into what that technology might be. are there, some type of, time dilation sensors or something? If we imagine this is perhaps some kind of manipulation of space time. Are we able to measure the, degradation in a GPS signal around one of these events to see if, there has been some distortion, with a hyperspectral sensor? Can we perhaps, have an understanding of the makeup if the air is ionized around the object? all clues for propulsion system or, what its performance characteristics are as far as, temperature resistance and things of that nature. so I, the problem is we, I can't say exactly which one of those is the most beneficial, but I think all those start to build that stair step process of understanding, what, again, making the assumption that it's using, capabilities beyond a state of the art. what is gonna lead us to the answers of how, how those actually work and how we can leverage that for our own uses.

Peter: 1:22:42

Yeah. And, and you made a really good point earlier in the conversation, pointing out the obvious that an an F 18 is not a scientific instrument. it has sensing capabilities, but for a, a certain purpose and it, and it needs to be usable in that mission case. But, there's a lot of data that's dropped on the floor and there are a lot of, things that if, if we really want to sense everything that we can from, from UAP observations that, we can open the aperture and there's a different set of, data that we can try and collect.

Ryan: 1:23:15

And that could look like building your own sensors, like we just discussed. That could look like perhaps building a data sidecar for existing systems that you can then implement, cutting edge analytic systems on that, the government uses across various sensor systems, right? Both for calibration testing and for looking for these signals that otherwise be going filtered out.

Peter: 1:23:35

let's take inventory. we've introduced the topic. I think we've done a good job of making a case for the strength of the data that we're seeing. I think we've done a good job of a, of a survey of the recent history of observations. we've looked at the behavior, we've talked about safety in the airspace system. We've talked about pilot reporting. we, we haven't talked about disclosure, but we have talked a little bit on the discovery topic, just without calling it discovery in terms of, hey, we've got technology, we've got sensors, we've got. Things that we could do to collect more data, and they're available in the commercial sphere. In fact, there's been this arc of capability that started in very bespoke, exquisite systems to now showing up in f eighteens to, I mean, I mean that was 15 years ago to now being even more broadly deployed. And that's a trend. And, and that there, that in the commercial sphere there's just already is and is going to be radically increased quantities of data of increasingly good quality being generated. And we have that to look ahead to. that's the body of material that we've covered in this discussion. Are there gaps that we wanna fill in?

Ryan: 1:24:52

you know, we continue to, receive reports in Americans for Safe Aerospace. we brought in some, former intelligence officers in the Army and elsewhere who, many of which who have had their own experiences, who help us, collate the data, refer to our, our scientific and law enforcement partners with our witnesses permission. And we use it to inform our work on Capitol Hill and with our public education work as well. So, when you submit a report to us, it actually does go to work, for this topic for I think the first time ever. So, you don't need to be a pilot. you can be, anyone and submit a report@safeaerospace.org.

Peter: 1:25:28

Cool. This is great.

Luka: 1:25:30

Ryan. Thank you very much. This was a, an eye-opening conversation. No doubt.

Ryan: 1:25:35

Yeah. Good. Well, I hope your audience enjoys it.