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Joe Rogan Experience #2244 - Ryan Graves

Go to https://expressvpn.com/RoganYT and find out how you can get 3 months of ExpressVPN free! Ryan Graves is a former Lt. U.S. Navy and F/A-18F pilot who was the first active duty pilot to publicly disclose regular sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. Today, Graves serves as the first Chair of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics UAP Integration & Outreach Committee, Executive Director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, and is the founder of StarSense Innovations. http://www.safeaerospace.org

Joe RoganhostRyan Gravesguest
Dec 17, 20242h 48mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 5:05

    Debunking the “missing nuke” rumor behind the East Coast drones

    1. NA

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music)

    4. RG

      Hello.

    5. JR

      Good to see you again.

    6. RG

      Nice to see you.

    7. JR

      What is the latest in the world of Ryan?

    8. RG

      (laughs)

    9. JR

      (laughs) Other than the fact that you're about to have a child, which congratulations on that, but-

    10. RG

      Thank you.

    11. JR

      What, uh, we want- you wanted to talk to me about this drone situation, and I've become very concerned. I don't understand what's going on. I think there's a bunch of different narratives. Some of them are very scary. The scariest one that I've heard is that they're, the drones are looking for gamma radiation because there's a missing nuke.

    12. RG

      Yeah. Let's address that first.

    13. JR

      Please.

    14. RG

      So, there has been a lot going on. I- I- I made a- a- an X post about this yesterday-

    15. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    16. RG

      ... to try to assuage some fears, so.

    17. JR

      I saw it, but I purposely didn't read it 'cause I wanted to-

    18. RG

      (laughs)

    19. JR

      I wanted to get it from you.

    20. RG

      Yeah. So, you know, I've had the, the privilege of interacting with a lot of government organizations over the past few years as I've been digging down this rabbit hole. Um, law enforcement at a federal level, DOD, executive branch, legislative branch, and some of the folks that I've come in contact worth- with, they specifically work on weapons of mass destructions. Right? So that's- that's their job. So if there's a loose nuke in the United States, among other agencies, they would be some of the people that would be sitting in a skiff for 24 hours a day trying to figure out where it is and to go get it. Right? So, um, you can imagine that would be their number one priority. Right? So I engage with these folks. I ask them, you know, "What's the sense here?" You know, people are kind of starting to panic a little bit and this message is getting out there more and more broadly. Um, and they assured me that's not the case, that there is not a loose nuke or other type of weapon of mass destruction that these objects, whatever they are, are pursuing right now. Otherwise, they would be working in a skiff non-stop to make- to make that go away, that problem go away. So, you know, that's part of why I have a- a high confidence level that this is not a response to an- a massive imminent, you know, weapons of mass destruction threat on the eastern seaboard. Uh, so I- I just wanna try to dispel that rumor right now. I've seen a lot of talk of that online, uh, and I don't... You know, although this is a, you know, I think a dangerous and- and scary situation that's going on right now, at least from that particular angle, um, that's not the indications I'm receiving.

    21. JR

      So, how would they have persuaded you? Just by saying, "That's not the case," or have they given you any information that leads to this conclusion? Like...

    22. RG

      They would be the people actively working it, essentially, right? So-

    23. JR

      And they're not.

    24. RG

      They're not working it. Right? So either the government is holding back that secret from the direct resources within the government that are responsible for finding these systems-

    25. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    26. RG

      ... or they're not working the issue because there isn't an issue there to work.

    27. JR

      So the- the thing that I had heard was that it was a missing nuke from Ukraine, and if that was the case, w- they... So what- what could they do? Is- is any, is there any truth to this idea that we have the type of drone capability that we could send these things out and they would search for gamma radiation and they'd be able to find a nuke? Is that...

    28. RG

      So there are teams that respond to those types of potential emergencies, typically within the Department of Energy. Um, having, you know, potentially hundreds of drones flying around trying to identify these isn't necessarily the best way. Gamma radiation is typically well-shielded in weapons, uh, and at very high altitudes or even moderate altitudes, like we're seeing these objects, it would be pretty difficult to detect them. And the way that NIST, uh, DOE typically operates in this environment is ground-based teams searching for radiation itself. So it's not necessarily consistent with how they would do it to begin with, um, and then based off of that other information, that's what leads me to believe that's not- not the case.

    29. JR

      Well, that makes me feel better 'cause I was freaking out this weekend. (laughs)

    30. RG

      (laughs) I think a lot of people were.

