The U.S. Air Force Pilot Who Had A Dogfight With A UFO

Prime Video offers the best in entertainment. The end of the world continues with the season 2 of Fallout. A worldwide phenomenon, inbegred by Prime. I heard about what to do in this situation. Look at the epic end of the story of the Witches of Oz. Buy or buy? Wicked for good now. I'm taking you to see the wizard. There's no going back. So what you also look, Prime Video. Here you look at all. Prime is advised, especially to buy or buy. In-house can advertises bevatten, 18+. the main settings are there. others like, hey, go through here to go to the next level. Like, that's what it seemed like to me. Do you allow yourself to speculate what all these things are, where they're from? This is Weaponized. This is Weaponized. I'm George Knapp here in Las Vegas, joined by my friend and colleague, Jeremy Corbell. How you doing, Jeremy? We had a good one today. Oh, yeah, I'm excited, man. We're going to be speaking with somebody who, you know, has seen things for themselves and has a really pretty incredible background. You know, one of the cool things, the many cool things about living in Las Vegas is it's the home to the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. This precision flying team that travels around the world demonstrates the precision and the power of American air forces. and the Thunderbirds, because of the proximity where I live, when they're in the air, a couple times a year they'll practice and then they put on a show over Nellis. When they're in the air, they fly right by my house. So I go up on the roof and watch them and it's spectacular. These are some of the elite of the elites in aviation. And I don't know if our friend Dave Fravor will agree that these are the best pilots in the world, but they're pretty close. They're certainly in the conversation. We've never been able to talk to a Thunderbird pilot about UFOs until, you know, a couple of years ago. There was a considerable amount of stigma around this topic. But as of seven, eight months ago, one of the former Thunderbird pilots decided to come forward and talk about his encounters, UFO encounters. And I use that plural version because he's had more than one. You want to introduce him, Jeremy? Yeah, sure. So I think what you're saying is true, though. It's really interesting that the Thunderbirds, I will hear more about it. but it's precision flying. So you have to have like a lot of time in aircraft to be able to, to, to fly with that kind of thing, but you have to have a whole history before. So we're going to be talking with my friend, Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Bodingheimer. Yeah. Well, George, Jeremy, thanks for having me. It's really, really good to be here today. George sounds like the Thunderbirds need to charge you a royalty for that view of their takeoffs every day man that's awesome uh yeah so i i started in uh the air force went to pilot training in texas got the f-15 e-strike eagle uh dream jet you know twin engine uh twin cockpit jets basically you know the the top gun jet for the air force uh two people in that thing very combat capable so all the beeps and squeaks all the like different technologies that you could ever ask for. They literally update that thing every month with the newest technologies that the Air Force has. So Dreamjet did that for eight years or so, a little bit less than eight years. And I ended up deploying to Afghanistan during that time, did 70 combat missions, 300 combat hours over there. That would have been 2011 through 2012. And then I came back and I didn't think life could get any cooler. And I threw my name in the hat for the Thunderbirds. And yeah, just wild a very rare you know chance to get selected for that got selected for it moved to vegas and flew with the thunderbirds for about three years you do about six months of training two years of shows and then six months of instructing and training your replacement so that was the the big military part of my career then i ended up flying commercial for about five years and now i'm basically full-time washed up fighter pilot on youtube that's my that's my job now. Your name, Max Afterburner, that's a great name. And you've got something like 500,000 subscribers. So a lot of these are your fellow aviators, former military guys, I would think. Yeah, I think there's quite a few of them on there. Yeah. And that's kind of what led me to do the UAP videos a few months back, I guess now, was a lot of the people in the comments section were just like, hey, tell us about UAPs. And that was around the time, I mean, you guys were getting a ton of press. You were doing great work. So I noticed you guys, you know, and you've since been doing great work with the congressional hearings and just giving aviators a platform to come forward and talk about this stuff. I think it's really great. So you guys have done a great job there. So I saw you guys out there doing it and I thought, hey, my subscribers want to see this. Why not? So and I think there's some positives, massive positives to this whole thing, which we can get to a little bit later too. So yeah, you've had a really a lot of flight hours, as you said, you know, 70 combat missions, and then, you know, working with the Thunderbirds and doing commercial flights, you spent a lot of hours in the air. But one of the coolest things is your call sign. You got to tell it to people, what's your call sign? My call sign is Neo, like Neo from the Matrix. Amazing, man. As an elite fighter pilot to have the call sign Neo. Now I know there's probably a story behind that which i'd love to hear but um currently you're a colonel or lieutenant colonel in the air force reserves is that correct i am yeah reserves yep all right yep let's talk about stigma because you say it at that you got this great episode about your ufo sightings or encounters and you you admit hey there is real stigma uh for about this for current duty on duty military guys and and until recently you didn't feel comfortable talking about it now you do is this something that you talk about with fellow aviators privately about the ufo topic is it does it come up you know it came up for me after one of the experiences that i have that i'll share with you guys here in a second but it wasn't this like huge event it was literally me being like hey i just i saw that out there on this sortie did you see anything and the other pilots like no you know and they kind of give you that no you know and that's that's the stigma in itself because i mean fighter squadrons it's high pressure high stakes jobs where you got to be dialed in they can't the people around you don't want to think that you're seeing things while you're flying right and that's understandable uh because you know in the thunderbirds you're flying three feet away from someone so if they didn't see it that's kind of i think where the stigma comes from that's why I think it's great with Commander Fravor. You know, he had a WIZO with him, had other members of the formation. So I think that's where you can really have some discussions and conversations. But when you're flying single cockpit fighter jets and someone else might not have seen it, you know, like if I was in the F-15E and I had the chance to talk with my WIZOs about it, which I do in one of