"Every Day For At Least a Couple of Years"
A Navy lieutenant went on 60 Minutes and said his squadron saw unidentified objects off Virginia Beach essentially every day. He is now the most durable witness in the file.
In May 2021, five weeks before the intelligence community published its first UAP assessment, CBS gave the subject fifteen minutes of prime time. 1 The witness who carried the segment was Ryan Graves, a former Navy lieutenant and F/A-18F pilot.
His account was specific about equipment. In 2014 his squadron, operating in restricted airspace southeast of Virginia Beach, upgraded their jets' radar. With better sensors they began registering objects they had previously dismissed as false tracks — and could then slew infrared targeting cameras onto them. 12
Once they could see them, they saw them constantly. Graves said the sightings occurred every day for at least a couple of years. 23
What the objects did
They hovered in high winds. They appeared from sea level to 30,000 feet. Some moved at speeds his aircraft could not match, with no visible means of propulsion. 6 Graves described dark cubes inside clear spheres — a description he would repeat under oath before Congress two years later. 4
Six pilots from the USS Theodore Roosevelt reported encounters along the southeastern seaboard between 2014 and 2015, from Virginia to Florida. 6 The Navy responded by drafting new reporting rules for unidentified aircraft entering military-controlled ranges. 6
Why he lasted
Graves offered three explanations on air and refused to choose between them: secret U.S. technology, foreign surveillance, or something not from this planet. He argued the objects should be treated as a national security and flight-safety risk rather than a conspiracy theory. 2
The reason Ryan Graves is still cited in 2026 while louder witnesses have faded is that he has never once claimed to know what they were. He has only ever claimed that they were there, that his instruments recorded them, and that nobody could tell his squadron what they were flying next to.
He went on to found an organisation pressing for a functioning aviation reporting channel, and co-authored recommendations to the FAA on how UAP data should actually be captured and managed. 7 That is the unglamorous version of this story, and it has outlasted the rest.
SOURCES
This report was written by UFONN from the reporting and primary documents below. Numbers in the text correspond to this list. Every link goes to the original publisher.
- 1UFOs regularly spotted in restricted U.S. airspace, report due next monthCBS News
- 260 Minutes UFOs: Ryan Graves says he saw them every dayThe Washington Post
- 3Ryan Graves, Ex Navy Lieutenant, Says Pilots Have Seen UFOs Every Single Day for YearsThe Daily Beast
- 4Navy fighter pilot Ryan Graves on UFO shapes and the militaryFox News
- 5US Navy pilots describe seeing UFO in unsettling documented incidentGlobal News
- 6Fleet of UFOs Followed US Aircraft, Navy Pilot SaysSpace.com
- 7Recommendations to Improve Acquisition and Management of Aviation-Related UAP DataNARCAP