  2. 5:05 – 7:06

    Why the drone incursions feel unprecedented: multi-year pattern, bigger footprint now

    1. RG

      Yeah, so the... There's a lot of good questions there. Let me back up by s- by starting with the fact that this started about two years ago, at least. So two year-

    2. JR

      But not like this.

    3. RG

      A little bit like this. So-

    4. JR

      Really? In this volume?

    5. RG

      Not in this volume. That's- that's the differentiator right there, but-

    6. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. RG

      ... so Langley Air Force Base, you might be familiar with the fact that they had drone incursions of an unknown type, unknown origin, last year.

    8. JR

      Right.

    9. RG

      Uh, that happened during about a two and a half, three-week period right before Christmas. Right? Right where we are now.

    10. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    11. RG

      That also happened the year before over at Langley. Unknown objects operating over the base. Um, they couldn't tell where they were going. They were unprepared for them. Same period of time, two, three weeks before Christmas. This is year three. Right? Um, and they were expecting them to come again for th- third year in a row over at Langley, and there was, you know, some effort put forward to be able to better understand these when they came back. Uh, and they did come back-But they came back in a much wider swath, right? They ... Now, we have them all over New Jersey, all the way up to Massachusetts. And it's hard to tell exactly with the quality of the reporting right now, 'cause it seems to be, you know, the bigger this story gets, the more people are just looking up and seeing anything and pointing it out. Uh, but, you know, there are reports from Texas to Florida to California, Ohio, Minnesota, Pennsylvania. I mean, i- it's not just New Jersey itself, it seems. And even the, uh, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was shut down for a drone incursion just this last Friday, a couple days ago. Um, so this isn't just a, a one-off event. It, it is in the sense that it's so large and so many people are paying attention to it, but this has been occurring for at least three years around military bases. And that's noth- ... That's nothing to say what the incidents that we were seeing over the Eastern Seaboard, uh, and other training ranges that fighter air, fighter pilots were seeing as they were doing their operations. So, I'm a little hesitant to link it to that, the full story that we've been having here, this full conversation. But

  3. 7:06 – 10:29

    Capabilities and detection gaps: ocean origin claims, low-altitude ops, emissions unknown

    1. RG

      at least for three years, this has been occurring. So, you know, kinda getting back to your question, you know, why can't we do more about it? Um, it's, it's a hard problem, I think, for a number of reasons. It's hard, but it's very solvable, all right? I think this can be solved. We can solve it. Um, but right now, kind of the word on the street is that these objects appear to be coming from over the ocean. Uh, there's senior congressmen, there's Coast Guard personnel, there's law enforcement that are seeing a large number of these come from somewhere over the ocean. I, I don't know if that means necessarily they're popping out of the water physically or if they're coming from some unknown location in the water and then proceeding over the coast. I don't know how that relates to Ohio. That's a pretty long trip, uh, if they are coming over the ocean. Uh, and from the videos I've seen and the conversation I've had, they are detecting these objects, um, through kind of normal mechanisms like radar systems, optical camera systems. Um, they are flying very low. Uh, in some cases, they seem to be operating as a group, um, in the vicinity of each other, flying past each other, flying very up close to each other, and then proceeding to do whatever they are that they're doing. Um, it's an unknown right now if they are emitting energy or not, so, you know, like radio communications or their own maybe active sensor systems. It's unknown. I- I've poked on that front, and the best I can tell, the government doesn't know, either, what they're emitting.

    2. JR

      That seems so weird that they don't know that. How would you feel if Incognito Mode came out with a year-end wrapped list? Would you be proud of that list and post it on social media? Probably not, unless you were smart and used ExpressVPN. See, the problem is that Incognito Mode doesn't actually keep your browsing history confidential. But with ExpressVPN, 100% of your online activity is encrypted and rerouted through secure servers, so your private browsing history is exactly that, private. ExpressVPN doesn't keep logs, either. In fact, their server technology makes it so they literally can't keep logs. That's because it runs on volatile RAM memory that never writes to disk. ExpressVPN received hundreds of data requests last year. Can you guess how many resulted in exposed customer data? Zero. That's privacy by design. ExpressVPN is fast, easy to use, and works on any device. Just tap one button to connect, and you're instantly protected. With 24/7 customer support and servers in 105 countries, it's no wonder that ExpressVPN is rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and The Verge year after year. So, get off the naughty list and start fresh in 2025. Use my special link to get three extra months of ExpressVPN for free. Just go to expressvpn.com/roganyt. That's expressvpn.com/roganyt. To get three months totally free, tap the banner to learn more. Like, it's just very disturbing that someone could operate these things and have ... I mean, how many ... What, what is the, the estimated number of them?

