Original subtitles

[narrator] Ever since humankind first looked to the heavens,

we have asked the question,

"Are we alone?"

Tales of otherworldly beings,

ancient prophecies and predictions,

and sightings here on Earth...

have heightened our sense of anticipation.

But in recent years,

these claims have become more frequent...

Do you believe our government has made contact

with intelligent extraterrestrials?

Something I can't discuss in public setting.

[narrator] ...more insistent...

Biologics came with some of these recoveries, yeah.

[narrator] ...and ever more dramatic.

In 2017, the Pentagon shocked the world by confirming that

previously leaked UFO footage was real.

Committees were launched, hearings held,

and witnesses interviewed, but the truth remains elusive.

Whistleblowers claim these clips are just the tip of

the iceberg, but files remain classified.

Do you believe UAPs pose a potential threat to

our national security? -Yes.

-Yes. -Yes.

[narrator] What are we not being told?

Our team of experts reopen the files.

They'll analyze the intelligence,

investigate the science,

and reveal the truth.

[camera shutter snaps]

[narrator] In 2014, US Navy fighter pilot Ryan Graves

was stationed at Naval Air Station, Oceana,

in Virginia Beach on America's east coast.

Over the course of a two-year period, his unit witnessed

unexplained aerial phenomena and heard firsthand accounts of

things he could no longer ignore.

After much deliberation, he went public, first in 2019

and then testifying before Congress in July, 2023.

It became one of the most provocative whistleblowing acts

in American history.

People have looked to the skies and seen things

they don't understand, but modern technology has given

us better tools to analyze them.

[narrator] And that technology has captured some

astonishing things.

During Graves' time with the US Navy Fighter Corps in Oceana,

they upgraded the onboard software systems on their fleet

of F-18 fighter jets.

Almost immediately, the pilots start seeing

these new contacts.

They assumed that either the hardware was faulty,

or the software was glitching.

You get these teething problems with new systems.

[narrator] But the contacts kept coming.

And so pilots went in for a closer look.

They thought that these were just phantom readings.

But then they head to their location and the FLIR

picks up something.

[narrator] FLIR is a forward-looking infrared camera.

Rather than capturing visible light, it captures the heat

signatures in the area.

What it means is there's something really there.

It's not a glitch or some kind of software problem.

It's real.

Pilots trust the infrared.

It can see things the naked eye can't.

They have to assume that there's something real

out there, and they have to treat it with respect.

As professional aviators, they kept their distance.

[narrator] The pilots remained cautious, but concerned.

Back at the base, it was a major topic of conversation.

They were encountering more and more of these things.

And when you're up there on a training flight,

you're totally focused.

You're not just on a joyride hoping to see a UFO.

[indistinct chatter]

[narrator] On practice missions, pilots agree on

a fixed point in the sky.

In combat, it's called the cap point.

It's the entry point to the operational area.

Think of it like an on-ramp.

at this altitude and this distance.

And then 1,000 feet below, there's an off ramp.

You've got your pilot and your weapons system operator

in the back.

There was also a wingman where they fly out there together

and they fly back together as well.

[narrator] It was on one of these training missions that the first of

their squadron got eyes on one of the UFOs.

There were two planes flying around the entry point,

somewhere between 12 and 18,000 feet, and there's nothing

on the radar.

And then all of a sudden, one of the objects flew

right between them.

[with static] They were going against the wind.

The wind's 120 miles to the west.

[narrator] He described it as a dark gray or black cube inside

a translucent sphere.

They were practicing close-quarter dogfighting.

So if you nearly collide with something that you didn't see

on your radar, that's a big safety issue.

So you're gonna go back and get that checked out.

[narrator] The pilots headed back to the ready room, and one of them

shared his story.

This was no longer a theoretical issue.

The pilot was telling everyone how he almost hit something.

It was a safety issue now.

[narrator] At this stage, the pilots didn't know what to

make of it, except that it might be a new

secret military project.

Whatever it was, it shouldn't have been in the training zone.

They filed a hazard report.

They figured that at least with that on record, whoever was in

charge of these things would know that they were endangering

their own pilots.

[narrator] The sightings continued on an almost daily basis,

with eight to ten reported along the East Coast alone.

It was described the same way every time, a gray cube in

a translucent sphere.

[narrator] Although they were showing up on their radar screens,

it proved incredibly difficult

to capture clear images of them.

