Case · C-085
Destroyers off California: swarms of objects and “pyramids”
Pacific Ocean, off southern California · United States · Jul 2019
In flight Military witnesses Video Photos
Explained
- What happened
- In July 2019 several U.S. Navy ships off California, including the destroyers Kidd, Rafael Peralta and John Finn according to Fox News, were overflown by unidentified flying objects. In April 2021 Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp released a night video shot aboard the USS Russell, according to Corbell in July 2019, showing some lights and a triangular-shaped object above the ship, along with photos and slides from a Navy briefing; Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough confirmed that the photos and video had been taken by Navy personnel and that the UAP Task Force had included these episodes in its examinations. The Russell's ship logs for July 2019 were released under FOIA to The Black Vault, which also obtained confirmation from the Navy (February 1, 2022) that a released photo and slide came from the USS Paul Hamilton.
- Proposed explanation
- Official explanation (2022): in the public hearing of the House Intelligence Committee on May 17, 2022, the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray showed a video of “triangles” filmed years earlier by Navy personnel off the U.S. coast, with night-vision goggles and a DSLR camera, while the ship was observing small drones in the area; after a similar episode on another coast, in which other Navy assets detected nearby drones, he said that it is now believed with reasonable confidence that the triangles correspond to unmanned aerial systems and that the triangular shape is produced by the passage of light through the goggles and by filming with the DSLR. According to The War Zone (June 2022) it is the USS Russell video released in 2021; the Navy documents obtained through FOIA describe the July 2019 episodes as encounters with drones, in one case probably used by a merchant ship to surveil the ships, and the Russell's video files are titled as drone (UAS) interactions. As early as April 2021 Mick West (Metabunk) had attributed the triangular shape to an optical effect (bokeh) and the lights to an aircraft and stars. The 2022 assessment supersedes the statement of Admiral Michael Gilday (April 5, 2021), according to which the Navy had not identified the objects; who was operating the drones has not been disclosed.
- Official investigation
- U.S. Navy; UAP Task Force (UAPTF); Department of Defense; Office of Naval Intelligence (House hearing of May 17, 2022)
- Words of the document
we are now reasonably confident that these triangles correlate to unmanned aerial systems
Official documents
- Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – open hearing transcript (May 17, 2022) · U.S. House of Representatives, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence – Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation · May 17, 2022
Sources
- Fox News, the Navy films “pyramids” and spheres (April 13, 2021) (press)
- Inverse, the Pentagon confirms 2019 UAP videos (press)
- The Black Vault, FOIA release of the USS Russell's ship logs (February 2022) (analysis)
- The Debrief, the Pentagon confirms the “trans-medium” video (May 14, 2021) (press, pro-disclosure)
- The War Zone (Adam Kehoe and Marc Cecotti), the Navy's FOIA documents on the drone swarms off California (June 10, 2022) (press)
- Mick West, “Green "Pyramid" UFOs in Night Vision Footage are Bokeh” (Metabunk, April 8, 2021) (analysis, skeptical)
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