  4. 10:29 – 12:06

    How many are there—and could they be autonomous with passive sensors?

    1. RG

      That's a great question. I mean, uh, at this point, I'm, I'm comfortable making a guess of probably over 800 or 1,000.

    2. JR

      (sighs)

    3. RG

      And how many of those are sightings of the same object? How many of those are individual objects? How many of those are unique objects that ...

    4. JR

      Right.

    5. RG

      So, uh, it's, it's tough to say, but this isn't just a few objects that people are seeing. Um, and so I can imagine some technologies that, uh, will allow traditional UAVs or drones to operate without emitting, right? So they could be ... Uh, they could have a self-contained navigational system, right? Maybe they have their own onboard maps, and they're using cameras to map where they are.

    6. JR

      So then they would be completely autonomous. You just send them out there, and they would have a task, and they would go through their, whatever their task is and navigate via their GPS or whatever tracking system they're using.

    7. RG

      Exactly. Um, and then, you know, what is their task, right?

    8. JR

      Right.

    9. RG

      Is it just to instill panic and fear? Is it because they're sensing something? Uh, and if they are sensing something, they would have to be using what's called passive sensors, all right? So, like, a camera system is passive, but if you're shooting a r- you know, uh, a radar out and having it bounce off of something, that's active, right? And that's easier to detect than a passive system.So, I could imagine, you know, a fully self-contained autonomous drone system that is doing something, potentially with passive sensors, that allows it to operate without emissions. Which is going to make it harder to track.

    10. JR

      If they're doing it at night, uh, the, if they do have passive systems, like some sort of an optical system, wouldn't that be hindered by the low light conditions? Or do we have stuff that is able to detect whatever they're looking for at night?

  5. 12:06 – 13:31

    Infrared lock issues and “signature management”: why can’t pilots/LE track them?

    1. RG

      Yeah. Depends what they're looking for. Uh, but ultimately, there is tech. There is electro-optical systems, there's infrared camera systems. Not unlike the jets that, or the systems that we had on, on my jet. Um, but we were able to detect these objects with infrared when we were flying off the eastern seaboard. There are a number of reports from law enforcement that their infrared systems are not able to pick these objects up. And not just this year, but also, uh, the incidents over Langley last year, the pilots that responded to that incident, so I've spoken to them, they h- weren't able to lock these up with their infrared systems either. So, they do seem to be exhibiting some type of, uh, signature management.

    2. JR

      That's interesting. So, is the signature management some- so, is it a heat signature that they're giving off? So, maybe there's some sort of a cooling mechanism inside of these things? Like, how, if they have a propulsion system, so you would imagine it's some sort of an electric engine, right?

    3. RG

      Mm-hmm.

    4. JR

      'Cause a lot of them are very quiet. That's gotta be giving off some kind of heat, right?

    5. RG

      Yeah, and that goes to some, like, very base physics, right? Like-

    6. JR

      Yeah.

    7. RG

      ... we create heat whenever we have, you know, stored energy, and we utilize it. So, to be able to, to mitigate that to such a degree that you can't even detect them at all, you know, it's, it's pretty tough. I mean, I can imagine, you can, you can reduce your signature. We do it in fighter jets, right? Through kind of just, like, baffles where we cover the engine essentially to make it harder to see. But to have zero ability to detect tr- or lock onto these objects is not a technology I'm familiar with.

  6. 13:31 – 14:40

    Performance and endurance: sharp turns, long loiter times, and “not physics-breaking—but odd”

    1. JR

      So, other than that, are they exhibiting any type of, um, movement that's extraordinary or th- their ability to turn angles? Is, is there anything about them that points to this being superior technology?

    2. RG

      It, it, you know, it's tough to say. Based off what I've seen just in, in the public from, from reports and kind of amateur photographers or witnesses, some of them do seem to be making pretty sharp turns. I wouldn't call them, like, physics-breaking turns. But they don't seem to be operating like a normal aircraft, right? So, they're down low. They're making what appear to be pretty high G turns, maybe, like, three, four, or five G turns, um, at relatively low air speeds, which is indicative of them having a pretty significant power supply, right? Anytime you turn like that, um, you're burning energy essentially. So, for them to be able to make these high G maneuvers and then remain in the area for another five or six or seven hours and still have the battery life, or whatever's propelling them, to then go over the ocean to a point where they're untrackable, again, I, I, I'm not really familiar with that type of capability either.

