Former DISA contractor Kevin Campbell: UAP seen live on MQ-9 feeds over East Asian seas (Americans for Safe Aerospace, 2026)

0:00 - What did you see? What did they see? - It was a single object, spherical in shape, not a perfect circle. It was moving across the water. At decent speed, I would say, it was very close to touching the surface of the water. We were using, in this case, MQ-9s, and this was in the East China Sea, Yellow Sea, in that region. This thing had no wings, no sign of propulsion, or, you know, no rivets. - You're seeing an IR image, and so you're not seeing like an exhaust plume or anything like that. - When it got a . - What did they detect? - Welcome to the American for Safe Aerospace podcast. I'm Ryan Graves. Today, joined by Kevin, who's gonna tell us a little bit about his experiences seeing various data sets in his time in the military. If you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe

1:01 to this channel. We're gonna be having more witnesses like Kevin. I do wanna have maybe a public apology to Aaron, our creative director. You know, as you might've noticed, our studio is a little bit closer to the Two Ferns model, I think, than what we would like eventually. But right now, you know, this is temporary. We'll probably do some interviews outside. Ace is gonna be at Oshkosh this year, a big fly-in at the end of July. And we're looking forward to seeing some of you there, but we'll also be doing some interviews there and whatnot. But, you know, I'm pretty excited about the direction that American Safe Aerospace is going. I think we'll have our own studio soon. So thanks for bearing with us. Sorry, Aaron. I didn't bring enough props today, but soon we'll have a pretty cool place, I think. But thanks for joining us here in Austin, Kevin. Why don't you tell us a little bit about how you found yourself in that chair? Military time, I'm a Department of War contractor. I never had military time. Okay. But I worked as a SATCOM network engineer for the Defense Information Systems Agency.

2:02 I worked in the Network Operations Center at Hill Air Force Base in Utah. And part of that job, when deployed units would set up their SATCOM equipment, they'd call into us. We'd do network builds for them. We'd get them connected into the network, monitor that traffic, you know. And part of that was watching the drones and whatever aerial assets that were being used for reconnaissance and whatever to verify the clarity of the footage and make sure everything's going smoothly. So it was during my time there, 'cause I'd be watching drones all the time, that I started seeing these strange things go on to the point to where I was like, okay, I would feel like I should come forward, especially after seeing your guys' hearing. That's what really inspired me to do it was your guys' initial hearing a couple of years back. - 2023, yeah. - Yeah. - Okay, well, before we get into that, let's kind of, let's maybe suss out a little bit of the details on what that job responsibility entails. And so you were working, just kind of clarify for people and for myself, you were working for a private company,

3:03 you were employed by them, you had a security clearance, and they were employing you as kind of like an IT support. I don't want to diminish it at all, but you were doing technical support for different data streams and whatnot for the military as a contractor. - Yeah. It was quite a bit of stuff we were doing because missions would call in to troubleshoot something going on. Like, hey, we don't have a good SATCOM connection or even something as simple as like, they'd get set up out in the field. They'd call into us and say, hey, we're ready to be brought to the network. We would remotely activate their SATCOM modems and then start, they'd be able to start transmitting information. - Did you ever work with like F-18 guys or Navy guys? - We did work with naval vessels. They would call in cause they would have specific SATCOM missions and equipment they were using and that communication would go through DISA, of course. So I was in contact with quite a few naval vessels. - Yeah. I imagine when it gets down to us in the F-18, you know, we'd try to be self-contained, right? We don't want to be calling troubleshooting in the States as an expeditionary group, you

4:04 know, in the Middle East. I could see the ships having some like big picture linkage issues. - Yeah. And there was, um, it'd go by priorities, you know, like we, we go from something as small as like a, a training mission in the States. Guys that are just learning their job, their MOS, SATCOM stuff. They'd call in, simulate, you know, getting connected with DISA and, you know, do that type of thing all the way up to deployed forces, you know, all the way up to POTUS. You know, I've worked on the vice president's SATCOM stuff before. - Oh, that's cool. - Yeah. And you use the term DISA, I think, or the acronym DISA, DISA, can you spell that out for us? - Yeah. Defense Information Systems Agency. - Okay. Okay. Well, that's very cool. You know, I don't think people realize just how much like backbone infrastructure. - Yeah. - Needs to like be working at a hundred percent to enable, you know, a lot of things, even just, you know, an F-18 flying off. And, you know, although you guys didn't touch it, you know, the, the crypto links, the GPS connections, and even more so. And, you know, the Joint Strike Fighter F-35

