Ryan Graves

Ryan Graves was commissioned into the United States Navy after completing a degree in aerospace engineering at Boston University. He selected the F/A-18F Super Hornet, the Navy's two-seat strike fighter, and was assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron VFA-11, the Red Rippers, based at Naval Air Station Oceana on the Virginia coast. He flew the Super Hornet for ten years, from 2009 to 2019, and accumulated combat deployments to the Persian Gulf during Operation Inherent Resolve.

The aircraft he flew was the modern version of the platform Commander David Fravor had been flying off the USS Nimitz in November 2004 when the Tic Tac encounter took place. The 2010 to 2014 upgrade cycle had given the F/A-18F a new active electronically scanned array radar, the APG-79, which extended detection range and resolution well beyond the previous generation. That sensor upgrade is the part of the technical record without which the East Coast incidents do not exist as documentation. The objects Graves and his squadron encountered were tracked by the APG-79 across multiple sorties over multiple weeks. The same objects were recorded by the AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR infrared targeting pod and observed visually by aircrew at close range.

The 2014 to 2015 workup cycle was the operational training period that preceded the USS Theodore Roosevelt's 2015 deployment to the Persian Gulf. Carrier Air Wing One was running combat-readiness training over the Warning Areas off the Virginia, Maryland and Delaware coasts. Graves' squadron and the other Hornet squadrons in the air wing encountered the objects on a near-daily basis across that workup period. He has stated that pilots reported the objects on every flight in some weeks.

Graves left active service in 2019. In May 2021 he appeared on the CBS News programme 60 Minutes in a segment reported by Bill Whitaker, the first commissioned naval aviator to discuss the East Coast incidents on the public record. The segment ran alongside the broader institutional story that was breaking that same week ahead of the June 2021 Office of the Director of National Intelligence Preliminary Assessment on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, the document that opened the post-2017 public disclosure cycle.

In 2023 Graves founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, the pilot-led organisation that provides a reporting channel for commercial and military aircrew who observe UAP and that lobbies the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Defense and Congress for a national reporting framework that does not penalise the reporting aircrew. The organisation publishes pilot witness statements and works with allied pilot-safety bodies in the United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil.

On 26 July 2023 Graves provided sworn testimony before the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs. He appeared alongside Commander David Fravor and former intelligence officer David Grusch. His framing across the four-hour hearing was the framing he had maintained since 2021: the encounters his squadron observed off the East Coast in 2014 to 2015 were a flight safety issue first and a national security issue second, and that the absence of an aircrew reporting channel free from professional consequences was producing systemic under-reporting across the US military and commercial aviation fleets.

Graves' public position on UAP, consistent across his 2021 60 Minutes segment, his 2023 sworn testimony, his ASA work and his subsequent congressional appearances, is bounded and procedural. He testifies to what he observed and what his squadron observed. He does not extend the testimony into claims about origin, retrieval programmes or biological remains.

What he has described under oath: objects detected by APG-79 radar at altitudes from 20,000 to 80,000 feet, tracked across multiple sensor systems, observed visually by aircrew at close range during multiple sorties, displaying performance characteristics that no known aircraft can match. He has described objects holding stationary in Category 4 hurricane winds, descending from 80,000 feet to sea level instantaneously, accelerating without observable propulsion, and operating without the heat signature that any known propulsion system would produce.

He has stated that his squadron's encounters became routine to the point that aircrew stopped formally reporting them, both because no reporting mechanism existed at the squadron level and because aircrew who did report were perceived to risk professional consequences. The 2019 Navy guidance change that created the modern Hazard Reporting System was triggered in part by reports that originated from his squadron and the other Hornet squadrons in Carrier Air Wing One.

His operational framing has held weight in the legislative debate because it sits below the harder claims of the broader disclosure conversation. A flight safety hazard tracked by multiple sensor systems and observed by trained aircrew across multiple sorties is a documentary fact independent of any claim about origin. That distinction is what has made Graves' testimony the procedural anchor of the post-2021 congressional UAP conversation.

The publicly available record of Graves' service and public engagement:

• Boston University. Bachelor of Science, Aerospace Engineering.
• 2009 to 2019. United States Navy. F/A-18F Super Hornet pilot.
• Strike Fighter Squadron VFA-11, the Red Rippers, NAS Oceana, Virginia.
• Combat deployments to the Persian Gulf, Operation Inherent Resolve.
• 2014 to 2015. East Coast workup cycle, Carrier Air Wing One, USS Theodore Roosevelt. The objects his squadron encountered are the documentary core of his subsequent public testimony.
• May 2021. CBS News, 60 Minutes. First commissioned US naval aviator to discuss the East Coast incidents on the public record.
• 2023. Founded Americans for Safe Aerospace.
• 26 July 2023. Sworn testimony, House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs.
• Subsequent. Continued congressional engagement on the proposed UAP Disclosure Act and the FAA aircrew reporting framework.

The 2014 to 2015 encounters Graves and his squadron observed off the Virginia and Maryland coasts are the documentary backbone of his testimony. The technical record includes the GIMBAL gun-camera video, recorded by an F/A-18F flying out of NAS Oceana during the workup cycle, and the GOFAST gun-camera video, recorded under similar conditions. Both were among the three videos confirmed authentic by the Department of Defense in April 2020 and subsequently released by the Office of Naval Intelligence under FOIA.

The third video confirmed in the same April 2020 release was the FLIR1 footage from the 14 November 2004 USS Nimitz Tic Tac encounter recorded by Commander David Fravor's wingman Chad Underwood. The 2004 Nimitz encounter and the 2014 to 2015 East Coast encounters are the two operational clusters that constitute the primary US Navy aviator record on UAP entering the public domain through the official channel.

This biography is built from publicly available material:

• House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs · Hearing of 26 July 2023, sworn statement
• CBS News, 60 Minutes · Bill Whitaker · 16 May 2021
• Americans for Safe Aerospace
• Office of the Director of National Intelligence · Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, June 2021
• Department of Defense · April 2020 authentication of FLIR1, GIMBAL and GOFAST Navy gun-camera videos

The archive takes no position on the substance of the encounters, only documents that they were placed in the public record under oath and corroborated by official DoD authentication of the sensor footage. If anything on this biography needs correcting, please get in touch.