This recording showed something that I, even my role as a former member of the Armed Forces Committee and a committee that monitors new technological-military developments, cannot attribute to any human development – neither a development of the United States nor of one of our adversaries.

When we spoke to the crew member and were shown the photo, I asked why there was no video footage of the encounter and why the [forward-facing recording] FLIR system was not running. The answer was that the crew was on a test mission over the Gulf of Mexico and in such missions it is assumed that the airspace is cleared and clean. So there shouldn’t really be anything there. Nevertheless, they initially saw a formation of four objects flying in a diamond formation, which were also detected with radar, a radar recording that I was able to see myself. One of the pilots flew towards this formation to investigate and saw what I can only describe as a large flying ball beyond all human possibility. As he approached the object, the onboard radar and FLIR system failed, forcing him to manually take the existing photo.