They got all the right indicators.

And so they put all their sensors in exactly

the right orientation to capture something, then do

a pass and poof, it's not there.

[narrator] But their elusiveness didn't dissuade Graves

or his colleagues from believing they were absolutely real.

It's just logic.

Either there's something there or every system on every plane

is malfunctioning in the same way at the same time.

And that just doesn't seem likely.

[narrator] The pilots took these sightings very seriously,

their lives depended on it, and submitted hazard reports to

indicate in detail what they had seen.

When you're up there, flying at 1,200 km per hour, you have to

assume that any contact is a solid, physical object.

The Navy implemented a separate process for any UAP sighting,

meaning pilots had to report anything unusual.

[narrator] The reports flooded in.

It was happening more than anyone had suspected,

and not just over Virginia Beach.

[narrator] In 2014, Ryan Graves and his colleagues were ready to

complete their final stage of battle readiness.

They headed to Jacksonville, Florida and on to

an aircraft carrier.

That was their base for living, taking off and landing.

[narrator] It was here that a Navy pilot would film possibly the most

famous UFO video to date.

[pilot, over static] My gosh,

well, if there's a -- look at that thing,

it's rotating.

The gimbal video is a pretty compelling piece of

UFO evidence.

The pilots were flying in what's called a max endurance

profile, which burns less energy and fuel.

In this case, it's a straight line.

They suddenly have half a dozen contacts on their radars,

all the hallmarks of a red air penetration test.

Red air calls test the readiness of

the aircraft carrier.

Aviators stop what they're doing, and move into position to

protect the carrier from attack.

[narrator] When the Navy pilots flew closer to the radar contacts,

they realized these weren't other naval aviators.

Whatever they were looking at, it wasn't US fighters.

They were too slow and making unusual turns.

Something wasn't right.

So they did a stern conversion to get a better look.

[narrator] The radar showed multiple contacts, one craft flying at

lower altitude and five others above it in a wedge formation.

They would fly in a straight line and then pull an instant

180 and go in the opposite direction.

You can't do that in an F-18.

Turning at that speed in a standard jet fighter

takes a mile.

[narrator] The radar profiles didn't match the behavior of ordinary jets,

but was consistent with other recent UAP sightings.

They decided that the wedge objects were the same as

whatever they had encountered in Virginia.

But the main unidentified craft on the gimbal video was unlike

anything they had ever encountered before.

The god's eye view appears on the situational awareness

display of the aviator.

It puts their aircraft in the center

of a 360-degree view.

When they looked closer at the video, it showed that this

craft did a vertical J-hook, probably less than 100 meters

at high speed.

What the UAP did defied any of our space or jet technology.

Rather than doing sweeping turns, it would stop moving in

one direction and start moving in another.

From the god's eye view, there was barely any

radius of turn.

It would do a 180, just like that.

We haven't got a jet that can do anything like that,

not even close.

[narrator] And thanks to the Heads Up Display, or HUD, we're able to

evaluate the size of the UAP and assess any

unusual behavior.

They were sometimes perfectly still.

Now, this should be near impossible at high altitudes

and at wind speed over 200 kilometers per hour,

but the evidence was there.

And when they were flying in a straight line,

they were going approximately Mach 0.8.

The fast turns, the hovering, the speed, all of

those things we have aircraft that can do, but we don't have

aircraft that can do all of them at the same time.

[narrator] We only know as much as we do about these events thanks to

a handful of whistleblowers, including US Navy fighter pilot

Ryan Graves, who was stationed at Naval Air Station Oceana.

During 2014 and 2015, when he claims

he and his colleagues saw UAPs virtually every day.

In 2019, he decided to break cover and reveal to

the American media what he and his colleagues had seen.

Graves claimed that they go out on exercises, see objects on

the radar, and then see the same objects in the same

place when they went out on night exercises 10 hours later.

If that's true, then whatever's powering these things is

fascinating and unlike anything I've ever encountered.

[narrator] The footage of these sightings was leaked anonymously to

the New York Times in December 2017.

They released it and another video at the same time,

claiming that they were recorded by naval aviators from

the Nimitz and Theodore Roosevelt.

[narrator] The Washington Post released a third video around

the same time.

The general public was intrigued, but the UFO

community went into overdrive.

