Ryan Graves describes recurring unidentified contacts during Navy training near Virginia Beach in 2014 and the reporting culture that developed around them. His evidence combines personal cockpit sensor experience, information received from other aircrew and later advocacy through Americans for Safe Aerospace. His testimony to Congress on 26 July 2023 makes those distinctions especially clear: he claimed firsthand multisensor experience but expressly said that he was not aboard either aircraft in the most frequently repeated close visual encounter. His relationship to the Gimbal and GoFast recordings is squadron context and knowledge of debriefing, rather than authorship of the released clips.
Former Navy F/A-18F pilot and later Americans for Safe Aerospace founder
The operational account and later congressional testimony
In his July 2023 prepared statement, Graves identifies himself as a former Navy pilot who joined the service in 2009 and flew F/A-18F aircraft with VFA-11 near Virginia Beach in 2014. He says that unidentified contacts became apparent after a radar upgrade. Initially considered possible software problems, some radar tracks were subsequently correlated with infrared observations, according to his account. He describes the contacts becoming a regular subject of preflight briefing. This is his retrospective description of the squadron's experience, rather than a released daily contact log.
The distinctive cube-inside-a-sphere description concerns another flight. Graves's prepared statement says that one of two pilots entering Warning Area W-72 saw a dark grey cube inside a clear sphere at the entry point; the aircraft, described as about 100 feet apart, took evasive action and returned to base. His spoken opening describes the object as coming within about 50 feet of the lead aircraft and estimates its diameter at five to fifteen feet. Aircraft separation, reported clearance and estimated object size are different quantities; none is an independently measured distance in this record.
Asked directly by Representative Jamie Raskin whether he had been aboard one of those aircraft, Graves said that he had not. He recalled being in the ready room when the pilot returned, still wearing his equipment, and receiving the account of an almost-collision. This places Graves close to the initial reporting conversation while leaving the appearance and clearance dependent on the other pilot's observation. He also said that the squadron submitted a safety report but received no official acknowledgement or further reporting mechanism.
The hearing records a later change in his public role. Graves said that recognising a video's voices and remembering its debriefing when it appeared in 2017 prompted him to contact colleagues and eventually speak publicly. In 2023 he appeared as executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, which he had founded to support reporting. His prepared statement and opening describe more than thirty military or commercial witnesses approaching the organisation. Those later reports concern separate events and are information supplied to him, rather than further personal observations from the 2014 training period.
Evidence review
Graves's account is directly attributable for what he says he observed on cockpit sensors, what was discussed in his squadron and the report he received after the near-pass. His distinction between being present at the ready-room conversation and being absent from the flight is consequential. The near-pass cannot be presented as his own unaided visual sighting, even when he uses the squadron-level language of what the aviators were seeing.
His prepared statement describes contacts holding position in hurricane-force winds, reaching speeds up to Mach 1 and operating for long periods without visible conventional propulsion. These are his conclusions about the reported pattern. The statement does not publish the associated weather observations, time-resolved tracks or sensor diagnostics needed to test each performance claim. The description is therefore different evidence from a reconstructed trajectory for a particular recorded target.
The congressional record preserves an accountable public statement and questions that clarify his access. It does not independently validate every underlying contact or the later accounts submitted to his organisation. His advocacy has a concrete basis in reported interference with training and concern about reporting; the number of people approaching an intake programme does not by itself supply a rate of independently verified encounters or establish one common object type.
All five original committee PDF pages read in text and as rendered pages. Separates personal sensor experience, another flight's near-pass, later witness intake and advocacy. The prepared material is longer than the spoken opening and includes an unfinished passage.
PDF pages 14–15, printed pages 10–11, read as original rendered pages. Establishes his 2023 hearing role and preserves the opening's near-pass estimates separately from the prepared statement.
PDF pages 25–26 and 51, printed pages 21–22 and 47, inspected against high-resolution renders. Graves recalls video recognition and explicitly says that he was not aboard either near-pass aircraft. Selected exchanges were reviewed; the complete hearing was not watched or fully read for this dossier.
Original release statement read. It authenticates Navy provenance and dates two clips to January 2015; its unidentified description is a statement at the time of release, not a finding of extraordinary performance.
