UFOs are the story of the century — wake up, America!

Last week, I had a front-row seat at the hearing of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), also known as UFOs. The three witnesses provided extraordinary testimony on their observations of aerial craft with performance characteristics far beyond those of modern aircraft, as well as knowledge of a hidden U.S. government crash retrieval program of such vehicles and their nonhuman operators.

The witnesses were former officers in the U.S. military with stellar service records. Their message to Congress was that we are not alone, we possess technology unlike anything available in the public or private sectors, and the U.S. government has covered up this earth-shattering information for decades.

So how has our society responded? To quote an assessment in Forbes, “the internet shrugged.” After some brief reporting by the major news networks, they returned their attention to nearly full-time coverage of the dismal legal landscapes surrounding Hunter Biden and Donald Trump.

Perhaps the era of fake news has desensitized the public to remarkable revelations like these, so I feel compelled to share my perspective to shed light on their validity and implications.

As a retired U.S. Navy flag officer, I can attest to the integrity and authenticity of the two pilots who testified: retired Commander David Fravor and Ryan Graves. I have served on three aircraft carriers and count many Naval aviators as close friends. These two witnesses are the real deal.

So is David Grusch. As a Navy information warfare officer, I worked closely with the intelligence community and Grusch’s former command, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. I too have been read into special access programs, and I understand how Department of Defense classification systems and authorities work. His testimony is 100 percent credible.

It may take time for society to come to grips with this historic hearing, but we will be best served by immediately responding as follows:

1) The U.S. Congress should continue to demand the Department of Defense and intelligence community disclose UAP information, data, and materials to the public. The House Select Committee that Reps. Tim Burchett, Matt Gaetz, Anna Paulina Luna, and Jared Moskowitz recently requested Speaker Kevin McCarthy establish can do this by further investigating the UAP cover-up described at the hearing and drafting legislation that directs disclosure. While specific technical characteristics regarding the materials and acquisition of data may require that they remaining classified, UAP should be included in other efforts by the Defense Department to solve the U.S. government’s over-classification problem. 

2) The U.S. government should show leadership in international scientific studies of UAP. San Marino is proposing Project Titan to the United Nations secretary-general for this purpose. While the witnesses at the hearing highlighted the national security concerns that UAP represent, there is a global security issue as well. Not only do we lack technical data regarding their occurrence, we need to understand where they come from, who controls them, and what their intentions are. Advancing our understanding of these phenomena can reinforce international alliances and be used as leverage in resolving disputes. As the world leader in 20^th century breakthroughs of nuclear power, information technology, and human exploration of the ocean and space, the U.S. has the opportunity to lead in a field with potentially more impact than any before it.

3) The U.S. research community should significantly expand the scientific study of UAP. With more disclosure and international engagement, U.S. national labs, in partnership with American universities and research institutions, can lead an effort to transform our understanding of physics and the universe. Several U.S. research institutions are already making remarkable progress, including Harvard University’s Galileo Project and Stanford University’s Nolan Lab. Based on the observed flight characteristics detailed in the hearing, the results of this endeavor could make the scientific revolution of the 16^th and 17^th centuries look like baby steps, with wide-ranging benefits in areas as diverse as transportation safety, agricultural productivity, energy efficiency, environmental stewardship and human health.

Our tiny planet orbits a relatively medium-sized star, in a galaxy of over 100 billion stars, among a distribution of several hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. How arrogant to believe we are the only species that has developed a means for travel between celestial bodies. Now that we are finding out otherwise, we must demand disclosure of what the government knows. Instead of staying asleep at the wheel, we should wake up as a society for the safety, security, and scientific advantages that can be gained.

Rear Admiral (ret.) Tim Gallaudet, Ph.D., is the CEO of Ocean STL Consulting, LLC , a research affiliate with Harvard University’s Galileo Project, and a member of the advisory board of Americans for Safe Aerospace. He is a former acting and deputy administrator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), acting undersecretary and assistant secretary of Commerce, and oceanographer in the Navy.