[narrator] Then in September 2019, after almost 70 years of

no comment and denials of UFO sightings by military

personnel, the US government took an unprecedented step.

The Pentagon confirmed that the three films were

legitimate voluntarily.

They determined there was nothing on the film that might

threaten national security or expose

technological capabilities.

[narrator] But the films they released were still incomplete.

They weren't ready or willing to provide full disclosure,

even now.

On a fighter jet, flight systems are recording

all the time.

The full gimbal video will be significantly longer than

the 35 seconds that was released.

The full video would be full of data.

It's all measured in flight to assess performance.

So they have all of that somewhere.

[narrator] Without the full video, we still don't have all

the data available.

But the acknowledgement that these UAPs exist is

a major development.

When they confirmed the film's legitimacy, they said it was

quote, "part of a larger issue of an increased number of

incursions by unidentified aero phenomena in recent years."

That's an incredible admission on the part of the Pentagon.

[narrator] Was this the first official admission that the US military

believes we are not alone in the universe?

And if so, what was flying in our airspace with impunity?

[narrator] In September, 2019, when the Pentagon confirmed

that footage of UAPs captured by US Navy pilots was

authentic, it sent shockwaves around the world.

When the Pentagon confirmed that three leaked films of UAP

activity had indeed been captured by naval pilots,

it was a game changer.

The gimbal video was one of two that originated from pilots

aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt on the 21st

of January, 2015.

The other is known as GOFAST.

[airman shouting indistinctly]

[laughing] Oh my gosh, dude.

Wow.

[narrator] The GOFAST footage was captured by an F-18 Navy

squadron stationed in Virginia Beach from a height of

6,000 meters, traveling at high speed far below.

These pilots know most things that are in the sky.

So if they're confused by what it's doing, that's notable.

[narrator] When the Pentagon officially released the film,

they had already ruled out drones or jets.

They confessed they didn't know what the object could be.

One of the most famous UAP sightings

by US military pilots had been made over a decade earlier,

on November 10th, 2004.

This film, leaked to the New York Times in 2017,

became infamous as the Tic Tac film.

They called it that because of the shape, oblong,

rounded ends, no obvious indicator of a front or a rear.

These have been reported on and off by pilots for decades.

There was the 1962 incident over Utah and Nevada, where two

different pilots described seeing a cigar-shaped object

with no obvious means of propulsion.

[narrator] And in 1987, came the Vranov incident, named after

a reservoir in what was then communist-bloc Czechoslovakia.

Around midday on Sunday the 12th of July, 1987,

the reservoir was crowded with tourists.

On the Austrian border, Czech radar picked up something

flying toward them and scrambled an armored

helicopter to intercept it.

They saw a black cigar-shaped object fly overhead and were

given orders to shoot it down.

[narrator] Attempting to target the strange craft, every time

they had it in their sights, it suddenly changed direction.

The highly maneuverable Tic Tac could fly as slow as

60 kilometers per hour and accelerate up to 2,700

kilometers per hour, seemingly in an instant.

They were monitoring it from above, and from below, it was

being monitored by the helicopter crew.

It was doing things that no known aircraft can do.

They couldn't get a lock on it, they couldn't shoot it down,

and even if they could, it was over a reservoir crowded with

thousands of people.

[narrator] After two minutes of visual observation,

the craft disappeared behind a cloud, only to reappear at

supersonic speed, heading straight

for the helicopter.

They had to make some extreme evasive maneuvers to come out

of that alive.

The encounter had lasted over two and a half hours.

[narrator] After that, the craft raced towards Bratislava and then

back over Austria where Czech radar lost it.

Like the US military,

the Soviets wanted to control the flow of

information on UFOs.

They were ordered to destroy all flight telemetry

and records of radio correspondence.

Officially, this never happened.

[narrator] The similarities between the Vranov incident in 1987

and the Tic Tac UAP encounter 17 years later are striking.

The Tic Tac incident occurred off the California coast on

November 14, 2004, by a US Naval squadron

flying off the carrier USS Nimitz.

There is a group of ships out and readying for deployment,

and for a couple of weeks, they've been tracking UAPs

on their radar.

Then Commander David Fravor is on a flight

in his Super Hornet, and he actually gains a visual on one.

Fravor claims that he tried to approach the object.

The UAP simply mirrored his moves and then took

the ultimate evasive action.

