Ryan Graves

Background and documented career

Graves is a former Navy lieutenant and F/A-18F pilot. His congressional biography describes a decade of service and deployments supporting Operations Enduring Freedom and Inherent Resolve. It also records work on military autonomy at BAE Systems and leadership of an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics committee concerned with UAP research and outreach. [1]

He founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, which identifies him as its executive director. The organization collects accounts from pilots and other witnesses and advocates research and reporting reforms. That role makes him both a witness to his own experiences and a recipient of others' reports; those two bodies of information should not be merged. [2]

What has been claimed or reported

In written testimony for the July 2023 House hearing, Graves described serving with VFA-11 near Virginia Beach in 2014. He said unknown radar tracks appeared after a radar upgrade and were subsequently observed with infrared sensors. He reported that recurring detections became part of squadron briefings and described apparent endurance and movement that he could not explain. [3]

His policy argument was practical: unidentified traffic in training airspace requires investigation whether its eventual explanation is a drone, another technology or something else. He urged better reporting, scientific investigation and appropriate public access to data. [3]

What the public record supports

The government's own reporting supports the broader flight-safety concern. ODNI's June 2021 preliminary assessment recorded 11 reports of near misses involving UAP and military pilots. This provides independent context for studying airspace hazards, but does not independently validate every encounter collected by Graves or his organization. [4]

Limits, disputes and open questions

Asked directly at the hearing whether he had been aboard a jet involved in the cube-and-sphere near miss, Graves said he had not. He described speaking with the pilot in the ready room. Treating that story as Graves's own close-range visual sighting would misstate his evidence. [5]

Unidentified tracks do not establish an object's origin or measured performance. AARO's February 2025 analysis of the separate 2015 GoFast video found no anomalous speed, despite its striking appearance. That finding addresses one recording; it neither identifies every East Coast object nor supplies a resolution for all incidents Graves discusses. [6]