  7. 14:40 – 18:01

    Social media misfires and safety risk: shooting at the sky, ‘downed drone’ confusion

    1. JR

      I know they've shot at least one of them down. Or people have shot. Have you seen the video? It looks like cops are shooting them down with shotguns in New Jersey.

    2. RG

      (laughs) Yeah. I did see one video like that.

    3. JR

      I think it's a cop.

    4. RG

      I wasn't sure of how real it was.

    5. JR

      I don't know if it's real.

    6. RG

      I hope it's a cop.

    7. JR

      It seems ... I know, because it's like, hey man, when you shoot up, those bullets land somewhere, you know? They can land on people.

    8. RG

      Yeah. Yeah, I've, you know, I've heard multiple people, representative officials saying like, "Hey, government needs to step in and start being more clear, 'cause people are just gonna take matters into their own hands."

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. RG

      That's where people get hurt.

    11. JR

      Well, there's also been downed ones, right?

    12. RG

      I've heard rumors of downed ones, but I haven't-

    13. JR

      There's video footage and there's, there's people driving in their car and there, cop cars are surrounding this thing.

    14. NA

      That was a plane.

    15. JR

      It was a plane?

    16. NA

      I think that was a plane crash.

    17. JR

      Oh.

    18. RG

      Yeah, I think, if that's the one you're referring to, there happened to be a, like, a small plane crash.

    19. JR

      Can you find that one, Jamie?

    20. NA

      Yep, yep, yep.

    21. JR

      Okay. But again, this is the problem with social media, especially with someone like me who's just kind of scrolling for five minutes and going, "What the fuck?" And then, like, you know, my kids ask me something, and I gotta get out of the house. All right, let me put my phone down. You know, so I'm, I haven't done any kind of a deep dive. And I did that purposely, just to try to pick your brain. It's this one?

    22. NA

      Yeah.

    23. JR

      Oh, yeah. That's definitely a plane.

    24. NA

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      Is that the one? Yeah, but he made-

    26. NA

      Yeah, when they were, when they were driving by, they were like, "Look, it's a drone shot down," and-

    27. JR

      Right.

    28. NA

      But ...

    29. JR

      That might be the one that I saw. I did watch a video. Did you see the video of the plane that crashed in, uh, Texas?

    30. NA

      I don't know.

  8. 18:01 – 20:55

    Why authorities seem slow: warrants, antiquated laws, and shoot-down liability

    1. RG

      S- so, there's (clears throat) there's some laws in this country that are a little bit antiquated when it comes to dealing with situations like this. So, my understanding is, right now, these things are operating mostly in what's called Class G airspace, which is really low. It's away from airports. Not all, of course, right? They're over bases, so-

    2. JR

      They're over LaGuardia.

    3. RG

      Yeah. Yeah. But here- here's, here's, I think, where a lot of the trouble is coming in from. I think the government has to make the presumption at this point, based off the feedback from the DoD and others, that if this is not a foreign adversary, then we have to make the assumption that it's a US citizen that's operating these. Because of that, they essentially need a warrant in order to wiretap these.

    4. JR

      What?

    5. RG

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      Even with the Patriot Act?

    7. RG

      That's the feedback I'm receiving. That's-

    8. JR

      Oh.

    9. RG

      ... the legal limitation.

    10. JR

      Come on. They don't even need a warrant to get into my phone.

    11. RG

      (laughs)

    12. JR

      Get the fuck out of here. I don't buy that.

    13. RG

      Well, whether it's the reality of the situation or not, that's how they're proceeding, right?

    14. JR

      All right.

    15. RG

      And so to overcome that, you know, there's like a 120-page report that needs to be filed all the way up to the deputy attorney general of United States in order to even intercept these signals that they may or may not even be emitting to be able to determine where they're going. And so I think that's one part of what's, like, slowing down this whole investigation.

    16. JR

      Hm.

    17. RG

      On the other hand, for base commanders, they have limited authority to protect their base, but when they do, they need to submit, basically, a request all the way up to the secretary of defense.

    18. JR

      Hm.

    19. RG

      All right, so now you have this like super politically charged situation with a lot of risk of objects flying over the US. If they take action and shoot one of these down, even with this, the secretary of defense's permission, you know, they're on the hook if that thing takes out a school bus or otherwise damages someone's property.

    20. JR

      Right. Or kills somebody.

    21. RG

      Yeah.

    22. JR

      Jamie, can you research ... Can you just do a quick search? Uh, have there been drones that have been shot down?