It plunged into the ocean, then resurfaced again,

then sped off out of sight. They say it went hypersonic.

That's Mach 5, 5,500 kilometers per hour.

[narrator] And Fravor wasn't the only witness.

At least five other pilots backed him up.

They said they saw the same thing, either with their own

eyes or on their instruments.

[narrator] Navy pilot Chad Underwood was the pilot who captured

the famous footage.

Underwood was heading out on his exercises

as Fravor came in.

The commander told him what he'd seen and warned him to

keep an eye out.

[narrator] A short time later, Underwood caught the Tic Tac on

his radar and managed to track it with his FLIR camera.

[over static] Oh, my gosh.

They're going against the wind.

The wind's 120 miles to the west.

Look at that thing, dude.

[narrator] Underwood claimed that the object's changes

in altitude, airspeed and orientation were

unlike anything he'd ever encountered.

He went further than that.

He said it was doing things that didn't seem possible,

like dropping from 50,000 to 100 feet in just a few seconds.

All this with no visible signs of propulsion or a heat

signature from an engine.

[narrator] Underwood's footage went viral on the Navy's intranet.

The video leaked back in 2007, but its legitimacy remained

unconfirmed for more than a decade, until 2020 when

Underwood came forward and acknowledged that

he was the pilot.

Fravor has talked quite openly for years,

but Underwood speaking up was important.

It put a name to the tape.

In the military there's a rigid command structure with

restrictions on speech and potential criminal

consequences for non-compliance.

And this applies to all forms of data, including video.

[narrator] Frame-by-frame analysis of the footage which was finally

released by the Pentagon has revealed even more remarkable

facts about these objects.

They've been recorded between Mach 5 and Mach 20, and they do

this without creating a sonic boom.

They also zig-zag at very high speeds.

[narrator] The G-forces would be unbearable on human physiology.

We're looking at several hundred times

the force of gravity.

We're talking about bones being crushed, organs liquefying,

pretty much instant death.

[narrator] A manned craft would be incompatible with life as

we know it.

They could be drones, but even then, once you go

hypersonic, there's a thermal barrier that human technology

is finding hard to overcome.

Even at the lower end, say Mach 5, you're looking at 1,800

degrees C for the bits of the craft that are cutting

through the air.

If the skin of the aircraft isn't melting,

then it's certainly putting the internal tech in

serious danger.

[narrator] The US military has experimented with unmanned

hypersonic aerial drones, but with limited success.

At high speeds, they couldn't control them,

they were too unstable.

It is theoretically possible, and the major powers around

the world are trying to perfect the technology.

But 15 years ago, they were nowhere near.

[narrator] Which leaves us with three possible options

for the sightings.

It's either an illusion that has fooled some of the greatest

aviators and aerospace engineers,

it's a secret technology that has made an incredible leap

and managed to remain almost totally hidden,

or it's really an alien craft.

[narrator] And if it were an alien craft, does that mean it might have

been carrying the first visitors from another planet?

It doesn't mean it was piloted, although other beings might

have evolved to withstand greater G-forces than we can,

or developed technology to protect them from such forces.

But what do we do when we're exploring space?

We send unpiloted vehicles.

[narrator] If this is reverse-engineered alien technology belonging

to the US military,

then they are keeping it secret, as Ryan Graves may

have suspected when his phone rang the night before he was

called to testify before Congress in July 2023.

They tell him to arrive in dress whites and report to them

first thing in the morning.

All they wanted to know was exactly what he was going to

tell Congress.

[narrator] Graves feared he might end up court-martialed

and in military prison.

Alongside fellow eyewitnesses David Fravor and David Grusch,

Graves went ahead to testify before the House Subcommittee

on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs,

in a closed session.

He told them everything he had seen,

but sensed their skepticism and lingering mistrust.

So much so, that one of the congressmen called Graves

that night to check that he hadn't been intimidated.

Nobody felt that they were getting the full picture.

[narrator] Even though he attended this meeting as a civilian,

Graves was still breaking with military convention.

Because the Navy only trusts the Navy, and you keep your

mouth shut except with people in the Navy.

[narrator] So what motivated Graves to break cover and speak

so candidly?

Change in the armed forces can be very slow, and it's often

only death and disaster that makes it happen.

He spoke up because he didn't want to see a pilot crash into

one of those things and die.