5:04 and other platforms, those are like absolutely critical to making those platforms actually valuable, right? Because they're soaking up so much information. - Right. - You know, these backbone data networks are what allows us to have these advantages that we have by linking everything together. It's pretty cool. - How, how long did you do that? - About a year. I've, so I went out to Utah initially because I was in Korea for a couple of years before that working and went out to Utah. I was trying to move from security into IT, you know, studying and eventually trying to get back out to Korea, doing IT stuff, you know? And so the job at DISA popped up and that was like a perfect route. I had the clearance for it. I had the, the base level IT certs at that time. So they, they brought me on onboarding takes a while, you know, before you get your access and everything. So you're kind of shoulder surfing people there in the knock until you're all set up and actually working on stuff, you know? So, and that's actually where I, um, first saw DISA's collection of like zipper videos of like drone strikes and

6:06 other stuff. - And where was this physically located? - Hill Air Force Base. - This was still at Hill Air Force Base. - Uh, and that is where you saw the data that was UIP related. - Yeah. - Let's kind of get into that a little bit and, you know, just to kind of set the stage, because we, you know, are going to be brushing up on things here. Uh, ASA doesn't accept or solicit classified information, just to be clear. There are times when someone with information, uh, behind that curtain, such as yourself, you know, looks to, looks to ASA to help us get that information in the right hands, but we don't accept it. We don't want it. I've had a security clearance for almost my entire adult life. I don't want that headache. With Americans for safe aerospace. And so let's, uh, of course, you know, uh, be very cautious. I think we should avoid, I know you're, you're in possession of, uh, squadron names and exact locations, uh, but let's avoid naming those explicitly. If we can, let's talk about the system that you were using

7:08 just in broad terms, about what it provides and how the UAP topic came into your awareness through that and also the year. So you talk, you know, you, you said you saw the hearing in 2023. Yeah. Let's, let's, let's anchor there for a minute. You know, I've been talking a lot about how once people realize this information is important, then they're going to preserve it. And that's gonna allow us to get that information into the right hands. Uh, and so it was cool to hear you mentioned that a few minutes ago, but maybe we could pick it up from there. So you saw the here you're, you were somewhat motivated. It sounds like you already had information or had come into information at that job. So let's talk about that. As well as there, I saw your guys' hearing and at the same time, this type of activity was going on and the hearing itself, what surprised me the most about it was, wasn't so much the information about UAPs that was being talked about. It was our, the members of Congress, our politicians that were like coming to you guys asking like, okay, so where do we go from here? How do we figure this out? You know, I was like, I was shocked. I was

8:09 like, you're telling me you guys don't know how to navigate or get into this stuff to find this information, but you're the one selected to like research this stuff for us. You know what I mean? And that, that kind of concerned me. The decision makers didn't have access to the information that they were legally obligated, you know, congressionally mandated in order to make decisions about. Yeah, that concerned me. And of course, you know, my personal curiosity as well, you know, the American people and myself clearly have a desire to know what's going on with this stuff. Yeah. I would even argue more than just the desire, but an innate right to understand the world around them if there are interactions that they, you know, folks are experiencing to be gaslit by a government, you know, that's not a healthy position to be in. Well, maybe let's jump back a little bit before the hearing. So when did you first come into contact with the UAP conversation within your professional duties or perhaps outside if that happened earlier? Yeah. So I guess it would be like my first week at DISA. So like I said, when you're

9:09 like onboarding your first week, you don't have access yet, right? You're going through all this paperwork and clearance stuff and, you know, it just takes a while. So you're just shoulder surfing with your coworkers, watching them do the tasks and what your job's going to be. And then kind of like a rite of passage at DISA is like, well, while you're waiting for access, you're going to watch the AISR drone videos, you know? And we have this share drive, a collection of videos of like all the best drone strikes and just interesting stuff over the years that they've compiled on the zipper side. And you just sit there and watch it. A lot of cool stuff. One of those videos was a UAP event that happened quite a few years ago and it was just unexplainable. So it was a file that you just happened upon as you were exploring the system or was part of a group of data that they kind of presented you to get acclimated to this system? Yeah. It's just sitting there. I mean, it's not really like tasked or anything. It's just you see something on there is just get saved into the share drive. You know, the AISR

