The puzzled voice of a US Air Force pilot reporting his terrifyingly close call with a UFO has been heard for the first time.
Traveling at supersonic speed, the unknown craft came within a 10 feet of the pilot’s wing, who was conducting a secret mission over California.
The pilot, who identified as ‘Troy 21,’ told local air traffic control (ATC) in Los Angeles: ‘This is going to sound weird, but I just had something pass underneath my wing, maybe a football-sized object right underneath my wing.’
During the September 17, 2024 incident, ATC is heard asking Troy 21 if he thought the object might have been a drone, but the stunned pilot couldn’t tell.
Troy 21 replied that his sensor operator was looking for the UFO on the plane’s cameras, adding that it was a ‘dark gray cylindrical object’ no bigger than a football.
The pilot quickly informed ATC that they had spotted the UFO again about 60 miles from where it first buzzed Troy 21’s plane.
Later in the recording, another air traffic controller in Los Angeles can be heard on the radio dismissing the incident, saying that ‘there was UFO reported here, but that’s all taken care of now. So you don’t have to worry about it… it’s gone.’
Former FBI agent Ben Hansen told NewsNation the mysterious object must have be traveling at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound, to get so far away so fast.
The strange object then moved off at high speed and was seen minutes later 60 miles away from the aircraft
The Air Force pilot was not able to tell if the object was a drone, but UFO expert and former FBI agent Ben Hansen said the chances of that were unlikely
‘You hear them call out what they believe they’re tracking this object, about 60 miles away, because they’ve got their own airborne radar,’ Hansen told NewsNation.
‘If true, within the two minutes when they called back, that would place this object going about Mach 2… That would absolutely, in my opinion, eliminate any prosaic explanation of a drone,’ Hansen added.
Hansen was able to secure a copy of the recording after it was not released to the public.
According to the UFO expert, the air traffic controller involved reported the incident to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC).
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recognizes NUFORC as one of the official channels pilots are able to use to make reports about UFOs and other strange sightings.
Hansen noted that this pilot and his crew were likely carrying out a drug interdiction mission for the US Department of Homeland Security when they encountered the tiny UFO.
He added that their aircraft, a Beechcraft 350C, has been converted by the government to house a sophisticated radar system.
Typically it can spot drug traffickers and other illegal activity, but during this flight, the military crew caught a glimpse of an unknown object around 2:30pm on a clear day.
‘It’s broad daylight. They got a good look at this thing, a cylindrical dark object that passes underneath their wing so close,’ Hansen said.
‘There’s big problems with that happening in controlled airspace like they were and they weren’t notified of any air traffic that was supposed to be in the area,’ the former FBI special agent continued.
The host of UFO Witness, Ben Hansen, said the 2024 UFO report raises serious concerns since the object passed so close to a manned airplane
Troy 21’s plane had advanced radar that reportedly tracked the UFO up to 60 miles away, but air traffic controllers later said there was nothing else to worry about and that the object was now ‘gone’
Hansen noted that his team has not spoken to the crew of the aircraft at this point.
He added that because of the secret nature of their flight, the pilot and crew wouldn’t be able to say much about the September 17 encounter.
Hansen’s computer simulation seen during his interview is based completely on the audio recording of the incident.
The host of ‘UFO Witness’ on Discovery+ admitted that the object could have passed under the wing from a different direction than the one seen in the video, but this was the best guess of what happened.
‘We do know their description is pretty exact,’ Hansen added.
As for the possibility of the UFO being a drone, Hansen noted that military drones and some hobby drones can go as high as 20,000 feet (where this encounter took place) but he believes the chances it was drone are unlikely.
The UFO was spotted near what Hansen calls a ‘military operations area,’ but the object was not in that zone, meaning anyone flying a commercial drone would have had to report their activity.
The incident is one of the latest close encounters that have many Americans believing alien life has been visiting Earth for decades.
Now, some government officials are looking to expose whatever is allegedly being hidden, including Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna.
After a classified meeting with Air Force whistleblowers, she revealed to The Grant Mitt Podcast this week that she ‘absolutely believes’ that the UFOs they and others have described are ‘of non-human origin.’
Rep. Luna and others believe the Trump administration will soon declassify what the US government knows about UFOs and alien encounters.