the experiences, that was a lot less stigmatized. And it was more of just like, whoa, what was that? But in a fighter squadron, man, it's a high-paced life. So you can talk about it for a few minutes. But then you got to get ready for the next training mission or the next deployment. So it's not something that a lot of pilots spend a lot of time on. And I'll be straight up with honest with everybody. I told Jeremy this. We had a quick chat. You know, I don't have any footage. I don't have any like actual footage of this. So my version of footage is trust me, bro, which is like, you know, and I just want to be upfront about that. And I just want to tell my stories and have the viewers make their own decisions. So it's. Yeah, look, man, I think it's rare. that you get good footage to begin with, you know, that comes out, you know, military footage of UAP is really closely guarded, even if people do get footage. So what I think is valuable, though, is you talking about the culture. But first of all, this is Air Force, right? So we have a lot of Navy pilots that have come out and there's a culture within Navy, there's a culture within Air Force. We know Air Force has been really quiet, you know, for good or bad, they've been quiet about the UAP thing. So because you're Air Force, and I would like to understand, you know, kind of when you began and kind of where you're ending, if you're saying that there is a change, you know, in this culture by hearing people come forward, hearing people testify, you know, that that has inspired you to tell your story. There's got to be a lot of stories and studies that there were the people haven't talked up. So what do you see about the Air Force and kind of the silence of it? And was that kind of embedded within your training or is that just because of the mechanisms and how you run? Super good question. Yeah, that's a really dialed in question. I think that's important. If you even just look at Top Gun Maverick, there's a reason why Top Gun Maverick was made by the Navy and not the Air Force. The access levels and just the different mindsets between the two services is vastly different. I was in pilot training and one of the instructors, we were talking about naval aviators and you got to call them aviators or they'll get really upset. That's a little, you know, we don't want to bruise any egos. She said she was like, well, with with naval aviators, they have a little book that's this big. That's the things that they're not allowed to do. And it's just like a really small book tells them, hey, this is the stuff that can get you killed in the air. Don't do this stuff. Right. And then the Air Force has a stack of books this tall that says these are the only things you're allowed to do. don't do anything else besides what's what we've done in these books you know and I get it a lot of that is based on safety but it does create a bit of a culture of a little less open you know a little less discussions a little more like hey was it in the book if it's not in the book why are we why are we even talking about it and I think that's changing a little bit as I was kind of leaving the service the service kind of the Air Force started to focus on a thing called AFWERX which is what they saw as kind of a innovative branch of the military service. And I think it's great. You know, they're trying to adapt and change. So that's kind of the first thing a little bit behind the culture. And then, you know, just at the end of the day, Area 51 is like that's Air Force property, in my opinion. You know, that is where the Air Force epicenter, the nerve center is. So, you know, there's going to be more knowledge, I think, on certain levels of the Air Force than there is with the Navy. So you've got to be careful that you don't divulge something that's classified. urgent intergalactic message to all weaponized listeners when i put on the right clothing it feels like armor a well-built wardrobe is about pieces that work together and hold up over cosmic time that's what quince does best premium materials hyper thoughtful design and everyday staples that feel easy to wear and easy to rely on even as the weather shifts or the world is invaded by aliens. Quince has the everyday essentials. I love the quality that lasts, organic cotton sweaters, polos that I wear for news interviews, lighter jackets, keep you warm and changing seasons. The list goes on and on. 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I'm curious also what the reaction has been from fellow pilots, aviators, flyers, whatever term you want to use. and uh but but the decision that you made to come forward and tell not about one or two you've got four four different episodes in encounters right yeah yeah that's right uh i don't i haven't heard too much honestly from other aviators uh i haven't had too many discussions about it and you know my channel is current events right so i'm doing a video almost every day and a lot of it's like high stakes uh deployments with iran or you know what's going on with greenland things like that so I feel like maybe there was some comments that I missed, but probably after this, after talking with you guys, there'll probably be a lot more discussions that I can have with some with some fellow aviators. But yeah, I just I felt like, you know, this might get into some of the philosophy and I'll just give you like one sentence on that. I kind of had a realization moment with all this UAP stuff because, yeah, I'm from, you know, Air Force guy. I'm proud of the Air Force. I love the Air Force, you know. And so I kind of felt for a while that if I talk about it, I was, you know, maybe biting the hand that feeds me. Right. But I've since thought about it. And I think this is this is honestly one of the best things for aerospace, space aviation, military combat aviation, because it's creating like an extraterrestrial arms race. And I think that's good because it drives engineers within the military. Engineers maybe right now at Area 51, if this isn't U.S. technology, they're looking at this and they're like, how do we do that? Or, you know, if there's some of these craft that have been, you know, gifted, you know, intertwining that into what looks like traditional military hardware, that's awesome because now it's going to keep my fellow colleagues alive more. and who knows maybe some of that technology i was already using unbeknownst to me but i think there's so many advancements here from this just seeing it that can make aviation safer can make your fighter jet safer can make you more combat capable and to you know survivable you know you up there flying in these austere environments Being more survivable and more lethal is super important But if you want I can just dive into some of the encounters Sure. I'll get off my soapbox and tell the people what they came here for. Well, before you do, our friend Dave Fravor, the reaction he had after seeing the Tic Tac and chasing it and see what it could do, he was amazed. He wasn't freaked out. He was amazed at what he told us, Jeremy. me you would call i want to fly that thing that's what he said i love it yes i think that's a great perspective um so i guess i'll start there with what was kind of the most similar to a tic tac that i saw this was in 2010 to 2012 ish time frame actually so right