10:12 people has been on DISA for years. So it's not an organized collection process when it comes to UAP. You're saying that people are just seeing things and deciding to kind of grab that clip and throw it into a folder. And this was just one of many folders, you know, that someone created before you got there. And you're like, oh, this is the UAP folder, I guess more essentially like that. But you're not suggesting it was like an organized collection effort. This was kind of just like the colleague to colleague, like cool folder of stuff. Right. Kind of. Yeah. Okay. Check this out. Yeah. You want to see this, this thing that happened a few years back, you know, and it just so happened UAP stuff winded up in there. Do you know when that folder was created? I don't know exactly what year. I know I've seen footage in that folder going back like 10 years plus though. And the system that you're using, I presume they're not constantly recording. So does that mean if someone did access information from the system, they probably clipped it in real time, more or less, or within some window? Is that fair to say? How it works is when I would monitor the

11:14 drones, there's a program called UVDS. UVids is what we called it on the zipper side. So how my workstation was, I had like two nipper screens, you know, green side, and then two zipper screens. Unclass and clash for those who might not be aware. Yeah. And so on the zipper side, there's UVDS, which is basically almost like a classified YouTube, right? The military has its own internet type of thing. And when you're tapped into that, you know, UVDS, there's like almost like a globe, a map of the world, right? And there's like every drone that's currently streaming live. And I could tap into those drones and I could maximize them on my screen. Usually I would have like nine drones up at one time. I'd be watching real time, you know, whatever I thought was interesting or something, a mission I was currently working on that I wanted to monitor the drone clarity and all that stuff, you know? How cool would that be by the way? You know, like, I think that's a pretty cool position. That was the best part of my job for sure. So basically, I guess, as they would say, monitor their situation. Right. But I actually was the ultimate. Yeah, the ultimate. Right.

12:15 Um, so I would be on these drone feeds and in UVDS, if someone like saw something that they wanted to save, there was a way to like clip it and it would do it in like five or 15 minute increments. I don't exactly know how it worked, but it'd wind up on like a highlight section. Right. And from there, you could download it into like, uh, your zipper files or whatever. And that's how it would be extracted into the share drive. Right. You know, there's no massive database of video files going back a long time that we could scrub. So this, you know, this folder is probably what we have from this. Right. Unless, of course, the government wanted to take this serious and actually implement, uh, systems that would allow us to either real time or, you know, save the data for 48 hours and do that type of scrub. So there's an opportunity, right. To gather more information, low hanging fruit that we could be taking advantage of in this conversation. All right. So you get in this folder. What, what are you seeing in there? I mean, what, what are some of these older videos look like? You know, we'll get into, I think here in a minute, what you were kind of seeing more

13:16 real time and whatnot, but you know, what about those, that first glimpse in what was in there? And oh, by the way, I just want to caveat for everyone. This was a few years ago. Right. And so no one's expecting your memory to be perfect here. I think, you know, we're moving forward in a culture where we can perhaps get this into more real time, but you know, we'll do our best with, you know, the timeframes that we've been dealing with here. Yeah. The first UAP video that was already there on the share drive when I saw was, uh, and I have to let you know, there's no, I have no like context operationally about what I'm looking at, you know, as operational security, right? I just see the date of the video. I don't know what the mission was or why we're there. I just get to watch, you know what I mean? Um, so this was a drone feed that I presume a drone feed. It appeared to be somewhere in the Middle East. It, it was over some village looked like a standard reconnaissance mission on a target, a building of some kind, but across the screen just comes streaking across as I can't remember. It was

14:16 like five to seven light, just white hot, you know, elongated rectangular shape. And they, they just streak across. And this was like a couple seconds long. The whole video itself was very short. How were they like right above like a village or a town or were they like a high altitude? Yeah. It was above a village. Yeah. Kind of like that downward looking like something's above it at some unknown altitude. Yeah. What were they in a formation of sorts? Yeah. It looked like a, like a delta wing formation, like that V, a V formation, right? But they're all individual objects. It was daytime. You could break out that they're individual. I couldn't, um, I don't know exactly what time it was because everything was an IR, right? Yeah. It was white hot against a more darker background of the village. Were they like a point source of like our energy coming at the camera or could you like make out like there was a center mass? No, it was just these solid streaks of light. It wasn't like, I guess, bleeding out.