    23. NA

      Yeah, I was... I was... I didn't... I haven't seen anything. I was, uh, the most... There's a story from, what, today's this. Two days ago, New Jersey lawmakers were having a press conference asking if the government could shoot one down so they can inspect it. So, like, I'm assuming they haven't shot one down if they're asking-

    24. JR

      Hm.

    25. NA

      ... to shoot one down that, that day, you know?

    26. JR

      Right.

    27. NA

      I hear something new that I don't know if it's even worth bringing up, but this is a new story going on. They said this might be what some of this has to do with. I don't even know if this is-

    28. JR

      Missing radioactive ex- m- yeah.

    29. NA

      ... material.

    30. JR

      Who, who ... Scroll up a little bit higher so I can see who put that out there.

  9. 20:55 – 24:12

    Ryan’s background: Navy F/A-18 pilot, radar upgrades, and the ‘cube in a sphere’ near-miss

    1. JR

      So, we should explain to people that didn't listen to our first podcast, uh, why you're uniquely qualified to talk about this stuff. Uh, could you just please tell people your background so they understand what you used to do and-

    2. RG

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      ... how you got involved in this whole UAP thing in the beginning?

    4. RG

      Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, formerly trained aerospace engineer in college. Uh, joined the Navy immediately after with the hopes to go fly fighter jets, uh, for the Navy. Was successful in doing that, and I, I flew the F-18 Super Hornet for 11 years and two deployments, primarily operating off of Virginia Beach. And, um, pretty, pretty standard career, uh, until about 2013 or so when we started to... We came back from our deployment, we began to upgrade our radar systems. Uh, when that happened, we, we put in, essentially, a much more powerful radar into our jet. It took about eight months. So you'd have, you know, you might fly with a, um, a newer radar in the morning, maybe an older radar at night. And consistently, when we were flying with these newer radars, we were picking up a bunch of objects that were operating in our working area that we weren't seeing with the older radar. Um, they were performing in strange ways. They would be stationary. They would be, uh, around 250 to 350 knots, kind of meandering around the area. Not really working together per se, but kind of clearly operating in the same vicinity as one another, right? So we weren't flying in formations necessarily. Uh, and we'd even see these supersonic as well, 1.1, 1.2 Mach, uh, typically heading east, and we'd only see them over the water. Um, we originally thought they were radar errors, right? Some kind of software glitch. But eventually, we started to correlate these across other sensors, such as our IR FLIR system. Uh, our missile systems would lock onto these, and we would, um, we'd try to fly up to them to see them physically with our eyeballs, and when we do that, we wouldn't see anything. They come within about 500 feet of these objects, all our sensors are pumped into our helmet, augmented reality style, and it would tell us exactly where to look, and boom, we'd come right past this object and there'd be nothing there. Uh, we'd circle back around and then pick it back up on our sensors. It would be slightly displaced, but, um, that was kind of the status quo for a few weeks until we had a, a near miss with one of these objects right at the entrance to our working areas. Uh, pilot came back, canceled the flight, had a look of shock on his face and described it as a dark gray or a black cube inside of a clear sphere. And o- once that happened, we kind of had to come together as a squadron with the safety officer in our squadron and say, "Hey, you know, like, okay, what's going on? This has kind of been rumor and conjecture, but, you know, we almost had a near miss. You almost lost an aircraft. You know, let's gather as much information as we can." As it turned out, there were four other near misses that had occurred in the past month that pilots were too uncomfortable to even report.Um, and that really kinda kicked off the seriousness of this issue for us. And we started filing paperwork, safety reports, uh, and hoping and expecting that this would get resolved in some way as, you know, the proper people, whoever that was, um, got these reports and they could mitigate it in some way. But that never happened, at least from our perspective, so we essentially

  10. 24:12 – 26:54

    Roosevelt workups and the famous clips: GoFast, Gimbal, formations, and near-miss pressure

    1. RG

      treated them as, as safety issues. We would avoid them. We wouldn't fly close to them. And then in 2015, we left to, uh, go out ... go do what's called a, uh, a pre-deployment workup cycle aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt. So, we train like we play. We get the whole air wing there, 30 jets, 40 jets, and we're doing these very complex missions, and there were a lot of objects down there as well. Uh, they either followed us down there or they were already there. And, um-

    2. JR

      Was there a lot of visual sightings of these objects or is it all just equipment that's picking them up?

    3. RG

      A lot of visual sightings. Um-

    4. JR

      Was it the same sort of thing, a circle with a square inside of it?

