The quote in the title comes from a new op-ed published at Politico by Ryan Graves, a Navy F/A-18 fighter pilot who was one of many military officers who encountered anomalous objects in our restricted military airspace off the coast of Virginia in 2014. In the article, he reviews some of the recent activity of balloons (or “objects” or “balloon-like entities” or whatever we’re calling them this week) in American airspace and the Pentagon’s response to them. Graves has plenty of experience with UFOs because “those damn things” had been plaguing his fighter squadron for eight months during the period in question and he’s seen them up close and personal.

While Graves praises the Pentagon for improving our radar systems and other sensor data so we can more readily identify and, if appropriate, engage with unknown objects, he points out that balloons are not the only issue we need to be dealing with. And the things that he and his fellow pilots saw (and sometimes almost collided with) over the Atlantic Ocean were most assuredly not balloons.

Then came the hair-raising near misses that required us to take evasive action.

These were no mere balloons. The unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) accelerated at speeds up to Mach 1, the speed of sound. They could hold their position, appearing motionless, despite Category 4 hurricane-force winds of 120 knots. They did not have any visible means of lift, control surfaces or propulsion — in other words nothing that resembled normal aircraft with wings, flaps or engines. And they outlasted our fighter jets, operating continuously throughout the day. I am a formally trained engineer, but the technology they demonstrated defied my understanding.

After that near-miss, we had no choice but to submit a safety report, hoping that something could be done before it was too late.

Graves’ account was impressive and urgent enough that it caught the attention of Senator Marco Rubio. That makes sense since Rubio has been one of the Senators (along with Kirsten Gillibrand and others) who led the charge to investigate UFOs, writing legislation that created the Pentagon’s new UFO investigatory office, AARO.

Advanced objects demonstrating advanced technology are routinely flying over our restricted or sensitive airspace posing a risk to both flight safety & national security https://t.co/4bXEHuuaq0

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 28, 2023

One area where I’m not entirely sure how Graves views the situation comes with his praise of President Biden for ordering the creation of a new interagency UAP task force. On the one hand, I suppose that the more resources we bring to bear on this effort the better. But at the same time, we’ve just gone through years of debate and congressional wrangling to create the AARO office. Looking into these unidentified phenomena is the whole purpose of its existence. Will the new task force be sharing data so that nothing is missed? Will they be engaging in redundant efforts when we might make more progress if everyone is pulling on the same set of oars?

Ryan Graves is currently launching a new advocacy group called Americans for Safe Aerospace (ASA). This group will support pilots seeking to responsibly report anomalous activity and the skies and help develop more comprehensive reporting and analysis measures. They will also advocate for greater transparency from the government on the subject of UFOs and potentially related phenomena. I applaud this effort and hope he is successful.

In closing, Graves circles back to point out that we can’t simply ignore the balloons, particularly the ones that are conducting surveillance on behalf of our adversaries. (Though we should probably avoid shooting down the ones belonging to the Boy Scouts with sidewinder missiles in the future.) But we cannot afford to switch over to a collective mentality where everything is viewed as an adversarial balloon or drone. There are objects in our skies, in space, and under the water that are doing things we can’t explain. And we need to get to the bottom of it.