before i was preparing to deploy we were doing a lot of operations off the east coast of the u.s so it's called the whiskey areas out there they're a moa so there's ships and things operating below you you know commerce is happening below you uh but you're up there and you typically own typically it's like you own like a thousand feet above the water sometimes surface up to like 60 000 feet so you own like all that airspace which is great for training right you can do all kinds of different situations defensive counter air offensive counter air strategic strike like all this stuff but typically i mean it was it was happening almost every sortie where at the end of it you're you're you've completed your training mission you've done your big air war and then on the way out the weapon systems operator in the back has you know this amazing we call it like a gucci of technology which just means fancy um it's a targeting pod that i mean you can just see amazing you can see amazing things i can't give the exact numbers on what you can see with it let's just for the sake of this it's amazing what you can actually see with this thing but on the way out of the airspace uh for you know almost every sortie, we would see these little orbs. And to me, they looked like a sphere, but maybe half the size of a car is what I would estimate, based on some of the ranging that you can see in that targeting pod. And then a lot of times they'd be going with the wind or going opposite direction of the wind. It seems like the wind didn't really matter for the flight path of these things. And the weapon systems operating in the back would just cue these up and try to track it. And sometimes it was hard to track because we were far away or the object was a little too small. So when I started to see, I think it was, there were some other sightings off the coast, off the East Coast. I started to see some pilots come forward and I thought, well, yeah, we've seen these a lot. So that's just something that I think was a normal thing for us where we were just like, yep, it's more of these orbs. And then we would think that, hey, maybe these were launching from ships, like they were small drones because there's tons of big container ships or oil tanker type ships below us. So we kind of just wrote it off as that. But that was kind of my first experience. So an orb doesn't really look like a drone that we know of. Right. And they're going against the wind in some cases. So likely not a balloon. Yeah. I would say not a balloon just based on going against the wind. And then I didn't see any like quadcopter type things on it that you could you probably would be able to see at least on some of them. You'd be close enough on some of them to see that. And then some of them would just disappear, you know, while they're being tracked they would just disappear um so you know that's something that we saw as well so again we don't really know what it was but it was kind of it became like a bit of a game for the weapon systems operator because it's hard sometimes to track those things to keep the cursors on him um and so yeah you know i'd hear from the back seat oh i got this one i got i got another one it was like fishing in the back seat uh which is holding your skills for other things it pops up on a screen or a sensor as you're getting closer to it in general oh you have it on the screen the whole time so you have these multi-function displays in your cockpit and so you just you know while you can see it it's it's appearing on your screen all the time but then as you kind of fly the fighter jet around the airspace like this camera you know it can't look through metal and so if if the actual jet itself you know gets in between the visuals then it'll just break contact and you can't see it but yeah it'll be on your screen the whole time and you can you can flip through those screens you can see the screen that the weapon system operator in the back is using, or you can be on something else. So it's super, like really great user interface in those fighter jets to be able to see that. And so the, the weapons op system operators, when they're back, they're tracking things and you're flipping through, you can see exactly what they're seeing. So you're looking at like thermal imagery if they're taking thermal imagery, is that right? Yeah, that's right. And so you've probably seen out of these thousands and thousands of hours of flight time. And also when you're flying on your own, compared to having a backseater, you've probably seen a lot of this type of footage before right i think it was it was it um graves the f-18 pilot who came forward with some footage uh like tic-tac type uh footage commander underwood filmed the tic-tac ufo footage and then uh there have been other pilots that have brought stuff forward through ryan graves yeah yeah so i remember seeing that and i think there was one there's a video where i think it was the backseater in the f-18 you know their navy f-18s saying like this things going against the wind or something like that uh so yes i remember i've seen that footage and it just kind of cued in my brain like oh yeah i've seen that before well i'm sorry i'm leading your question here is that um george and i have some other footage we'd love to show you at some point maybe not today but just um you know we're trying to determine if you're seeing a sphere or like an orb you know people like to just throw out this debunk well these are you know birds or balloons and i'm just wondering when you go in and you look you're actually out there find these missions i mean it's not typical for a wizzo to uh lock on to a bird right i mean they've all told me it's not you know in your in your experience yeah that's that's not a normal thing i don't think i ever saw that you know unless it was a massive bird unless there's a pterodactyl out there i don't think we're gonna see them lock onto a bird yeah okay but yeah happy to look at it after this for sure yeah for sure so so that was kind of the the basic thing is you go to the East Coast, and you said more often than not, is our previous conversation, you're out there and you're seeing these unidentifieds, or at least you're picking them up on radar, and it becomes kind of a game. We've heard that over and over and over. George reported on that, that every day that there were these encounters and sightings, and it was a mid-air collision issue, at least potentially, and nobody believed George when he first reported on that, and now we know it is true and that that is something, and you're just confirming that, that on the East Coast, That's what you were experiencing. Yeah, I never had any mid-air collision scares with these orbs. They're typically pretty far away from us when we pick them up. But yeah, I mean, even a drone or something like that, something even really small is going to be very damaging to a fighter jet. So yeah, you would want to avoid, if you could pick these things up and you saw them, you wouldn't want to fly near it, just for safety reasons. When you come back from that flight, that training flight, do you tell anybody? Is there a reporting process for pilots? Yeah, there's like after action reports we can do. So a lot of times we would write up a few of those encounters and then it basically goes in a safe. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know what happens from there. It gets delivered to the intel department in the fighter squadron. Every fighter squadron has its own little intelligence office. And so at the time, I mean, we were preparing for, you know, combat. So for us, we're like, OK, cool. Here's that sheet of paper. We got other things to think about. See ya. All right. The Air Force are going to lock that up because there's no like, you know, reporting structure like in the Navy where they're they're saying you should be reporting UAP. Right. yeah i never really got it while i was in and this could have changed you know when i was flying fighters full-time that was never really an avenue for that i think i think maybe towards the end it you know a few more discussions would happen with our intelligence you know officers in the vaults and but that was pretty much it all right episode two episode two all right uh so this one uh i think this one's probably my favorite one uh and the the reason why is because i feel like i essentially got into a mini dog fight with a uap and i'll never forget it i mean the what we were doing was we're coming back this is when i was actually on the thunderbirds and we come back for a thunderbird pitch uh where you come in you're 400 or so feet above the ground and you're in tight formation and everybody pitches sequentially and then lands so this was at nales this was this was right by george's house here um and so we're coming back in and i'm looking uh at the boss who i stay in formation position with and then something catches my eye and all of a sudden what i see is all the only way i can describe it is a triangle shaped fighter looking uap and the reason why i say fighters because this thing looked just looked like it was built for speed i mean if you look at the difference between a commercial airliner versus an f-15 it's obvious which one's built for speed right so this one had like a diamond or a triangle shape with the front of it uh kind of looking like a you know a copperhead snake you know it looks very aggressive and it had what looked to me to be some sort of uh welding marks on it and it reminded me of this the same look of a cyber truck now you know now that i've seen that cyber trucks i'm like oh yeah that reminds me of the uap i saw so almost like an unfinished paint job on this thing uh but yeah triangle and it came past me, dusted me off. And that's a move that we actually use in dog fights is a dust off where you do emerge and you get really close. Uh, you know, if you're in combat, you want to rattle the other pilot. That's the goal before you get into emerge with them to make them make a mistake. And so that's what I felt like. I was like that son of a bitch just dusted me off. You know, it was like right next to my jet, probably, you know, if I had to guess 700 or so knots of closure, maybe, maybe more. Uh, and, uh, no sign of a cockpit. If I had to guess the size of it, I would say maybe the size of a lawnmower, maybe a little bit bigger than a lawnmower, you know, like a smaller type object. Uh, but it definitely had the, what looked to me to be some sort of maneuverability and how far away that woke me up. Yeah. So, uh, yeah. Did you report that one? Is that something you'd tell somebody about? So that's the conversation that then I then had with the flight leader. And I said, hey, did you see anything out there? Because and I kind of and to be honest, we didn't really have a relationship that was very open with communication at the time. And so I didn't really push it too hard. And then I brought it up to some other members that weren't in the formation that were coming in behind us. so they were coming up behind us but higher and they were there was two of the two other f-16s and so i had a conversation with them uh afterwards too and i just you know told a close friend of mine who was one of those pilots behind us i was like hey this is what i saw have you ever seen anything like this before and he just said no and i haven't man but i'll keep my eye out i'll keep my eye out now the base would the base have sensors that would have picked it up presumably Yeah, you would think. I mean, you would think on radar, you know, something that size would show up relatively well. So, you know, a Cessna or something like that is obviously going to be completely obvious to see how this thing would have showed up on the air traffic control ATC radars. I don't know. But there should be some sort of, you know, if this thing has the same properties of a fighter jet with the same reflectivity, then, yeah, you should be able to see it. But again, this was maneuvering under some kind of intelligent control, would be your guess, not a balloon. Yeah, it was maneuvering in the fact that it came really close to me and was at a place where I could basically see it very clearly. So it didn't do any moves or rotations as it came close to me. It was just like a quick pass, like past me. But you know, so you're in an F-16 at this time, right? And you're going pretty damn fast. And this thing also had its own acceleration in your close proximity towards your direction. You said it was about 20 feet away, if I remember the account. So you're used to flying really close to craft going fast, but usually the same direction. This is pretty harrowing. And the thing was propelling towards you on its own volition, I guess, right? Yeah, I mean, it definitely had some sort of propulsion. And it was shaped like it had propulsion in a certain direction. aerodynamically this one this one actually looked like it had some sort of aerodynamic properties that you know a u.s fighter jet would have some similar to that but you know i talked to jeremy a little bit about this you know this isn't this is definitely the worst place to test some sort of technology like this um so i don't i don't think this would be u.s technology or testing just because of the massive safety issue right i mean there's area 51 is close by just take it out there you've got your choice of every fighter jet in the inventory to test it against you don't need to test it against the public relations team of the air force right i mean if a mishap happened there i mean man it'd be over for that entire project and technology so that's why that one to me i was like this doesn't seem like anything that our guys would be uh launching towards us all right number three number three uh all right so that's the uh 2018 uh this one was out over the Nellis ranges uh we did uh I I got like the sweetest deal in the world so after I left the Thunderbirds I became an instructor and then there were times where I just needed to take an F-16 out and stay current and so I mean it was just an amazing time in life and so I was actually in a to CDEF-16 at this point, flying with another member of the team, and we're out over Death Valley. And there's certain restrictions there where you have to stay, I think it's 2,000 feet above certain areas. And just some background, we would go over the areas at 2,000 feet and stay legal, but then there was other areas where you could drop down and do little mini low levels and things like that. And so of course I had to do that on every mission right Go low go fast and there was these areas where people would go out and camp And