    5. RG

      Or, or solid spheres. Um, some elongated spheres, kinda more Tic Tac shape, if you will. Um, and during that workup cycle, that's when we recorded what's now known as the Gimbal and Go Fast video. Um, and they almost had to shut that entire exercise down because there were multiple near misses while we were trying to do this. And this is, this is a big deal. If they cancel that training mission, that means the people that are deployed essentially have to be there longer. They have to wait longer, so there's a lot of downstream effects, so pretty big deal to even consider canceling a, a training, um, a training, um, uh, exi- you know, our, our training mission like this. So again, we, you know, we filed it up. We didn't know what else to do with it and we went back to our training, left on deployment. In 2017, uh, a New York Times article came out. I was now an instructor pilot in Mississippi and for the Navy still. And on, you know, front page of New York Times, lo and behold, there are the video of the Gimbal and the Go Fast with the pilots' audio on there that we've heard now. And I'm like, "Holy shit," you know? Like, "This is still going on." Massive deja vu, as you might imagine. And, um, that, I saw that as, like, a cry for help, essentially, that these videos now have been somewhat smuggled out. They're on the front page of New York Times and-

    6. JR

      Do we know how the Gimbal or the Go Fast videos got leaked?

    7. RG

      (smacks lips) My understanding is that work was done partially with Lue Elizondo and Chris Mellon. Um, so there was two videos that were attached, right? So, when you record on the jet, it records two screens. It records-

    8. JR

      Can we show those, Jamie? (clears throat) Show those videos?

    9. RG

      So, it records these two screens, right? And the bottom screen is like a God's eye view with all your radar data and the right one is your FLIR system. And when you watch that in the briefing room after, they're stitched together, like side by side. And that, you know, that's what I saw and that's how I built my understanding of this, this situation.

  11. 26:54 – 36:06

    Deep dive on Gimbal/GoFast: locking difficulties, ranges, relative velocity, and IR modes

    1. JR

      There it is. (clears throat) So, with the crosshairs, um, is that ... They're trying to lock in on it? So, now they've locked in on it, right?

    2. RG

      Yeah. They weren't able to gain a lock in their air-to-air mode, so they actually had to degrade down to an air-to-surface mode, kind of a manual locking mode, and that's that box that you see.

    3. JR

      Well, what is the difference? Like ...

    4. RG

      Uh, the air-to-air mode should essentially be looking exactly where the radar is dropping them off and should automatically lock on it. But in the method that you're seeing here, the pilot's manually slewing the sensor. This is kinda like a last-ditch effort to get it. Uh, and he's, like, restarting it, and that's why the box keeps getting bigger and it's, it's getting smaller. It's not capturing it.

    5. JR

      What would be the difficulty? Like, why is it difficult to lock on?

    6. RG

      We don't know. Um, you know, one theory is that is 'cause it's relatively close to the ground and there's a lot of background, right, to confuse the sensor, but it's really-

    7. JR

      How far off the ocean is this supposed to be?

    8. RG

      It's somewhere around 10,000 feet or so. So, it's really not that close, um, so it's really not a great explanation. But yeah, you can see him try it there.

    9. JR

      Now, what do they estimate the size of this thing to be?

    10. RG

      I don't know if anyone has a- estimated a size, to be honest. It's hard. You know, the ... From the pilot's perspective, they're not gonna be able to make a real-time assessment of the size.

    11. JR

      Because how far o- above this thing are they?

    12. RG

      Um, well, they're about, they're about five miles away or so.

    13. JR

      Five miles? Okay.

    14. RG

      Yeah. So, you see the range, 3.4 right there?

    15. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    16. RG

      That range is coming strictly from the AT FLIR sensor itself. It's not a very reliable indicator of the range. That's what the radar is for. So, although it says about 3.5, uh, 4.4 and then ticks down, it's probably a little bit further away than that.

    17. JR

      What does that stand for, RNG?

    18. RG

      Range.

    19. JR

      So, um, the speed, is w- is that on there anywhere of how fast this thing's going?

    20. RG

      So, you have, uh, 170 Vsubc right below the range.

    21. JR

      Mm-hmm. Uh-huh.

    22. RG

      Uh, and that's indicating, uh, our rel- relative velocity. Uh-

    23. JR

      And that's miles per hour or kilometers? What is that?

    24. RG

      Uh, should be knots.

    25. JR

      Knots.

    26. RG

      So, it's probably like 180, 190 miles per hour.

    27. JR

      No heat signature?

    28. RG

      Well, there is, uh, a heat differential, anyway. So right now, we're in, we're in white hot, so objects that are white are hotter objects than the background.

    29. JR

      Right. I've used, uh, infrared s- um, (smacks lips) uh, binoculars before.

