TOPLINE The US Department of Defense officially released three non-confidential videos filmed by Navy pilots on Monday, "Weather Unspecified", a step that comes after years of progress toward government transparency from UFOs .

The videos, first released by the New York Times in 2017, show fast-moving rectangular bodies racing through the sky and a pilot, in one of the video shouts, "Look at this thing, dude - it's spinning!"

The Pentagon, which previously confirmid the veracity of the videos in 2019, said it formally released the footage after a “thorough review” determined the videos do not reveal any sensitive information and to “clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real,” Sue Gough, a Defense Department spokeswoman, toldCBS News .

One of the videos released shows an incident from 2004 in which Navy pilots encountered an object 40 feet long hovering about 50 feet above the water, according to the New York Times; the two other videos are from 2015 and show strange objects moving very quickly — one racing above the water, another rotating in mid air (the videos were released after unauthorized leaks in 2007 and 2017, CBS News reports.)

The publication of the videos and the Times report on the experiences of seafarers who faced things came as government officials sought to investigate and give more transparency to the issue in recent years .

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who tweeted in support of the Pentagon releasing the videos Monday, helped steer funding towards a $22 million program in 2007 to investigate UFOs (in his tweet Monday Reid added that the videos “only scratch the surface of research and materials available.”) .
Following the 2017 Times report, the Navy formalized a process allowing pilots to report encounters with aerial phenomena; in 2019, the Navy confirmid an uptick in UFO s 

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It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” one of the pilots told the New York Timesabout an encounter with the oblong object in 2004 about 100 miles out in the Pacific .

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President Trump has previously said he doesn’t buy the hype around the unidentified objects . 

“I did have one very brief meeting on it,” Trump said in an ABC News interview in 2019. “But people are saying they’re seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly.”


UFO video