[narrator] And according to Graves, there are far more of them than

the official reports would suggest.

These reports happened every single day for two years.

That's hundreds,

maybe even thousands of radar contacts.

It's unlikely they're ours.

Why risk it being shot down by our pilots, or worse still,

crashing into them?

For high-end tech, you're talking about years of

development, tens of millions of dollars of hardware,

and some of the best pilots in the world.

We're not gonna risk that intentionally.

[narrator] Even today, Navy pilots patrolling both coasts of

the United States regularly encounter UAPs with

remarkable capabilities.

So far, there's no explanation for what or who they might be.

[narrator] Since 2004, US military

encounters with airborne UAPs captured on

recently released declassified film have reframed

our understanding of what these unidentified crafts might look

like and be capable of.

These objects can zig-zag, drop 70,000 feet in a second,

go underwater, and move at speed without creating

a sonic boom.

They have capabilities that far outstrip at any known

terrestrial craft, and far exceed anything in

the NATO arsenal.

These are things that are nothing short of remarkable,

and they're documented frame by frame on video

that's been captured.

[narrator] The visual and radar technology on modern jet fighters has

revealed more about these objects than we could have

dreamed possible just a few decades ago.

We've got radar imagery, we've got IR imagery,

and we feed this data into computers to figure out what

the accelerations were, and we conclude that they were

several hundred times the force of gravity.

Recreational drones are all over the place, so it's likely

that some of these reports are drones.

But militaries worldwide are developing much more advanced

drones, all with top-secret capabilities.

Turns like the J-hook on the gimbal require

astonishing accelerations and decelerations,

which require very heavy fuel load, very heavy engines

and ability to create aerodynamic control.

Either that or they have to be extremely light.

[narrator] However, pilots report seeing no wings, flaps,

or aero controls on these vehicles.

On the contrary, they were smooth-surfaced with

no obvious signs of conventional mechanization

or fuel load of any kind.

Nor did they report seeing any evidence of rocket

or jet exhaust.

[narrator] With no control services and no obvious propulsion system,

how could it operate?

To me, this suggests that the objects were very light

and controlled by creations that are far

beyond our understanding.

There is no tech that I know of that could be mistaken for

a gray cube in a translucent sphere.

And besides, there is no way that we would mess with

the safety of our air crews in that way.

[narrator] So that suggests either extraterrestrial tech or even

something from a foreign nation penetrating US airspace.

If China or Russia developed aircraft with Tic Tac

capabilities, it would be the most significant

technological leap in military history.

[narrator] In the AI age, when images are detected electronically,

the enemy can bypass security, affect what pilots see on

screen, and make the unreal real.

The Russians and the Chinese have focused a lot on hacking

our sensors and radars to fool our pilots.

They've also developed directed energy systems, such as free

air plasmas, which could be used to draw images of fast

moving aircraft in the sky in order to also fool our pilots.

We don't know that they've done this.

We have done it. We have a patent on it.

[narrator] Whatever these objects are, our experts agree that

the images taken of them are real and authentic.

If that's the case, what might they be?

Strong arguments have been made both for man-made and naturally

occurring phenomena.

But what if these are indeed extraterrestrial?

What would that mean for us and our planet?

The vast knowledge that we could gain from a potential

encounter with an extraterrestrial presence

could be immense and will open up a new exciting frontier in

both science and technology.

The opportunity to reverse engineer UAP technology

or information for military and scientific

purposes, it's incredible.

Harnessing negative energy holds the key to creating

warp drives.

And then you're talking about intergalactic travel

at light speed.

If we actually did encounter ETs, the biggest single thing

we could learn is how to accomplish interstellar travel.

Because interstellar distances are so staggering,

we simply have no clue how to do that right now.

[narrator] Our nearest neighboring solar system is

40 trillion kilometers away.

Even in our fastest craft, it would take us nearly

50,000 years to reach it.

A quantum drive, also known as a warp drive, works by

utilizing a theoretical construct called negative

energy in back of the aircraft and positive energy in front of

the aircraft to encase the aircraft in a space-time

bubble, which itself can move faster than the speed of light

without violating the laws of physics.

[narrator] Although negative energy is, at this stage,

purely theoretical, were it ever to become a practical

reality, it could open up the possibility of space-time

travel to traverse the universe.

Negative energy is a valid concept in physics that could

explain the rapid expansion of the universe.