so I would always say to myself like I know there a guy down there with his girlfriend and I'm going to fly over at 150 feet, max afterburner, and give them like the best air show of their life. And then she's going to be like, oh, that was amazing. And he's going to be like, I set that up for us. You know, that was my goal. I wanted to give everybody an opportunity to say that. So we were doing that, just raging around, raging around the desert. And then it was kind of sunset was kind of settling in. We popped up. And as we're kind of popping up out of the low level, I saw what to me just looked like a reverse explosion. So an implosion, I guess, where it was like a big circle of sky was turned kind of purple and red and then went really small, got like incredibly small, like and then disappeared. So it was almost like something big, like a big, like atmospheric anomaly was very obvious. And then it just went really small and then was gone. So, you know, I'd say the colors were probably like, you know, it was sunset. So it was kind of matching that colors like purplish and reds. No sound or anything like that. But I mean, that's going to, you know, we're in a jet with ear protection in. And so, but that was, that caught both of our attentions. And we were just like, whoa. And I kind of just had the feeling of like, yeah, let's go the other direction. Let's not figure out exactly what that was right now. But, you know, we're out there flying by Area 51. We're flying by a lot of the test areas. So, yeah, that one. I don't know. It's funny because you've had so many experiences with aviation. These things that stand out to you. And by the way, we're pulling these experiences from you compared to all your combat experiences and all this. We want to know about the odd stuff and we want to normalize people talking about it. You know, these things happen. You're an expert trained witness. And this is what you saw. We don't have answers for all these things. but um you know just the fact that these are the things that stand out to you that are so outside of the norm from everything that you did in your career now this last one really freaks me out it is one of the weirdest um you know kind of ufo uap encounters that i've i've heard of um mainly i'm just i i want you to go through it but also can you talk a little bit this is during a commercial phase of your life, right? Yeah. Yeah, it is. So basically transiting in a big aircraft. It was somewhere in Southern Wyoming. And, you know, just another day you're flying as a commercial pilot. I mean, things are pretty boring until you, you know, you really have to use a lot of focus when you get into like, you know, certain wind situations and things like that. For the most part, though, it's pretty, it's pretty chill. Right. And so you're up there. we're on autopilot. This was in 2024. And, you know, just another day, it was like day three of a four day trip. So you're a little tired, but you're, you know, you're, you're doing your best to stay alert as you're up there. So I'm just scanning, you know, and that's just something that I would do just to try to stay awake is scan, chug the caffeine, you know, and just make sure you're alert. So that's what I'm doing. And I just pick up what, what looks like just a white glint like to so i'm in the right seat of this aircraft there's another pilot next to me i pick up a white glint that's probably at my 11 o'clock or so and i'm like oh it's almost like a reflection and so i was like oh okay another aircraft right um got it and so i'm kind of watching this thing no calls from atc telling us about anything up ahead of us which air traffic control if you're going to come within a mile of anything they are on it like they are really good at their job. So a mile or a thousand feet, or sometimes even, you know, more than that, they're going to be chirping and saying, Hey, do you see this? Do you see that? You know, to make sure everybody sees each other, no calls from ATC. And then as this thing starts getting closer, I bumped the pilot next to me and I'm like, Hey, look, look at that. And he's like, Whoa. And even prior to that, I had started to make out what looked to me to be like a pulsing square so it was almost like a perfectly shaped square and bright white around the edges and then it kind of went into a cream color towards the center and then just clear in the center you basically see through it and so I looked for immediately I looked for some sort of a tether because I'm thinking like balloon and then he says this the same thing after the fact he was like I was looking for a tether as well but there was no tether so there was nothing that would make this a weather balloon that was attached to the ground. And it was basically, so if you think of it like this, it's moving like this. So there's nothing aerodynamic about this thing, right? If it was an aerodynamic rectangle, you would want to orient it like this so that it could slip through the air a lot more efficiently. This just stayed like this. And as it got close, I could really make out like that glowing sensation in the middle. And I told Jeremy this, it almost, it was in my mind, I've played some video games in my day. It reminded me of Mario Brothers. Like, hey, go through here to go to the next level. That's what it seemed like to me was a pulsating sensation. Like, look, look at us. Look at me. Look at this thing. It wasn't trying to be a camouflage at all. And so then it starts coming down the wing line. And prior to that, there's this thing as a pilot where you're always very weary about anything that stays static on your canvas. because that means you're on a collision course. So for a while, it did. It looked to me like we were on a collision course with this thing. I click off the autopilot and I just waited. And then all of a sudden I started to get a line of sight on the canopy. So that tells me, okay, we're not going to hit this thing, but it's going to come really close. And when you're in a big aircraft and you're up and out, so you don't want to maneuver aggressively, the air is thin, your airspeed margins for stall are a lot tighter. So you're very cautious, but also at the same time in my mind i'm like i the last thing i want to do is hit whatever this thing is but once i realized that wasn't going to happen then my mind just totally went to like all right try to take in all this detail as much as i possibly can and then it came down the wing line i would guess it was probably a hundred feet off of our like in the left quadrant of our cockpit about a hundred feet down and it just came right next to us i could see the outline the square and then gone it didn't look like it was moving very fast because the line of sight wasn't like a breakneck speed kind of like that last the fighter size uap that i told you about but just more of a calm steady there it goes and so after that when you see anything weird you have to make a call to atc air traffic control and so guess who was the lucky one to do that yeah and that pilot with the pilot next to me uh he didn't want to talk too much about it after that day just that that's the that's the feeling i got from him but he said hey we need to call air traffic control and make a you know a pirate a pilot report uh so good luck so yeah i call air