In mid-2014, during training flights off Virginia Beach, F/A-18 pilot and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Ryan Graves began noticing unusual radar readings. Phantom blips moved with impossible speed and precision. Initially dismissed as glitches, these anomalies soon reappeared, captured by the jets’ advanced sensors. Some hovered in place, then shot away at supersonic speeds—from the ocean surface up to 40,000 feet.
“Sometimes stationary—0.0 Mach. Other times 250 to 350 knots…sometimes even supersonic—1.1 to 1.2 Mach. All altitudes. And always over the ocean,” Graves recalls.
On one occasion, the objects became visible: a dark gray or black cube inside a clear sphere, five to 15 feet in diameter, approaching within 50 feet of their jets. “That was the turning point,” Graves says. “We started treating it as a safety issue.”
Over the next year, sightings were nearly daily. Some objects flew solo, others in formations, with no exhaust, visible propulsion, or wings. They sometimes rotated in place or vanished when approached. Pilots off the West Coast, including those aboard the USS Nimitz and USS Princeton, reported similar encounters over the years.
These craft, now classified as UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena), appeared capable of “transmedium” travel, moving seamlessly between air and water without slowing or creating disturbances—defying aerospace expectations.
Graves doesn’t claim to know what these objects were, but he is certain: “This wasn’t business as usual…It was a pattern. This was global.”
Reports of strange objects plunging into the ocean—USOs (unidentified submerged objects)—date back to at least the 1950s. These sightings challenge conventional physics and maritime knowledge, and they’ve grown more frequent as detection technology has advanced.
Now retired, Graves leads Americans for Safe Aerospace, the largest UAP-focused pilot safety initiative worldwide, working with former Pentagon and naval officials to push for transparency. He stops short of labeling the craft as alien, but insists they do not match known human technology. “Where that leaves us opens options—extraterrestrial visitors, time travelers, breakaway civilizations…things that challenge the status quo,” he says.
Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, PhD, an oceanographer and former Navy official, first saw footage of these incidents in 2015 involving jets attached to the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Videos later released in 2020 captured craft moving at incredible speeds with no visible propulsion. “I knew then that what I saw was not our technology,” he says. “No nation has craft that can move like that.”
Gallaudet, now CEO of Ocean STL Consulting, urges the U.S. government to treat UAP research as a national priority. Many records remain classified, but if the reports are even partially accurate, encounters off Virginia, California, and elsewhere may hint at a much larger, global phenomenon.
This momentum has already influenced policy. In 2023, Congress passed the UAP Disclosure Act, requiring federal agencies to collect and disclose records related to recovered nonhuman craft and biologics, acknowledging the potential existence of off-world or nonhuman intelligence.
Newly released records reveal encounters with transmedium UAPs. While they don’t confirm extraterrestrial origins, they raise questions that remain unexplained.
“The possibility that they exist underwater is very real,” Gallaudet says. “They could come from another galaxy—or perhaps they’ve lived here long before us, finding refuge beneath the seafloor.”
Some of the most compelling incidents include:
USS Nimitz, 2004
F/A-18 pilots reported a Tic Tac–shaped UAP over the Pacific, moving faster than sound without generating sonic booms. The USS Princeton detected the object at 80,000 feet, which dropped to sea level in under a second. Commander David Fravor and Lt. Commander Jim Slaight described a smooth, wingless white oblong object, which vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, 2013
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection infrared camera recorded a small spherical object moving inland from the ocean, crossing the airport, then returning to the sea. It submerged and resurfaced multiple times without creating splashes or turbulence, defying conventional hydrodynamics.
Caribbean Sea, 1990s
A Navy CH-53 Sea Stallion pilot reported a dark mass pulling a target drone violently underwater while retrieving it from the ocean. The pilot later shared the encounter with Fravor, who recounted it on Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2019.
USS Omaha, 2019
Infrared sensors captured a spherical object hovering above the Pacific, then disappearing into the ocean without a splash or wake. Pentagon officials verified the footage. A sailor later confirmed similar sightings aboard the USS Jackson in 2023.
“These objects look nothing like any known aircraft,” Gallaudet says. “Their engineering capabilities are beyond our current technology.”