When two very flat metal plates are placed very close together

in a vacuum, they'll actually move together by a phenomenon

of negative energy, which is thought to be caused by

the interaction of virtual particle pairs, one being

matter, one being antimatter. They exist everywhere.

They're going on inside your brain right now.

[narrator] In this experiment, these virtual particles have

both positive and negative energy.

The positive particles cancel one another out,

but the negative ones do not.

Some physicists believe that negative energy causes

space-time itself to expand.

Both wormholes and warp drives require negative energy.

Wormholes require it to keep the wormhole open so it

doesn't collapse.

[narrator] If negative energy is indeed the answer to space-time travel

and an extraterrestrial race had mastered it,

then they would be dramatically more advanced than us.

Humanity is currently estimated to be a type 0.7 civilization

on the Kardashev scale.

Basically, we're infants.

[narrator] The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's

level of technological advancement by the amount of

energy it is able to harness.

It was proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in

1964, and it has three categories.

[narrator] Type I, a civilization that can harness all the energy

resources of its home planet.

This would mean capturing all the light energy that falls on

the planet from its host star.

[narrator] Type II, a civilization that can harness the energy radiated

by its own star.

This would require the construction of a Dyson

sphere, a megastructure that would surround the star

and capture all its energy.

[narrator] And Type III, a civilization that can harness the energy on

the scale of its own galaxy.

Type III would be a civilization that has

mastered the use of negative energy, whereas we are

struggling to effectively harness the energy provided by

our own planet without destroying it or at least

severely damaging it.

We are only able to harness a tiny fraction of

the sun's energy.

It might be possible to reach Type I status in the next few

hundred years, but the technologies for

anything above that are far beyond

our current capabilities.

We are thousands, possibly tens of thousands of years away from

Type II and III status.

[narrator] Could visitation by a single alien craft change

that timeline? -Absolutely.

If you could travel back in time to the ancient Egyptians

and give them the electric motor, nuclear fission,

microprocessors, where would humanity be now?

An interstellar craft here on Earth that we could understand

would create a technological leap forward hundreds,

maybe even thousands of years into the future in a flash.

[narrator] After decades of denial, obfuscation,

and classifying files, US military intelligence has,

in recent years, finally confirmed what people

long suspected.

The Pentagon has evidence of UAPs that they simply

cannot explain.

Are these revelations the missing piece that will

alter all human understanding?

Or is it yet more misinformation from

official sources?

Our experts have investigated all the angles.

Why are the Pentagon releasing and confirming these films?

Why are organizations that are usually shrouded in secrecy

revealing information?

And why is the intelligence community admitting they don't

know what they are?

Two elements separate this from the vast majority of other

UAP reports.

First, the reporters are pilots and experienced.

Secondly, we have a lot of data from instruments and sensors

that we didn't have before.

The House hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena

involves witnesses who are experts in their fields.

And in addition, they've had direct encounters, which makes

their testimonies particularly compelling.

[narrator] Our experts agree that something incredibly compelling

has been happening.

But after keeping these films classified for years, why is

the famously secretive Pentagon suddenly being so open?

The truth is their hand was forced.

Congress was putting pressure on the Pentagon because videos

and reports were being leaked.

There's now US legislation that calls for evidence of

technology of non-human origin,

and it's not pulling any punches.

[narrator] With Congress holding the purse strings of an $877 billion

budget, the military has no option but to comply,

to an extent.

These laws are saying someone in the government knows

what you have.

And they're being increasingly compelled to tell us.

[narrator] The congressional hearings of 2023, which was testimony from

US Navy officers Ryan Graves, David Grusch, and David Fravor,

were a start.

But much of the information regarding UAPs continues to

remain highly classified.

No, I would not trust official sources.

They tend to keep things secret.

If not outright lying, the official sources have been

proven to be limited.

Trusting any government narrative fully is

an error in judgment.

[narrator] Indeed, if the recent testimony is to be believed,

then the released films represent only a tiny fraction

of all UAP encounters.

As reliable witnesses report more sightings and more people

have access to cameras and instant media,

the government has seized the opportunity to try to

control the UAP narrative.

I think looking at the reasons why the Pentagon and Congress

have now opened investigations on UFOs or unexplained aerial

phenomena, is that these type of sightings are just too reliable

and unexplained to take with a grain of salt.