traffic control and air traffic control uh i need to report an anomalous object here's what it looked like to me it was a square with pulsing edges bright white uh can you mark this location for other traffic behind us and there was other traffic on the radio at the time you know until air traffic control goes copy thanks but then they did ask they asked some clarifying questions too they were like can you tell us the color again so they took it seriously but they also were shocked too which i understand i mean that's normal you don't you don't get these types of pyreps very often pyrep stands for pilot report and then i heard a few other uh aircraft on the same frequency speak up and say uh all right we'll keep an eye out you know things like that and everybody's just kind And we didn't hear anything the next couple of days. There was a little report that we did file just through some things that we needed to do, but there wasn't any report of anyone else seeing it. How big was it? I would say probably 50 feet tall, like 40 to 50 feet tall. It wasn't small. do you uh allow yourself to speculate what all these things are where they're from what's going on up there you know yeah i think recently i have so after i made the video i kind of popped the top off just hey i'm just going to be honest about what i saw tell my story let everybody else decide for themselves so you know i can go down some if you are you guys okay if i go down some deep rabbit holes here yeah okay you know i think with all this uap stuff i mean we've seen there's like the jellyfish uap you know there's uaps that have been seen in combat zones that have been you know struck with a hellfire and not a lot has happened uh so i'm i'm constantly you know asking myself why why why would we be seeing this what's the point um and i think there's there's one thing that continuously comes up for me. And it, to me, it seems like if our military, you fast forward us a couple thousand years in the future, the technology, the technologies that we have, is there a way for us to get that technology back to us today to prevent some wild, terrible situation from happening? We're talking nuclear war or something like that. You know, if my military brain was fast, fast forwarded 2000 years into the future, and I could do that and I could get it to, you know, what I see is the good guys. I see the U.S. military is the greatest force for good on the planet. You know, people can argue with that or, you know, it's not perfect. It's not what I'm saying, but I think we are the greatest force for good on the planet. If you just look at history. So if I could, if I was in the future and I could get that technology back into the right hands, I would, why not? I would try to get it to the U.S. military or at least get it into the brains of U.S. military decision makers, innovators, so that we could start to develop things that who knows, maybe this technology leads to some sort of deterrence for a nuclear war, you know, down the road. You know, that's something that I think the U.S. military giving a gift to its past self to be more effective is plausible. And I think to me, that's what makes sense. A lot of times that's not the only theory I have, but that's kind of one of the main ones that I've come to. So you don't feel threatened by it. You don't feel whatever these things are, that they're necessarily a threat. No, because I think with this type of advanced technology, if they wanted to blow your fighter jet out of the sky, they would have done it long ago. I think there's something different here. There's something way, way better that we can take from this than a threat. Yeah, so you're saying this is what Jacques Vallée said to us, George, is that there's a control system that the UAP UFO thing might or appears to be that it's a learning process. It's an educational, systematic process to kind of teach us. And this is why we call you Neo as your call sign, because you're thinking, you know, kind of big picture that the benefit to our nation is that, you know, whether it's from past human or future humans or whatever, the benefit is we're constantly having to improve and adapt and change, maybe for our own protection, but also just because of the inspiration of seeing UAP maneuver, these little winks and these hellos and these strange appearances. is it does encourage humankind to advance. And that's kind of what you're saying, is that the technological evolution could be something that is being provoked by a different intelligence or if we go really down the rabbit hole, like a future intelligence. It's a fascinating theory. Yeah, I look at it like human advancement through competitive pressure. You know, if you are under pressure in really high stakes situations or you're seeing something that's really wild, it's going to drive you to action. You know, I mean, think Manhattan Project, Apollo program, all these things that really drove humans to the edge of technological innovation. To me, this is just another gift in that same category that can help us advance. And I look at, you know, my family's history. So my grandfather flew the B-21. My dad flew the F-4 and the F-16 in the Cold War, you know, basically ready to drop a nuclear bomb at any time. And then I got to fly the F-15E, which is like, all these are just massive leaps in technology when you go from a B-21 to an F-4 to an F-15E. And now my colleagues are out flying F-35s and F-22s, and we got the F-47 on the way. So the advancements in aeronautical technology are insane. And I can't help but think some of this advancement is probably because of that competitive pressure that's pushing us. And again, it could be even being intertwined by certain government contractors right now that have access to it. And that's got to stay pretty hush hush. You know, if you're to keep it from Russia and China, I think David Grush commented, you know, it shouldn't be just one contractor that has access to this. And I think that's true, but you can't I don't think you should have 100. And I'm a capitalist. Trust me, I believe in capitalism. But when you start to thin it out to so many different people, you just run the risk with every every extra person you add on or every extra company you add on. You do run the risk of exposing it to China and Russia. I'm just throwing that out there. And a lot of the cool stuff that happens, all the innovations happen out right out there at Area 51. Is it out of bounds for you as an aviator or pilot to ask questions about that area or to speculate or chit chat with fellow pilots? Hey, I wonder what's going on out there. Yeah, I mean, I think I think it is. It's kind of just something that that you don't do. You know, there's a big respect in the fighter jet world for anything that could endanger anybody's life. You know, if there's an advanced technology that we don't want anybody to know about, it's like a football team and a playbook, right? Like you don't want that other team finding that playbook. So unless you're really heavily involved in that program itself, then you just don't talk about it. And there's, you know, there's certain areas where you can talk about things. There areas where you can I think the Air Force you know they maybe a little overprotective but for good reason Right I mean if this technology is