    30. RG

      Yeah.

  12. 36:06 – 38:55

    If it’s not ours: policy silence, New Jersey’s strategic geography, and the AI/deepfake verification crisis

    1. JR

      Why do you think that is, if you had to speculate?

    2. RG

      (sighs) The biggest probability is they don't know.

    3. JR

      Hmm.

    4. RG

      Right? If this is something that, you know, they've been struggling with for all these years and suddenly it's happening in a much larger capacity than it has in the past, they're not easily able to write it off, and they just don't have the answers. Or perhaps they do have the answers, but they fall under a category of information, much like these objects, that they're not willing to have a public conversation about it.

    5. JR

      What is the best footage of the New Jersey drones? Do we ha-... Why New Jersey, by the way? Fuck.

    6. RG

      I don't know. A lot of shipping.

    7. JR

      Uh, also a military base, right?

    8. RG

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      Outside of Bell Labs, th- there's a military base. And, like, what else? The proximity to New York City, I guess?

    10. RG

      New York, DC.

    11. JR

      Yeah.

    12. RG

      You know, I mean, there's a lot of big cities right there.

    13. JR

      Yeah. All, all pretty close. Um, I've only seen a few interesting videos. And we're in this new realm, uh, of uncertainty when it comes to AI-

    14. RG

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      ... and it comes to c- computer-generated images and video. It's like I've seen so many... I've seen me, I've seen fr-... I've seen so much stuff that's not real. I'm like, "Okay, I don't know what's real anymore."

    16. RG

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      It's like, especially when it comes to something that's kind of blurry, it's in the sky, and you got people on the ground. I've seen so many fake ones.

    18. RG

      Mm-hmm.

    19. JR

      You know, there's just so many ones that people have generated. You know, I'm friends with Jeremy Corbell. And Jeremy, uh, I always send him, like, a, "What the fuck is this?" You know, I'll send some stuff to him. "Is this bullshit?" And, you know, he's very good at, like, "We don't really know. I'm very suspicious because of this. This is what we know." Like, "Let me send you some things that I know are, uh, not fake, but we don't, still don't know what they are and see the difference." And so we'll have these long conversations and text message or phone calls about stuff like that. But no one seems to be able... Th- there's not, like, one person you can go to. I mean, you have your people that are dismissing everything and think it's just hobbyists and crazy people. But if they're not giving off signatures, like, that are standard with these normal drones, like these heat signatures, and they're able to stay in the sky for hours and hours at a time, just that alone points to, at least, if it's not our adversaries, if it's, if it's domestic, superior technology that we're not even aware of right now. How, I mean, how are they staying in the sky for five hours? Like, what is the... If you got, like, a top-of-the-food-chain drone... And who was it that was explaining to us the issue with, uh, why China has superior drone technology? It has something to do with the F- FAA. Was it Andreessen? I don't remember. I don't know. W- well someone was explaining the reason why most of these, like, high-end dr-... It might actually, might have actually been a green room conversation. Yeah. Uh, but I still remember what you're talking about now.

    20. RG

      Yeah.

  13. 38:55 – 1:06:39

    China, drones, and modern warfare: electronic countermeasures failing and the homeland-defense gap

    1. JR

      So that the FAA and the rules and regulations have sort of stifled the development and, uh, the improvement of these domestic drones.

    2. RG

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      And so most of the hobbyist drones are coming from China. And China, if you haven't seen, has fucking incredible displays of drones, where they do-

    4. RG

      Yeah, those multi... Yeah.

    5. JR

      Yeah, where they do, like, a drag in the sky. It's amazing. And it is because of regulations, it's because of the FAA dragging their heels, being incompetent or at, uh, least being overwhelmed, where this has not been able to progress domestically the way it's been able to do in China.

    6. RG

      Mm-hmm.

    7. JR

      And so it's... That alone seems like a giant security threat, the fact that China has had just full integration with the government and been able to have this technological innovation that allows their drones to be, like, super powerful, u- like, what, what they're able to do with these displays in the sky, unbelievable, like really wild stuff to see-

    8. RG

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      ... that seems like many, many leaps above what we can do.

    10. RG

      And, you know, it, the, you know, the, the faux-firework displays that these things put on are just one part of the puzzle, right? Because-

    11. JR

      Right.

