The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #1883 - Ryan Graves
Joe Rogan and Ryan Graves on navy Pilot Describes Daily UFO Encounters And Government’s Growing Concern.
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Narrator and Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan Experience #1883 - Ryan Graves explores navy Pilot Describes Daily UFO Encounters And Government’s Growing Concern Former Navy F/A-18 pilot and aerospace engineer Ryan Graves explains how a 2014 radar upgrade suddenly revealed multiple unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) operating daily in tightly controlled U.S. military airspace off the East Coast.
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Navy Pilot Describes Daily UFO Encounters And Government’s Growing Concern
- Former Navy F/A-18 pilot and aerospace engineer Ryan Graves explains how a 2014 radar upgrade suddenly revealed multiple unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) operating daily in tightly controlled U.S. military airspace off the East Coast.
- He details radar tracks, FLIR footage, and near mid-air collisions, including the now-famous “Gimbal” video and visual descriptions of a dark cube inside a transparent sphere—objects that could hover in 140 mph winds and maneuver in ways far beyond known aircraft.
- Graves frames UAP primarily as a serious aviation safety and national security issue, describing formal hazard reports, NOTAMs, and later classified reporting mechanisms, as well as briefings to Congress and the Pentagon.
- The conversation broadens into speculation about nonhuman intelligence, trans‑medium craft, secrecy versus transparency, and how advancing technologies like AI may eventually help rigorously study and demystify these phenomena.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasUAP became visible after a major radar upgrade, not after they appeared.
Upgrading F/A-18s from the APG-73 to the more advanced APG-79 radar suddenly revealed numerous previously unseen contacts offshore, suggesting UAP were likely present all along but below earlier detection thresholds.
These objects posed real and repeated aviation safety hazards.
Graves describes daily UAP in training airspace, including a near mid-air where a cube-in-sphere object passed between two F-18s at the entry point of a working area, triggering formal hazard reports and a federal NOTAM warning pilots of “unknown objects.”
Observed UAP displayed flight characteristics inconsistent with known aircraft or drones.
They could hover motionless in 100–140 mph winds, meander in non-straight paths, fly racetrack patterns for hours, and in some cases execute extremely tight, instantaneous direction changes far beyond F-18 performance envelopes.
Military systems confirm these are physical, sensor-correlated objects—not just radar glitches.
Contacts appeared simultaneously on advanced radar and FLIR (infrared) sensors, sometimes as distinct heat or cold signatures at the exact radar-indicated positions, reinforcing that they represent real objects or energy sources in the sky.
The Gimbal incident involved a formation of UAP, not just a single object.
Behind the widely seen Gimbal FLIR clip was an SA (situational awareness) radar display showing a wedge formation of multiple small objects plus the main “Gimbal” target, which appeared to reverse direction via an extremely tight vertical U-turn—data that remains classified.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesThey were out there when we took off, we’d see them, and then we’d go to land, they would still be out there. Every day.
— Ryan Graves
He described it as a black or dark gray cube, and that cube was inside of a clear translucent sphere.
— Ryan Graves
I see the signs of a safety problem brewing… and if we don’t have the command or operational support to tell the truth about what we’re seeing up there, then things have to change.
— Ryan Graves
Without the FLIR footage, you would have never been able to see these things.
— Joe Rogan
I think there is another actor involved… there is something that is not human that is interacting in some fashion.
— Ryan Graves
QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE
5 questionsIf UAP are present daily in U.S. training airspace, what might be happening in parts of the sky where we have less or no advanced sensor coverage?
Former Navy F/A-18 pilot and aerospace engineer Ryan Graves explains how a 2014 radar upgrade suddenly revealed multiple unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) operating daily in tightly controlled U.S. military airspace off the East Coast.
How should aviation authorities and airlines systematically train commercial pilots to handle UAP encounters without compromising safety or increasing panic?
He details radar tracks, FLIR footage, and near mid-air collisions, including the now-famous “Gimbal” video and visual descriptions of a dark cube inside a transparent sphere—objects that could hover in 140 mph winds and maneuver in ways far beyond known aircraft.
What mechanisms or independent bodies could credibly bridge the gap between classified military UAP data and open scientific research?
Graves frames UAP primarily as a serious aviation safety and national security issue, describing formal hazard reports, NOTAMs, and later classified reporting mechanisms, as well as briefings to Congress and the Pentagon.
Given the performance Graves describes, what technological breakthroughs in propulsion or physics would be required to replicate even a fraction of these observed maneuvers?
The conversation broadens into speculation about nonhuman intelligence, trans‑medium craft, secrecy versus transparency, and how advancing technologies like AI may eventually help rigorously study and demystify these phenomena.
At what point would the government have a moral obligation to publicly acknowledge nonhuman or unexplained intelligence if internal consensus quietly moved in that direction?
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
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