15:16 You know what I mean? It was confined into a pretty solid shape, but it was just this bright. So there was like a defying trail behind these objects or, or perhaps you couldn't tell if it was a trail behind it or that was the object. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So it was hard to, okay. Interesting. So that was, that was the first, first one you saw. What else? Yeah. That was as far as for UAPs that was there. All the other, all the other videos on there, which we had like hundreds, right? It's all drone strikes or, uh, you know, bird's eye view of firefights happening from the past, you know, special operations, that type of stuff, you know, that we thought was really cool. That was safe. Yeah. So, okay. So you're in there, you see one weird thing and maybe you're just like, okay, you know, and bunch of other cool war footage and whatnot, by the way, cool and somewhat scary and creepy to think that, you know, as I was flying out there on some mission, maybe not this particular situation, but that you have, forgive me, but some, you know, kid, you know, sitting in some office somewhere in the United States, just like watching what we're doing out there, you know, kind of tagging along. It's

16:18 kind of, never really thought about that before, but. It is interesting. Cause you know, we're sitting there just doing our work and then the drones are up. A lot of guys just don't pay attention to it, but as soon as we see Lay's Des on the screen, it's, hey, hey, you know, hey, watch, you know, that's cool. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, you know, just who, you never know who's watching, you know, in these scenarios or who you're going to watch down the road. And we always kind of knew that was there, but never actually talked to those people behind the curtains. That's cool. All right. So, you know, I just, maybe this is a good point. So you see one weird video. I mean, what's your mind state here? Are you, are you into the UAP topic? Is this like, did you have context to be like, wow, this is one of those things I've heard about, or are you just not really sure what to do with this? Yeah. I mean, I've always been into this topic as a kid, you know what I mean? growing up, fascinated with UFOs, aliens, all that stuff, just like everybody else. How can't you be when you're a kid, you know? Like, yeah. Yeah. And so getting to see it, because I had seen like the previous footage that released like the gimbal and all that, the go fast video that you guys presented. And so that, that was fascinating to me. And

17:19 then seeing that on the sipper side, I was like, yeah, that's, that's legit. And I had talked with guys in the knock about this, like, Hey, what do you think that is? And you know, we'd debate with each other, like, no, that's, that's gotta be ordinance or that's gotta be something. I was like, no way. You know, I'm very familiar with how ordinance looks going through the air just from all the footage I've seen. And I remember I was arguing with one of the missile defense guys. Cause we're, we're broken up into sections, right? My section is called ESGS, which is enterprise satcom gateway services. You got cyber defense over here, and then you got AISR over here and so on and so forth. This circle around the commanders in the middle of the officers. Right. And so we, we talk about it and be like, what do you think that is? And lots of different ideas being floating around. You know what I mean? Some guys were like, yeah, that's totally anomalous. And other guys, there's gotta be an explanation. And there's certainly on the, as on the outside as well. Right. Remind me what year this is again, when you're getting in. Yeah. This was in 2023, 24. Yeah. Before the hearing. I think, yeah,

18:21 before the hearing. And then while I was there, I think you guys had the hearing and that's when I was like, oh, okay, you know, I should probably jump on this. So what happened next then from there? Happened next. I can't remember if I started seeing my stuff before or after your hearing. Right. I just know after your hearing very shortly before or after is when I saw the UAPs that I saw and then. On the sense, on this system. Yeah. And then felt compelled to reach out and, you know, report it. Well, let's talk about those experiences. What would you see? And again, this is now like on the real time feed. Yeah. Okay. I, we were working eight hour shifts. Right. So I was working nights at the time, the, the mid shift, you know. So daytime in the U.S. Oh, actually, no, this was. Yeah, this was in the U.S. Yeah, sorry, sorry. Yeah. So, um, I would come in and then I get all my stuff going, start working on stuff. And then I'd pull up the drone feeds and every day coming in, I would check the highlights and be like, all right, what's new? You know, anything interesting, you know? And one day there was a footage of

