Source: 9News

Experienced lieutenants Ryan Graves and Danny Accoin, as well as three other anonymous squadron pilots, who fly F/A-18 Super Hornet jets told The New York Times they first noticed the objects in 2014.

Lt Graves and Lt Accoin were part of the VFA-11 ‘Red Rippers’ squadron at the time of the alleged incidents.

In vision of one incident recorded by Lt Graves’ squadron while performing training manoeuvres between Virginia and Florida off the Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, the silhouette of a strangely-elongated object was caught in one of the jets’ cameras.

The pilots recorded the shapes flying over the ocean at high speed, suddenly stopping and rotating mid-air.

“These things would be out there all day,” Lt Graves told The New York Times.

“People have seen strange stuff in military aircraft for decades.

“We’re doing this very complex mission, to go from 30,000 feet, diving down. It would be a pretty big deal to have something up there.”

Lt Graves and his team reported the sightings to the US Department of Defence’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program run from the Pentagon, however they were only ever described as “a striking series of incidents”.

The alleged sightings were said to occur around a height of up to 9100 metres in the air and included such close interactions as two pilots saying they “almost hit one of those things”.

Those incidents led to the pilots questioning whether the objects were part of a classified US Government drone program unbeknown to military personnel.

The Pentagon program was shut down in 2012, however new rules for fighter pilots to report alleged sightings were put in place following the incidents connected to the Roosevelt carrier that allows the recounts of military personnel to not be dismissed as illusion.

The Theodore Roosevelt carrier left the US, deployed to the Persian Gulf in 2015 to form part of the fight against Islamic State. The pilots have since said the alleged sightings have stopped since their departure.