When you have engineers and pilots, people who put

their own and others' lives at risk, all starting to break

cover, people start to take note.

[narrator] But as well as controlling the narrative,

might the US government have other motivations for conducting

congressional hearings into the sightings?

The United States government may be building up the threat

of UFOs to raise awareness and urgency among the public

and the international community, to justify more funding for

investigation encountering this phenomena.

[narrator] It's also undoubtedly a useful distraction, diverting away

from its own state-of-the-art military research.

There's also now so much up there that spots things,

including the space stations and satellites that make it

a global phenomenon that's very difficult to hide,

plus you have a variety of former defense ministers from

other nations saying there's something there, including one

former director of the CIA, Jim Woolsey.

So I think the time has sort of become ripe for

the population to know more.

[narrator] Some believe this trickle of information is just the start

of a coming flood.

The most likely, in my opinion, is that the government is

preparing us for major disclosure.

The government may be building up the threat of UFOs to

prepare us for a scenario where communication with non-human

entities becomes inevitable.

[narrator] It's a shocking idea, but one held by most

of our experts.

It's not necessarily the sightings.

It's the whistleblowers from

the military, aviation, and intelligence community.

That's what's changing the narrative more

than anything.

You can't keep a secret forever, but for me it all adds

up to an increased probability that these were

extraterrestrial events.

[narrator] Hollywood has long played with the idea of what the global

reaction to ET contact could be,

and it generally doesn't end well.

By releasing information piecemeal in this way, is this

an attempt by the US government

to control the spread of panic,

which would inevitably accompany a UAP incursion?

The first issue we would face is a lot of disbelief.

Recent years have seen declining trust in government

and a rise in conspiracy theories.

There would be a significant percentage of the public

who simply refused to believe whatever the government

was telling us.

[narrator] Without trust in the government,

and suddenly questioning our place in the universe,

what's left?

Humans have a remarkable ability to adapt,

but uncertainty breeds fear,

and decisions based on fear are largely selfish and irrational.

Should the government confirm that aliens are visiting Earth,

it is possible we could expect panic, hoarding, outbreaks of

violence, economic catastrophes and political unrest.

It's the professional repercussions that make

reporting so difficult.

Combine that with the potential impact on global human society,

and it's not easy to be a whistleblower.

[narrator] Navy Pilot Ryan Graves filed his reports of encounters in

2014 and 2015, only because the UAPs interfered with

training and he feared for the safety of his crew.

New whistleblower legislation offers some protection.

As more witnesses come forward, attitudes are starting

to change.

There's still a stigma.

It's not like it's gone, but these new laws

and the increased openness they bring mean were moving in

the right direction.

UAPs might be a natural phenomena that have existed for

a long time, but were not understood until recently.

These things may have been here for thousands of years,

but if they're 70,000 feet up or two miles out to sea,

they're more likely to have been noticed in the last

century or so.

[narrator] With that sobering thought, it's time to wrap up

our investigation into what could be the most significant

images in the history of mankind.

Taken at face value, the UAP reports from US Navy

pilots from 2004 onwards are compelling to say the least.

The witnesses are extremely credible, and there's hard

evidence from sensor recordings.

There are alternative explanations, such as spoofing,

air plasmas, and so forth, but even those are a reach.

One way or another, though, we are encountering

something unknown and very exciting.

When the Wright brothers first took to the skies, it heralded

a great era of aeronautical innovation.

Whatever these UAPs turn out to be, I feel like we're

witnessing the dawn of astronautical engineering.

To me, the idea that ETs might have visited means that there's

a whole lot of physics and nature that we don't

yet understand.

There could be ideas of exotic physics and biology that

naturally flays.

And as a scientist, that's really exciting.

It makes me think on the biggest scale,

the discovery of ET life would change international

politics, religion.

It would have an existential impact on all of us,

hopefully bringing humanity together as one giant race.

I believe that we have been and are being visited.

The question is really by whom.

Maybe we'll finally find that out.

I think the quest is going to be one over the next few

decades to discover more and more what our neighbors are

and what lies ahead in the universe.

[narrator] After investigating these most recent, most revealing, and most

remarkable alien files, our experts are left with more

questions than answers.

Perhaps the Pentagon tapes could be the beginning of

a new, open era of our search for proof of intelligent

life in space.

And the answers might just be around the corner.