Voiceover: Former Navy pilot Lieutenant Ryan Graves calls whatever is out there a security risk. He told us his F/A-18F squadron began seeing UAPs hovering over restricted airspace southeast of Virginia Beach in 2014 when they updated their jet’s radar, making it possible to zero in with infrared targeting cameras.Bill Whitaker: So you’re seeing it both with the radar and with the infrared. And that tells you that there is something out there?

Ryan Graves: Pretty hard to spoof that.

Voiceover: These photographs were taken in 2019 in the same area. The Pentagon confirms these are images of objects it can’t identify. Lieutenant Graves told us pilots training off the Atlantic Coast see things like that all the time.

Ryan Graves: Every day. Every day for at least a couple years.

Bill Whitaker: Wait a minute, every day for a couple of years?

Ryan Graves: Uh-huh.

Ryan Graves: I don’t see an exhaust plume.

Voiceover: Including this one – off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida in 2015, captured on a targeting camera by members of Graves’ squadron.

Soundbites from pilots: Look at that thing, it’s rotating! My gosh! They’re all going against the wind, the wind’s 120 knots to the west. Look at that thing dude!

Bill Whitaker: You can sorta hear the surprise in their voices.

Ryan Graves: You certainly can. They seem to have broke character a bit and were just kind of amazed at what they were seeing.

Bill Whitaker: What do you think when you see something like this?

Ryan Graves: This is a difficult one to explain. You have rotation, you have high altitudes. You have propulsion, right? I don’t know. I don’t know what it is, frankly.

Voiceover: He told us pilots speculate they are one of three things: secret U.S. technology, an adversary’s spy vehicle, or something otherworldly.

Ryan Graves: I would say, you know, the highest probability is it’s a threat observation program.

Bill Whitaker: Could it be Russian or Chinese technology?

Ryan Graves: I don’t see why not.

Bill Whitaker: Are you alarmed?

Ryan Graves: I am worried, frankly. You know, if these were tactical jets from another country that were hangin’ out up there, it would be a massive issue. But because it looks slightly different, we’re not willing to actually look at the problem in the face. We’re happy to just ignore the fact that these are out there, watching us every day.