going to save thousands of aviators lives and you know be an amazing deterrence against somebody you don want the other team having that playbook Yeah. Out there is sort of what the future holds. I mean, they're working on things that we won't see for 10, 20 years, something like that. I would imagine for a pilot like yourself, you think, gosh, I sure would like to be able to come back and fly in 20 years. Maybe you're from the future and that's why you've had four encounters. They sent you back too. Maybe that's why I got the call sign Neo. Somehow they just inserted that into the matrix. They're like, we're not only going to send them back, we're going to give them the call sign Neo as well. But yeah, it is interesting. Privately, I definitely have thoughts where I'm like, oh, I wonder about that. I wonder about this. I'm a human. I love aviation. I still have that little kid inside that lights up every time I see a fighter jet. So just thinking about what they could have is amazing to me. And I mean, it's really cool, too. We live in a time now where some of these programs are being delivered to the public, like the F-47, you know, President Trump talking about the F-47. That drives people forward in innovation as well, too. I think getting things out to the public of like, hey, this is what's going on with your tax dollars that we can talk about. And that's a super advanced program to talk about. I mean, they've even said that it's been flying for years. Like, that's amazing to hear that. And so it gives me hope that, you know, we have transparency, but we also have secrecy in a way that hopefully allows people's imaginations to think about what's possible, but also protects the warfighter out there. So you'd say there are good reasons if we have recovered craft materials from somewhere else and we're working on it in secrecy. You think probably there's a legitimate reason for that secrecy? Yeah, absolutely. I think so. I mean, I'm all about transparency, getting things out to the public. But I think the thing that I want the viewers to know is there's probably technology. I don't know. There's probably some technologies out there that if Russia and China had it, it would impact your life in a very negative way, like personally. And so I think the fact that I know it's hard, you know, America, we're a bunch of rebels and I love it. That's what we're here for. We're here to innovate, be rebellious, you know, figure things out. But at the same time, you know, you have to be very I'm speaking to myself here. We have to be very aware that Russia and China do not have good intentions with a lot of this technology. And they are they are not constrained by the same ethical decisions that most of the people who want a lot of this to be released. I think the people that want this to be released are coming from a great place. They've got good hearts. They want transparency. but also Russia and China don't care about that. They want to do nefarious things that you could probably never imagine if they had some of the technology, hopefully, that we have that we're working on. So if Russia or China had a TIC-TAC, we'd know about it by now? I don't know. I mean, I think so. If you look at what Russia and China do, let's just specifically say China. I mean, a lot of times in China, one hand's not talking to the other. so Xi Jinping might not even be in collaboration with his you know version of the chairman of the military they might because their honor is a big thing there so they might not even talk and that's some of the rumors that I've heard with like the Chinese spy balloon coming over the U.S. like they literally had I think it was the one of the uh the foreign minister of China was supposed to visit the U.S. that next week and and they're going to fly over this big spy balloon, you know, and they wanted to work out some economic deal that totally thwarted that, right? That threw that off. So what's the strategy there? Why not just wait a couple of weeks? So, yeah, I think I think they might be a little more reckless with the technology than we would be. But I mean, we could also be surprised, too, and they could be, you know, holding it under wraps for something. Jeremy, did you talk to Ryan about the Hellfire missile video? Yeah, he did a whole online. everybody should go watch. Ryan did a whole breakdown of the Hellfire missile hitting the UAP, and it's really great. And he's got a really clear perspective about it, George, which is why I want him to look at some of the footage that you and I have considered. So, Ryan, what was going on there? Yeah, I mean, I think it's really, really worth everybody looking at and seeing, right? Because Is that something that, you know, would the U.S. military, if that was a top secret program, would they expose that to the world? I mean, all you got to do is just not shoot it with a hellfire, right? Then you don't expose it. So, yeah, I think it puts us in a very interesting position where now just, you know, a lot more questions and answers. But extremely cool for that to come out. And, again, I look at it as driving weaponry forward. I mean, as a fighter pilot, as any military combat coded pilot, your whole job is weaponry, basically. How do you get weaponry onto the enemy and protect, you know, the good the good guys? So in that situation, it makes me think, all right, well, let's say some other country has that technology to not be harmed by our hellfire. Well, that's the first thing I'm going to think of is how do we compete with that? How do we get it? How do we make sure that we're staying on top of that? and then if it's you know if it's something else then it brings up a lot of great questions as well we you know we're the untrained eye we don't really know what we're seeing with that video but it looked like the missile hit an object and then either bounced off or the object broke into pieces that continued to fly along in a formation balloon could it be a balloon yeah i mean i think it's it's so it's in infrared if i'm not mistaken is that right so it's it's actually yeah so i mean hard to tell on that one it does look did look like some pieces kind of flew off and then came back together so does that mean some sort of uh you know material that can expand and shrink and change you know some sort of transformational material that's what would make more sense to me. Balloon, you know, unless there's some technology with a balloon where it's going to be like a solid state thing, I don't really see it being a balloon. So yeah, I think it really, you got to ask the question, what can do that? And my question is, how do I get a fighter jet that can do that? That's what I want. Have you in your career ever encountered something that was really intense, that it was a black project, so you had to go be debrief, sign an NDA, did that ever happen to you in your whole career? Were you accidentally get exposed to a black project? Not accidentally. Okay. I'm not going to get any more from you about that. Yeah, we'll just have to leave it at that. Okay. So, but from what I understand, there are protocols for that. And that's why when George and I see footage that has been labeled UAP by our military. If it was a black project of ours, it wouldn't be put into this category of unknown. That type of communication, if you