Current official section read on 14 October 2026. Describes notification of the operations supervisor or controller in charge. It is not used to reconstruct the procedures or feedback available to Graves's squadron in 2014.
Final report's printed page 28, PDF page 30, read and inspected as an original rendered page. The example describes parallax and a roughly 40 mph estimate, explicitly neglecting aircraft wind effects. The report as a whole was not fully inspected for this dossier.
Original 26-page publication acquired. Narrative and methodology text read; selected consequential pages 1–7, 17–18, 22 and 24–26 inspected as rendered originals. The report distinguishes ground speed from wind-compensated speed and records missing original metadata, unknown aircraft heading and unavailable aircrew accounts. No independent recomputation of its model was performed.
Personal sensor experience, squadron reports and public testimony
The central contribution of Graves's testimony is an operational reporting history. He connects his own sensor experience with briefing practice, another crew's immediate reaction and subsequent attempts to bring the issue into public discussion. Those connections explain why he considered the events a continuing safety problem. They do not turn every event described across several years into a single continuously tracked object.
Released VFA-11 hazard forms provide a separate documentary route into the training-area history. Reports for 23 and 24 April 2014 describe radar contacts and additional sensor observations, while a 27 April summary records a near-midair encounter with a balloon-like object. Their crew identities are redacted. They document recorded hazards within Graves's squadron, but cannot be assigned to him or identified as the cube-and-sphere encounter solely because the dates and unit are compatible. The supporting collective dossier examines those particular records without counting Graves again.
The famous recordings also need their own source history. The Department of Defense's 27 April 2020 release authenticated the Navy provenance of three clips, including two dated January 2015, and described their subjects as unidentified at that time. That statement did not certify extraordinary performance. NASA's 2023 GoFast example and AARO's 2025 analysis subsequently examined the apparent speed of one target using display geometry and flight assumptions. Their findings constrain that recording; they neither analyse every contact Graves described nor make him its recording aircrew.
Graves's criticism of reporting arrangements belongs to the time and institution he was discussing. His 2023 prepared statement argued that civilian aircrew lacked a trusted reporting route. The FAA controller instructions available when this review was prepared direct personnel to inform their operations supervisor or controller in charge about reported or observed UAP or unexplained activity. A current procedural instruction and a participant's historical criticism answer different questions. Neither establishes the quality of feedback received by VFA-11 in 2014, which remains part of Graves's account rather than a documented investigation outcome here.
Key dates
2014
Graves dates recurring squadron detections near Virginia Beach to the period following a radar upgrade.
23–27 April 2014
Separate VFA-11 hazard forms record training-area contacts; the publicly released copies redact crew identities.
27 April 2020
DoD officially releases the historical Navy clips and authenticates their provenance.
26 July 2023
Graves testifies before the House subcommittee about operational experience, received reports and aviation-safety concerns.
All five original committee PDF pages read in text and as rendered pages. Separates personal sensor experience, another flight's near-pass, later witness intake and advocacy. The prepared material is longer than the spoken opening and includes an unfinished passage.
PDF pages 14–15, printed pages 10–11, read as original rendered pages. Establishes his 2023 hearing role and preserves the opening's near-pass estimates separately from the prepared statement.
PDF pages 25–26 and 51, printed pages 21–22 and 47, inspected against high-resolution renders. Graves recalls video recognition and explicitly says that he was not aboard either near-pass aircraft. Selected exchanges were reviewed; the complete hearing was not watched or fully read for this dossier.
Original release statement read. It authenticates Navy provenance and dates two clips to January 2015; its unidentified description is a statement at the time of release, not a finding of extraordinary performance.
Current official section read on 14 October 2026. Describes notification of the operations supervisor or controller in charge. It is not used to reconstruct the procedures or feedback available to Graves's squadron in 2014.
Final report's printed page 28, PDF page 30, read and inspected as an original rendered page. The example describes parallax and a roughly 40 mph estimate, explicitly neglecting aircraft wind effects. The report as a whole was not fully inspected for this dossier.
Original 26-page publication acquired. Narrative and methodology text read; selected consequential pages 1–7, 17–18, 22 and 24–26 inspected as rendered originals. The report distinguishes ground speed from wind-compensated speed and records missing original metadata, unknown aircraft heading and unavailable aircrew accounts. No independent recomputation of its model was performed.