CHICAGO (NewsNation) — Three whistleblowers will testify before Congress next week on their experience with unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), hoping to destigmatize the topic and educate lawmakers on the dangers of unidentified flying objects.
Among the three whistleblowers is former U.S. Navy fighter pilot Lt. Ryan Graves, who has been speaking out about UPAs since 2017 when he saw a New York Times article reporting on a video of a UAP near miss he was involved in.
Graves said the article made him realize that UAPs were a problem that was still a safety hazard for the pilots who are flying out there and that there was no mechanism for it to get resolved within the Department of Defense.
“That really led me into communicating and educating Congress and others about the severity of this issue, and also the national security implications of having unknown objects in our airspace, in our training ranges,” Graves said.
Graves had reported multiple UAP targets and warned the Pentagon these encounters are putting us at risk.
And the threat to national security has prompted members of Congress to pursue an investigation into UAPs, seeking to declassify important data on the topic and demanding that the information become public knowledge.
The bipartisan effort has met roadblocks from multiple government agencies, receiving a tremendous amount of pushback from other members of Congress, the Intelligence Community, the Pentagon and even NASA.
Due to the pushback, the House Oversight Committee had collected a team of whistleblowers to testify before Congress in hopes that by sharing their UAP experiences, the American public will finally receive a resemblance of an answer. Lawmakers also hope that the testimony will be able to influence the rest of Congress to push forward with legislation that would force the Pentagon to reveal any and all UAP data.
Graves said his goal for testifying this year is to ensure that he can educate members of Congress about what pilots and aircrew have been seeing.
“Congress is key to influencing change on this topic,” Graves said. “And so being able to bring more cases and sharing what I’ve been receiving from other witnesses, I think will be what I’ll be targeting in this hearing.”
He said it’s important to remember that this is a “pretty clear issue,” and that it is simply a matter of national and aviation safety.
“Having unknown objects in our aerospace, in our commercial airspace and our tactical training ranges are all very serious safety hazards,” Graves said.
While there is a larger conversation around what the government may have known about this and what efforts have been put into understanding UAPs, Graves said he will be focusing on working to destigmatize these topics.
He explained that by destigmatizing the conversation around UAPs, more whistleblowers, such as UAP whistleblower David Grusch — a former national reconnaissance officer representative of the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Task Force with the Department of Defense —can come forward without fear to their career or their personal life.
Graves’ foundation “Americans for Safe Aerospace” has recently started the UAP witness campaign, where UAP witnesses can come forward and share their experience with the support of other whistleblowers.
However, Graves said the foundation wasn’t started with the intent of receiving whistleblower witness reports. It’s just what they have received, he said.
“As it turns out, there are individuals looking to take advantage of some of the whistleblower laws that have come about in Congress, although there is no public-facing mechanism in order to help these folks take advantage of that legislation,” Graves said. “We have had enough people come forward that we’ve had to turn this into a regular process.”
He said he doesn’t want witnesses to feel ignored.
The House Oversight Committee hearing on UAPs/UFOs will be held at 10 a.m. ET July 26. Graves will testify along with Grusch and third whistleblower David Fravor, a former commanding officer of the Black Aces Squadron with the U.S. Navy.