    12. RG

      ... warfare is changing. It's changing drastically. And this is, you know, something I've tried to raise the alarm bells on before the Ukraine war, but we're seeing it now. You know, warfare is going to these highly mobile, nontraditional platforms, where you can have, you know, a group of guys that are, you know, basically teenagers now, going out and conducting operations with these small drones. And, you know, God forbid that an adversarial nation is now employing those technologies here in the United States. And if it was Russia, if it was China, and they were doing it directly, that'd be the equivalent of a declaration of war. I mean, they're essentially invading our, our land, right?

    13. JR

      Right.

    14. RG

      Is there, you know, some avenue where they might be hiring criminal gangs in some way to do this in order to create a level of, um, deniability for them? I don't know, but I'm certain that China and other nations are watching this unfold very carefully and d- detecting the gaps in our homeland defense systems.

    15. JR

      Hmm.

    16. RG

      Right? I mean, this is, this is a major issue. War is changing. And there are a lot of companies that, um, you know, within the private sector and, of course, within, you know, the normal, you know, defense contractor world, that is building capabilities to be able to detect and mitigate drones, whether it's kinetically or through electronic warfare. But we're not employing those. And oh, by the way, the electronic warfare measures that have been employed, employed against the New Jersey drones have been ineffective.

    17. JR

      Hmm.

    18. RG

      So they have tried to take these out with non-kinetic options, disabling their navigational systems, otherwise trying to fry them, bring them down. Has not been effective.

    19. JR

      That's not good.

    20. RG

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      No, that's (laughs) very concerning. So, um, is there any good footage that you could point to? Well, I don't... I, I don't even know where to look. I've looked. There's people in the news that have reported it, but the one clip I was looking at, they're just showing a plane. So, like, that's not good. I f- I, I found one where... But it looks like a guy in the woods. I don't know what the video is, you know?

    22. RG

      Yeah, that's a problem.

    23. JR

      I don't know when they took it, I don't know when they shot it. They're saying it was last night, but it, it could've b- it could've been anything. Right. Yeah, it could be bullshit.But this is part of the problem with this weird world that we're living in right now, with the fake information.

    24. NA

      Mm-hmm.

    25. JR

      It's- it's so difficult to figure out what the hell's going on. Um, did I send you that video, Jamie, of that guy in, um... where he's a CEO of a drone manufacturing company? This is the guy that made me the most nervous. I'll send it to you right now. This guy made me the most nervous, 'cause this guy is talking about how this, uh... whatever the hell this stuff is, uh, he believes is looking for a nuke. I'll send this to you, Jamie.

    26. NA

      The thing you tweeted?

    27. JR

      No.

    28. NA

      Okay.

    29. JR

      Did I?

    30. NA

      I don't know. Maybe.

  14. 1:06:39 – 1:18:51

    A path forward: citizen-led sensing, Americans for Safe Aerospace, and ‘discovery vs disclosure’

    1. RG

      We can figure this out, Joe.

    2. JR

      Really?

    3. RG

      Like I said, like, it's a hard problem, but it's not an unsolvable problem. Like, there are technologies that we could go out in the field within a couple weeks, employ, see if we can find the RF signals, and try to trace them back, right? We don't have to rely on the government for this. Let's do it.

    4. JR

      Well, how would we do it?

    5. RG

      Well, come join Americans for Safe Aerospace.

    6. JR

      What do I have to do?

    7. RG

      Come to my website, safea- safeaerospace.org. We'll go out there-

    8. JR

      Go to that website. Let's see what we gotta do.

    9. RG

      We're almost the largest UAP organization in the world right now.

    10. JR

      Really?

    11. RG

      And, you know, when I talk to people in Congress and the executive branch, you know, I point to them and say, "Hey, you know, we're... 13,588 people care about this issue." Right? This allows us to be able to go in there and talk seriously about th- this conversation.

    12. JR

      So Jamie, sign up.

    13. NA

      Hold on.

    14. RG

      So put in your email there. Don't show the world your email, though.

    15. NA

      I won't.

    16. JR

      Jesus Christ.

    17. NA

      (laughs)

    18. JR

      People are gonna know. They're gonna know, Jamie. They're gonna hear the amount of clicks that you make.

    19. NA

      All right, it's, it's off. No one knows.

    20. JR

      These fuckers, they, they're, they're very clever.

    21. RG

      We could get us the largest UAP organization in the world right now in this, in this show, Joe.

    22. JR

      Well, there you go. Now we're 13,589.

    23. NA

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      Congratulations-

    25. RG

      There we go.

    26. JR

      ... Jamie.

    27. NA

      Good.

    28. JR

      Um, so what would you do? So now that you've joined, what can you do?

    29. RG

      We've been working with, uh-

    30. JR

      Submit report?

Episode duration: 2:48:42

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