UFOs are already having an impact on combat training for America’s fighter pilots, a top national security official has warned.
‘Some of these phenomena, we know, have already had an impact on our training ranges,’ according to John Kirby, the National Security Council’s Coordinator for Strategic Communications under President Biden.
The comments suggest a new approach from the White House, whose press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre coyly dismissed questions about the F-22 stealth raptor jets that shot down three UFOs last February by saying, ‘I love E.T. the movie.’
Kirby, a retired rear admiral in the US Navy, said the unanswered questions surrounding UFOs must now be treated as a ‘legitimate issue’.
In a White House briefing Monday, he told reporters: ‘When pilots are out trying to do training in the air and they see these things, they’re not sure what they are, and it can have an impact on their ability to perfect their skills.’
While Admiral Kirby emphasized that the Pentagon is taking the UFO issue ‘seriously,’ he declined to answer questions on ‘individual whistleblowers’ — specifically retired senior intelligence officer David Grusch, whose explosive UFO claims have sparked open congressional oversight hearings set for July 26 next week.
Rear Admiral Kirby, speaking as the White House National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, told reporters Monday the Pentagon wants ‘to get to the bottom’ of the UFO mystery, which he said impacts US fighter pilots ‘trying to do training in the air’
Last month, Grusch came forward alleging that US military and defense contractors are hiding evidence of crashed UFOs, recovered ‘beings,’ and UFO-related deaths.
‘I’m not going to talk about individual whistleblowers,’ Admiral Kirby responded, when asked if he believed the claims made by former Pentagon insiders like Grusch.
According to comments made by Senator Marco Rubio last month, Grusch’s testimony has been notably corroborated in classified hearings by other defense sector witnesses, some of whom may appear before the House Oversight hearing of UFOs scheduled for next Wednesday.
Dismissing comments on the ridicule that has historically surrounding the UFO topic, Admiral Kirby insisted that the Pentagon wants to ‘better understand’ what’s going on in the nation’s restricted airspace, where pilot training occurs.
‘The Pentagon has stood up an entire organization to help collate and coordinate the reporting and analysis of sightings of UAP across the military,’ Kirby said, using the preferred terminology for these airborne enigmas: Unidentified Aerial or Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).
‘We wouldn’t have stood up an organization at the Pentagon to analyze and try to collect and coordinate the way these sightings are reported if we didn’t take it seriously,’ He noted. ‘Of course, we do.’
The comments add further weight to the US Navy’s so-called 2015 GIMBAL UFO video, taken with an F/A-18’s infrared targeting pod and depicting a mysterious object flying in restricted airspace off the Atlantic coast.
That airspace, or ‘warning area,’ had been cordoned off for use by Naval aviators’ training exercises.
The US Navy’s so-called 2015 GIMBAL UFO video (above) taken with an F/A-18’s infrared targeting pod, infamously depicted a mysterious object flying in restricted airspace off the Atlantic coast. The airspace had been cordoned off for use by Naval aviators during training
Kirby also said that the current US military efforts are the first ‘coordinated, integrated effort’ — an apparent dismissal of the now public, but once highly classified, UFO investigation programs run by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency: the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP) and the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).
Kirby was quick to add that neither he, the White House, nor the Pentagon has reached any firm conclusions on the phenomena, despite having shot down multiple UAP over Canada and Alaska last February.
‘We’re not saying what they are or what they’re not,’ Kirby noted.
‘We’re saying that there’s something our pilots are seeing. We’re saying it has had an effect on some of our training operations. And so, we want to get to the bottom of it. We want to understand it better.’
‘It’s already had an impact,’ he reiterated.
The questions to Admiral Kirby were posed by Blake Burman, chief Washington correspondent for Nexstar Media’s new cable news network NewsNation, which has staked its name to groundbreaking UFO reporting since launching two years ago.
