THE EAST COAST ENCOUNTERS
Flying with strike fighter squadron VFA-11 "Red Rippers" out of Virginia, Graves and his fellow aviators reported objects appearing in their training airspace almost every day for months — holding position in high winds, accelerating without obvious propulsion, and showing up on the upgraded radar and infrared sensors their jets had just received. That window and that airspace are where the Gimbal and GoFast clips were recorded.
ADVOCACY AND TESTIMONY
Graves first took the encounters public on 60 Minutes in May 2021, describing objects that appeared in his squadron's airspace every day for at least two years. He went on to found Americans for Safe Aerospace, framing UAP first as a flight-safety and reporting issue: aircrew, he argued, were seeing things they could not identify and had no safe channel to report. At the July 2023 House Oversight subcommittee hearing he testified alongside David Grusch and David Fravor that encounters were far more common than the public record suggested and that stigma kept most of them unreported. His emphasis is less on what the objects are than on the fact that trained crews, using calibrated instruments, keep recording them.
READ THE RECORD
The footage from that era — military infrared and electro-optical sensor clips — is exactly the class of material in the PURSUE Department of War collection. Umbra renders it natively, so you can watch and read the record the aviators describe, on your iPhone.
Who is Ryan Graves?
A former U.S. Navy F/A-18F pilot who flew with strike fighter squadron VFA-11 "Red Rippers." He and his squadron reported near-daily encounters with unidentified objects off the U.S. East Coast in 2014–2015. He founded Americans for Safe Aerospace and testified to Congress in 2023.
Is Ryan Graves a real Navy pilot?
Yes — a real former U.S. Navy fighter pilot who flew the F/A-18F Super Hornet. He first spoke publicly about the encounters on 60 Minutes in May 2021 and later testified under oath at the July 2023 House Oversight hearing on UAP.
What did Ryan Graves see?
Objects that appeared in his squadron's training airspace almost every day for months — holding position in high winds, accelerating without visible propulsion, and registering on the jets' upgraded radar and infrared sensors. The Gimbal and GoFast videos came from that same window and airspace.
What is Americans for Safe Aerospace?
The nonprofit Graves founded to treat UAP first as a flight-safety and reporting issue — giving military and commercial aircrew a stigma-free channel to report what they see, and pressing for the sensor record to be taken seriously.
> The encounters the aviators describe — read the PURSUE record on your iPhone.
