Source: Daily Star

On November 14, 2004, US Commander David Fravor was rehearsing manoeuvres in his fighter jet when he found himself at the centre of one of the most significant UFO encounters ever recorded.

While doing his practice flight with another navy pilot, they were redirected by controllers, who said they were needed for a mission.

At first, Commander Fravor and his colleague, who has remained anonymous, thought they were ­intercepting drug runners coming up from Mexico.

But when they got to their destination they saw a bizarre craft hovering above the water.

Describing it as a wingless white object which looked “like a giant tic-tac” and measured around 40ft, Commander Fravor and his colleague had never seen anything like it.

A man described as having a “fighter instinct”, Commander Fravor directed his jet towards it to get a closer look.

In response, it stopped hovering and began rapidly accelerating, before crossing the nose of the plane and vanishing.

More startling, Commander Fravor was told to go to a Combat Air Patrol point 60 miles away, but then moments later called off because the mystery craft was already there.

This means it was able to fly 60 miles in a minute and would be capable of flying 3,600 miles in an hour – beyond the capabilities of US military planes.

“I’m not saying it was from outer space, but I’m not saying it’s from here either,” says Commander Fravor, who still remains confused by what he witnessed that day.

These events are the focus of the first episode of new documentary series Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.

Narrated by former Blink 182 rocker and alien hunter Tom DeLonge, the series follows former US government worker Luis Elizondo’s quest to expose the truth about UFOs and the threat they could pose to humanity.

Elizondo headed the Pentagon’s top-secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) from 2007 to 2012.

An £18million project, it was tasked with investigating UFO sightings in the US and the rest of the world.

The evidence was kept in a 600-page “blue book” named after Project Blue Book, the US government UFO study that ran from 1947 to 1969.

Elizondo has one copy, which he keeps at an ­undisclosed location.

But he sensationally quit the Government to become a freelance investigator, because he believed his colleagues were covering up the true extent of the threat posed by extra-terrestrial lifeforms.

Elizondo, who is the most significant member of the US Government to publicly say that he thinks aliens are real, says as the years went on, the number of alien sightings was increasing.

“I spent most of my life in national security chasing bad guys. I didn’t have any preconceived notions about UFOs,” says Elizondo, who had no interest in the subject before being assigned to AATIP.

In the series, he speaks to ­military personnel who claim to have seen objects from outer space, hoping their testimonies will force the US government to recognise UFOs as a threat to ­national security, and take action.

They include Larry Gessner, a former US military and police sheriff, who saw a flying saucer hovering above his car when he was on a callout in 2009. “These are not crazy people, they’re the people US security is entrusted to,” says Elizondo.

“These are military pilots who have been in combat and something has shaken them up to the stage that they are willing to risk their professional standing by coming forward.

“They were there and they are trained observers. They are people who can think critically.”

After interviewing Commander Fravor, Elizondo shows video footage of the “tic-tac” spacecraft ­taken from another fighter plane to Colonel Christopher Cooke, a ­retired officer and expert in military aircraft.

The grainy, 90-second video shows the circular object flying slowly then zipping away at an ­altitude of 20,000ft.

Cooke agrees that the image is “perplexing”. “It has no characteristics of any craft I’ve seen,” he says.

“It’s staying airborne without wings… the heat from the engine isn’t visible, there’s no plume. There’s no propellor or jet engine to defy gravity.”

Colonel Cooke adds: “If there are vehicles out there, aircraft that are doing things aerodynamically that we’ve never even thought of, then we potentially could have real trouble down the road.”

For Elizondo, this is why he is determined to uncover the truth about aliens, putting his career and credibility on the line.

He says: “Being able to have the conversation now with the American people so they can ­finally know what’s really going on, I think it’s a great privilege and honour for me.”