Newly-released DoD video purportedly shows Navy pilot's encounter with UFO
A newly-released video which shows U.S. Navy pilots encountering an unidentified flying object (UFO) in 2015 has garnered calls for more research into what these mysterious objects could be.
"What the f--- is that thing?" one pilot can be heard saying in the video.
"Wow, what is that, man?" the pilot adds. "Look at that flying!"
The footage was released Friday by To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science (TTSA), a private scientific research and media group. It is led by Dr. Hal Puthoff, a NASA and U.S. Department of Defense adviser and James Semivan, a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency service member.
The clip is said to be "an authentic DoD video that captures the high-speed flight of an unidentified aircraft at low altitude" and "reveals a previously undisclosed Navy encounter that occurred off the East Coast in 2015," according to a statement from TTSA.
The new video comes on the heels of two other declassified videos that capture alleged encounters between U.S. Navy pilots and unidentified flying objects that were published by the New York Times last December.
The Department of Defense declined to comment on the latest video, but confirmed to ABC News last December that the U.S. government ran a program for investigating reports of unidentified flying objects until 2012.
“The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program ended in the 2012 time frame. It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change," the statement read. "The DoD takes seriously all threats and potential threats to our people, our assets, and our mission and takes action whenever credible information is developed."
Chris Mellon, a TTSA advisor and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, slammed what he said was the lack of research into what could be behind these videos in an op-ed published Friday in the Washington Post.
"We have no idea what’s behind these weird incidents because we’re not investigating," Mellon wrote.
"Nobody wants to be 'the alien guy' in the national security bureaucracy; nobody wants to be ridiculed or sidelined for drawing attention to the issue," he added. "This is true up and down the chain of command, and it is a serious and recurring impediment to progress."
Last December, retired U.S. Navy Cmdr. David Fravor told ABC News that what he believes what he witnessed during a routine training mission on Nov. 14, 2004, "was not from this world."
He continued: "I'm not crazy, haven't been drinking. It was — after 18 years of flying, I've seen pretty much about everything that I can see in that realm, and this was nothing close."
ABC News' Lucien Bruggeman and Kelly McCarthy contributed to this report.
