Matt Gaetz says photo of UFO 'orb' not of 'human capability' taken by Eglin Air Force Base

U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz asked a House Oversight subcommittee to subpoena radar data and images from a UFO encounter with U.S. Air Force pilots off the coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year.

Gaetz said from the images he saw of the object, he was “not able to attach to any human capability, either from the United States or from any of our adversaries.”

The comments came during a House Oversight subcommittee Wednesday as it heard testimony on UAPs or “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” the U.S. government’s preferred term for what is more popularly known as unidentified flying objects or UFOs.

Three former military members with firsthand knowledge testified about their experience of how the federal government handled encounters with UAPs.

The hearing was a bipartisan effort to pressure the executive branch to publicly disclose more of what it knows about UAPs and their origins.

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Gaetz, who does not sit on the subcommittee but was allowed to question the witnesses as a guest, described his own recent experience investigating the issue.

Gaetz said that several months ago, his office received a protective disclosure of a UAP encounter off the coast of Florida from Eglin Air Force Base in Okaloosa County.

Gaetz traveled to Northwest Florida with Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett and Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna where they asked to meet with the pilots and see any images and radar data from the incident.

“We were not afforded access to all of the flight crew, and initially, we were not afforded access to images and to radar (data),” Gaetz said. “Thereafter, we had a bit of a discussion about how authorities flow in the United States of America, and we did see the image, and we did meet with one member of the flight crew who took the image.”

Gaetz said the pilot told him they were doing a test flight over the Gulf of Mexico on a clear day when four objects were identified on radar flying in a diamond formation.

Gaetz said he’s personally seen the radar data from the incident.

“One of the pilots goes to check out that diamond formation and sees a large floating, what I can only describe as an orb, again, like I said, not have any human capability that I'm aware of,” Gaetz said. “And when he approached, he said that his radar went down. He said that his FLIR (infrared camera) system malfunctioned and that he had to manually take this image from one of the lenses.”

The three witnesses at the hearing said Gaetz's story aligns with their own knowledge of UAPs.

Retired Cmdr. David Fravor, a Navy pilot who filmed the now famous “Tic Tac” object in 2004 from a flight off the coast of California, said the ability to disable military aircraft radar should be a national security concern and said the object he filmed in 2004 did the same thing to his aircraft.

“It completely disabled the radar on the aircraft when I tried to do it, and the only way we could see it is passively, which is how we got that image,” Fravor said.

Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot who has spoken out about encountering UAPs on training missions and is now executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, said Gaetz’s description reminded him of the comment made by pilots in the famous “Gimble” video of a UAP encounter in 2015 by U.S. Navy pilots.

“The recording on the ATFLIR system shows a single object that rotates,” Graves said. “You hear the pilots referred to a fleet of objects that is not visible on the FLIR system.”

Graves said he also has some anger that reporting the UAP incident was so tough, and the military should have better tools for pilots to be able to report such encounters.

Gaetz said the pilot told him explicitly that reporting UAP incidents is discouraged.

“It was stated explicitly to me by these test pilots that if you have UAP experience, the best thing you can do for your career is forget it and not tell anyone,” Gaetz said. “Because any type of reporting, either above the surface or below the surface, does have a perceived consequence to these people. And that is a culture we must change if we want to get to the truth.”

The third witness who testified Wednesday was retired U.S. Air Force Maj. David Grusch, who has become a whistleblower on the government's UAP program.

Grusch told the committee that when he was detailed to the National Reconnaise Office, which operates U.S. spy satellites, he served as that office’s representative on the UAP Task Force at the Pentagon where he learned of a military program set up to recover crashed UAP’s and reverse engineer their technology.

The military has previously denied Grusch’s assertions that any such program exists after Grusch made the same claim during a media interview in June.

During the hearing, Grusch was asked if the U.S. government had information about extraterrestrial life, and Grush said the U.S. likely has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.

In a statement to the Associated Press, Defense Department spokeswoman Sue Gough said investigators have not discovered “any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.” The statement did not address UFOs that are not suspected of being extraterrestrial objects, the AP reported.

Gaetz didn’t ask Grusch any questions Wednesday but said the committee needs to hold a closed-door classified hearing with Grusch to learn more.

Gaetz also asked the committee to subpoena the radar data and images from the incident at Eglin Air Force Base.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Matt Gaetz investigated UFO incident near Eglin Air Force base