(NewsNation) — Former Navy fighter pilot Ryan Graves has spent years pushing for a proper, centralized system enabling military and commercial pilots to report sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena. It may finally be coming.
The Pentagon announced Thursday the launch of a website that will publish unclassified material from the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the agency within the Department of Defense that’s responsible for investigating reports of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, commonly known as UFOs.
That website is a mandate from Congress and will allow service members, government employees and contractors to submit UAP sightings. The tool is not yet live.
“This is a step we’ve been waiting for for a while, and it’s a good first step,” Graves said Thursday on “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.” “We can’t really scope the problem both within the military and within the public until we gather this data. … Better late than never.”
Currently, civilian pilots are encouraged to report sightings to air traffic control, AARO says. The Federal Aviation Administration then provides the reports to AARO.
Graves’ nonprofit, Americans for Safe Aerospace, accepts reports from commercial pilots, and he hopes AARO will do so in the future too.
“The demand is there, and we need to step up and help pilots right now. We’re still getting emails every day” with reports, he said.
There has been some criticism of AARO, particularly from whistleblower David Grusch and others who claimed elements within AARO were not being fully transparent with Congress or the public about UAP reports.
Others have suggested AARO itself has been kept in the dark about illegal UAP programs. AARO has consistently pushed back on claims that the agency or the Pentagon has information on actual aircraft of nonhuman origin in its possession.
“I’m anxious to see what type of information they’re going to continue to populate this website with, and ultimately what is held back and what is promulgated forward and how that decision is made,” Graves said.
NewsNation digital producer Stephanie Whiteside contributed to this report.
