Objects that can maintain Mach 1 speeds even in the face of gale-force winds. Aircraft with no visible means of lift or propulsion, and no wings or engines. Phenomena that seem to operate outside of the “known aerodynamic principles that we expect for objects that fly in our atmosphere.”

Those are some of the descriptions that former U.S. military personnel used when recounting their personal encounters with UFOs, telling lawmakers Wednesday that the unexplained phenomena in American skies are a significant national security threat and that the federal government must share with the public more information about them.

Wednesday’s hearing before the House Oversight Committee’s subcommittee on national security, the border and foreign affairs represented a rare public forum on the once-taboo subject of what the government now calls “unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Video footage of close encounters, media reports, eyewitness testimony and federal investigations have helped bring the issue into the light.

The details, as described by some of those eyewitnesses, are chilling.

“The UAP we encountered and tracked on multiple sensors behaved in ways that surpassed our understanding and technology,” said Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot with more than a decade of service, describing his personal experience while stationed in Virginia Beach as part of a Navy Fighter/Attack Squadron.

“The UAP could accelerate at speeds up to Mach 1, hold their position against hurricane-force winds, and outlast our fighter jets, operating continuously throughout the day,” he said at Wednesday’s hearing. “They did not have any visible means of lift, control surfaces or propulsion — nothing that resembled normal aircraft with wings, flaps or engines.”

“I am a formally trained engineer and I have no explanation for this,” he admitted.

If the unknown objects “are foreign drones, it is an urgent national security problem,” Mr. Graves told lawmakers. “If it is something else, it is an issue for science. In either case, unidentified objects are a concern for flight safety.”

David Fravor, a retired Navy commander, recounted his famous 2004 encounter with a UAP that was captured in what is widely known as the “Tic Tac” video — a reference to the shape of the object captured by Navy aircraft from the USS Nimitz. 

Mr. Fravor told lawmakers Wednesday that the craft did not adhere to any of the “known aerodynamic principles” of flight.

“The tic tac object that we engaged in November 2004 was far superior to anything that we had at the time, have today, or are looking to develop in the next 10 years,” he said. “If we in fact have programs that possess this technology, it needs to have oversight from those people that the citizens of this great country elected to office to represent what is best for the United States and in the best interest of its citizens.”

David Grusch, the former national reconnaissance officer representative with the Pentagon’s UAP task force, told lawmakers that he learned of a years-long government effort to retrieve parts of crashed UFOs and study their technological makeup.

“I was informed, in the course of my official duties, of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program to which I was denied access to those additional” materials about the effort, he said.

Their experiences are just a handful of the hundreds of officially documented encounters with UFOs and federal programs to study them. 

A federal government report released last January examined 366 UFO sightings, including a stunning 247 UAP incidents that took place just between March 2021 and August 2022.

Of the 366, officials said 26 can be explained as likely being drones; another 163 were characterized as “balloon or balloon-like entities”; and another six were attributed to “clutter.”

That leaves 171 sightings that lack a clear explanation.

Lawmakers of both parties said that the government’s secrecy around UAP is contributing to an erosion of Americans’ faith in their elected leaders.

They also questioned why it is that the military and intelligence community seem to have so little information about sightings and close encounters.

Americans “ask themselves — how come when a Russian jet shoots flares at one of our drones, we have perfect pictures and videos to show the American people and the world, but when it comes to UAP, nothing?” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz, Florida Democrat.

• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.