encounter something and you film something as a pilot that you're not supposed to, there are protocols. We've talked to a bunch of people that have accidentally come across these black projects and they are taken, debriefed, had to sign NDAs. You are not to talk about this again. So that's why a lot of the times when we receive footage that is designated UAP, we go and we ask around, but we make sure this is not something that is a known black project by US government. So if it has incredible flight capabilities, like apparent instantaneous acceleration, that's something our government is analyzing, again, to your theory, because, you know, we want to advance our own technology. But I was just curious if you've ever come across something like that accidentally, but I guess you have not come across black projects accidentally correct uh i have one more question for our guest ryan um you know you had you had four encounters four sightings of something strange i i would guess that most pilots go fly their whole lives or whole adult lives and never see anything why you i guess because my call sign's neo i don't know you're one of them over there yeah yeah that's a great question uh i don't know i think i don't know i just maybe i'm open to like i don't know there's like there's history historic precedence for you know the foo fighters right seeing those fireballs in the sky uh which pilots saw them which ones didn't want to talk about it which ones just compartmentalized it and were like you know what no then some of them that have a little more of an ability to think in that gray area came forward. And I think, you know, if people have seen my YouTube channel, they probably know by now, I think in the gray area and I love to hear myself talk. So, you know, I think there's something in me that is curious and I'm constantly wanting to drive innovation. And so if I see something that to me aligns with that pursuit, I'm going to, at least it's going to be something that I don't discount. It did take me a while to come forward and chat about it to kind of, you know, when you go through the military, you have you got to think of the pressure, too. Right. Because a lot of these, you know, my goal was never to be a career military guy, but there's a lot of people that their goal is to be career military. And so, you know, there's probably a lot of military members that look at me with like, you know, a little bit of that side eye. And they're like, dude, you know, you're a little bit out there. And that's OK. That's something that I always found through my whole career was, you know, I was Neo trying to break free of the Matrix, always questioning, why are we doing this? Why are we doing that? How do we make this better? Why are we doing things this way? Oh, because it's always been done that way before. What if we change that up and try this? This would be more efficient. So I think those types of pilots are out there. You know, the Commander Fravers of the world, Ryan Graves, you know, people that have come forward and talked about it. They're not going to be your cookie cutter pilot. And that's great. I mean, we need all types. We need the pilots that are like the Neos. And then we need the pilots that are not, that go out there and just do the job every day. And then we combine ourselves together and we all get better. Hi, I'm Josh Spiegel, host of the podcast Lunatic in the Newsroom. It's news like you've never heard before. We'll talk about things like a possible ban on recreational pot, Americans giving up on dressing like civilized human beings and a call for fraternities to be outlawed. If you enjoy wild overthinking, Lunatic in the Newsroom is for you. It's funny, informative and emotionally unstable. lunatic in the newsroom listen today ryan bodenheimer man it's great talking to you it's been a fascinating conversation i hope people will check out your your youtube channel max afterburner a lot of cool stuff on there jeremy anything else no just thanks so much for sharing that and i bet you that now that you've kind of talked about the weird and things you've seen the uap things i would you know ask around you didn't tell people for a long time i'd imagine there are a lot of fighter pilots and just people in aviation that have encounters and experiences that there were unwilling to tell at one point, but are now more willing to tell. So I encourage people to go to you and just tell you what it is that they've encountered or seen, because that's how we're going to make progress with understanding the UFO phenomenon. That's awesome. Yeah. And I'm all ears. You know, if there's other aviators that want to chat with me first, I'm kind of the gateway to them, like, you know, telling their story. I'm here for it. So absolutely. And then thanks to you guys for, you know, driving the ball forward. I'm sure you guys have faced a lot of scrutiny before. But again, I think having these conversations about innovation, about UAPs, it drives everybody forward. It makes our military better, makes our country better. So just keep going, guys. I'm proud to be a part of this. Thank you. Something extraordinary is coming. Subscribe now to our all new Clips channel, Weaponized Clips. Well, Jeremy, I mean, he's a really impressive guy. I would imagine all those Air Force Thunderbird pilots and combat pilots are impressive people. But really, he was so open and candid about the experiences he's had and sharing with us. I hope that the intended effect is that other aviators, military guys, will come forward and share what they've seen. He was awesome. man. This is like, you know, maybe nine months ago or so you're like, you know, can you get a hold of him? And I tried every way to get a hold of him and he was, he was difficult to get a hold of. But what I really appreciated about it was that we're asking him to come talk about just out of his flight history, you know, coming from the air force, 70 combat missions, flighting with this elite Thunderbird group. And even his commercial aviation, we're like, Hey, tell us the four weird things that happened when you flew. And a lot of people just don't want to talk about this. I really appreciate that he just threw down numbered order. Here's the weirdest shit that I've ever seen. And he's very open minded and he's very thoughtful. You know, privately when you talk with him, you know, his main theory is really what Jacques Vallée said. It's so interesting. He knows or he suspects that there is some sort of intervention with human beings to help propel us and move us forward, which I thought was such a optimistic point of view about the UAP thing, not that they're a threat and we should all be scared and protect our airspace, but it's an opportunity for innovation. So he's just a very brilliant individual. He's got a great YouTube channel, Max Afterburner, coolest call sign ever, Neo. But I also think that people like him can inspire other people to come forward, especially from the Air Force. The Air Force has been so quiet about this and he kind of shed a little bit of light on that, you know, which is in the culture of Air Force, it's very different than let's say Navy. So maybe it'll encourage more Air Force pilots, aviators to come out and tell their story. Yeah, I agree. That was a fun episode. Yeah, talk to you later.