FigureRyan Graves (b. 1985)

United States Naval Academy 2009. F/A-18F Super Hornet pilot with strike fighter squadron VFA-11 “Red Rippers” aboard the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt during the 2014-2015 work-up and deployment cycle off the U.S. East Coast (Virginia Beach offshore operating area). Graves and his fellow VFA-11 aircrew flew daily training intercepts during a period in which Roosevelt’s AESA-equipped Super Hornets and the E-2 Hawkeyes’ radars consistently held unidentified targets — slow- and fast-moving, occasionally co-altitude with civilian airliner traffic, often through full mission durations of 6+ hours. Several encounters resulted in near-midair incidents; one near-miss between a Super Hornet and an unidentified object was reported through the standard aviation safety reporting system. The GIMBAL and GO FAST videos, both released by the Pentagon in April 2020, were captured during this deployment.

Graves separated from active service in 2018. He went public with the East Coast encounters in interviews with Helene Cooper for the New York Times (May 2019) and with 60 Minutes (May 2021). In 2022 he founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, a non-profit advocating for standardized civilian and military pilot reporting channels for UAP encounters under a non-stigmatizing framework. The organization has worked with the FAA on amendments to the FAA Order JO 7110.65 (Air Traffic Control) and has briefed the FAA’s UAP working group.

Graves testified under oath to the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security on 26 July 2023, in the same hearing as David Grusch and David Fravor. Sworn testimony: “These sightings were not rare or isolated; they were routine. Military aircrews and commercial pilots, trained observers whose lives depend on accurate identification, are frequently witnessing these phenomena.” His public-record position centers on flight safety — that the operational frequency of UAP encounters with military and civilian aviation is a near-term aviation-safety issue independent of any origin hypothesis, and that the current cultural and reporting structures actively suppress useful data collection.