Ryan Graves

Ryan Graves is a former United States Navy (USN) F/A-18 pilot who became one of the most prominent public voices reporting Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) encountered by US military aircrew. In 2014, Graves was flying with Navy Fighter Attack Squadron 11 (Strike Fighter Squadron 11 (VFA-11)), the “Red Rippers”, stationed at NAS Oceana in Virginia Beach¹, over a decade of Navy service that included two operational deployments². That year his squadron began seeing UAP hovering over restricted airspace southeast of Virginia Beach³, shortly after a radar upgrade let the squadron start detecting unknown objects in its airspace⁴. During a training mission in Warning Area W-72 off the Virginia Beach coast, two F/A-18F Super Hornets were split apart by one such object⁵, described as a dark grey or black cube inside a clear sphere⁶ that came within approximately 15 metres of the lead aircraft⁷ and was estimated at roughly 1.5 to 4.5 metres in diameter⁸. The squadron filed a safety report on the encounter but received no official acknowledgement and no further mechanism for reporting further sightings⁹.

Graves relayed an account from a fellow pilot who nearly collided with a similar object during the 2014-2015 US East Coast UAP encounters: a translucent sphere the colleague described as “a giant soap bubble”, with a cube inside touching the sphere’s outer edge¹⁰, telling Graves afterwards, “I almost hit one of those damn things”¹¹. Graves was also aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt when the longer, unreleased version of the Gimbal video was shown during the Gimbal incident; he recalled a cluster of smaller craft flying in an inverted V-shape ahead of the larger object¹². He later testified that the Gimbal/Go Fast UAP video recording shows a single rotating object on its forward-looking infrared (FLIR) footage, even as pilots on the audio refer to an accompanying fleet that is not visible in the footage itself¹³; Graves said he witnessed in a subsequent debrief that this fleet did appear in the radar data shown on the situational awareness page¹⁴. Writing about the phenomena his squadron observed generally, Graves said they accelerated to speeds up to Mach 1¹⁵, could hold position, appearing motionless, despite Category 4 hurricane-force winds of approximately 220 kilometres per hour¹⁶, and showed no visible means of lift, control surfaces or propulsion¹⁷. Both Graves and David Fravor said they faced no repercussions from their superiors for reporting their encounters¹⁸.

Graves founded Americans for Safe Aerospace¹⁹, an organisation advocating for aerospace safety and national security, and serves as its Executive Director²⁰. More than thirty witnesses had come forward to the organisation, with almost 5,000 Americans joining its push for transparency²¹. On 2023-07-26, Graves testified before the House Hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (2023-07-26) in that capacity²², appearing alongside Fravor and David Charles Grusch at the bipartisan 2023-07 Congressional UAP hearing, where all three testified under oath²³. During the hearing, Graves said he relied on Grusch and others to research where UAP-related records are kept, describing himself as the operator of the group²⁴. Graves, Grusch and Fravor jointly indicated there was some possibility that UAP are collecting reconnaissance information on United States Congress and military capabilities²⁵. Graves told the committee he speaks on behalf of more than 30 commercial aircrew and military veterans who had confided similar UAP encounters to him²⁶, and noted that since 2021 all UAP videos have been classified secret or above²⁷.

Beyond his own sightings, Graves brought secondhand accounts to the committee’s attention. He testified to information relayed to him about the 2003 Vandenberg Air Force Base Unidentified Aerial Phenomena / Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) incident, in which a group of Boeing contractors reported a large, approximately 90-metre red square object approaching the base from the ocean²⁸, remaining for about 45 seconds before darting off over the mountains²⁹. Underpinning his advocacy work is his own Navy training as an aviation safety officer³⁰, and he has worked with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) to help establish a UAP Integration Committee bringing engineering expertise to the subject³¹. Before the committee, he recommended the existing Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) as a short-term trusted platform for pilots to report UAP³², noting it already has built-in analytics capability and is funded by Congress³³.

Graves and other USS Theodore Roosevelt pilots were later summonsed to give confidential briefings to members of Congress about the East Coast encounters³⁴. He recalled that when the UAP video was shown to Rear Admiral Andrew L. Lewis, he responded “Hah!” and walked out³⁵. Separately from the cube-in-sphere encounters, members of Graves’ squadron captured a targeting-camera video of an unidentified object off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida in 2015, on which no exhaust plume was visible^36,37. Sources describe Graves as a key eyewitness in the 2015 USS Theodore Roosevelt UAP incursions³⁸.