19:23 what appeared to be a UAP on there that I was like, holy cow, you know, what, what is it that I'm looking at? You know, and I looked into where the location was, where the drones were flying, when this was, you know, and I was monitoring these drones in real time out while I was at work. That was on the highlights, right? So someone else pulled it. Yeah. Someone else did. I went to an AISR guy and I was like, hey, do you see this video on the highlights right now? Like, can you pull this into the share drive? He's like, yeah, I can. Yeah. Did you ever figure out who pulled it originally? No, I did not not. I assume it was the AISR, you mean who uploaded it and the highlights to UVDS? No, who found, who like first discovered it, you know, like I'm curious to rationale what they thought when they first pulled it. I would love to know that too. Yeah. Now it's the way that UVDS is set up is like, you can see how many people have viewed it. It's kind of like YouTube, you know? There's also like a live stream function as, as it's going. Like, there's also like a live chat. Hey, I'm just live streaming from the skiff, you know? Hey. Hey. Yeah. So a lot of the times they would,

20:24 whoever was like the administrator of it, of it would like open up the chat at certain times. So you could communicate. The only time I ever saw it happen is when a drone's going down and everyone's typing Fs in the chat, you know what I mean? So, yeah. And, you know, so salute 07. That's hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know who originally put it up in there. Okay. So you, you see this video, what, maybe before we get into details, but you, do you want to say generally whereabouts, uh, it was, uh, detected and what platform detected it perhaps, or just vaguely. And then, um, what, what, what did they detect? Yeah. So we were using, in this case, MQ-9s. Um, and this was in the East China Sea, Yellow Sea, you know, in that region. What did you see? What did they see? So this first one, it was a single object, uh, spherical in shape, not a perfect circle. You know, they never are, it seems it was, but it was spherical. It was moving across

21:25 the water at a decent speed. I would say it was very close to touching the surface of the water. First, it was panned out as white hot and IR, and it was just tracking it going along. And then it zoomed in on it, watching it kind of almost tumble in a way. I couldn't discern if it was a somewhat uneven sphere. And you could see that it was kind of the flight path was tumbling, or you could kind of tell it's rotating. It kind of seemed to be both. Yeah. At times it'd be, it'd be moving like straight across the water and doing like this kind of tumbling motion. I wouldn't say it's going like end over end, but it has like this kind of bobbing movement. You know what I mean? Yes. Yeah. Do you have any estimate of altitude? It had to be gosh, a couple of feet over the water. Oh, a couple of feet. Yeah. Very, very close to the water. Did they have a lock on the object? It didn't have like an actual square around it, like a targeting square is what I would call it, where it could actually measure like the size and stuff. Yeah. Like the drones are capable of doing, but it was locked onto the target and or it

22:25 was moving with it or they were slewing it. Yeah. Either that or the drone operator was really good with the stick because he was following it. He's probably locked in some way. It's very hard. And it's like, it's jerky. If, if it's operator control, it's impossible to be smooth. Probably hard to estimate the size. I imagine. Yeah. Unless you have a comment on that. Yeah. So I know like in, in future events that I saw, they did get a, like a square around it to measure it as a tool that the drone can use, I guess. And sometimes it'd be, have one meter next to it. Other times it'd be three meters. So between one to three meters is my estimate. And there was also, I've seen it pass in front of a ship. This appeared to be a fishing vessel, you know, so in the right hands, that, that footage. The reverse engineer from there. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? So, okay. So you, before we get into these other sightings, you're seeing this fear, it's tumbling, it's kind of bobbing in the air. Do you have any sense of the winds? You know, is this moving against the winds? Is this moving with the winds? Is this moving fast? Is this moving slow? And how does, you know, how does this

23:28 video end? I couldn't get a really a sense of like wind direction. I could see like the waves, of course, uh, like the white caps and whatnot, but I, I couldn't tell direction and that type of thing. I could see like the way the drone was oriented and the angle it was looking at it from. But, uh, that information, I, no, I don't have that. Um, I would say it was moving at a decent speed. I mean, this thing had no wings, no sign of like propulsion or, you know, no rivets, nothing like that. And there you're seeing an IR image. And so you're not seeing like an exhaust plume or anything like that. When it got up really close on it, you know, the best way I can, uh, compare it to is the recent drops that came out. You saw the ones like, there's one that does move past a ship in the, in the latest drops they did. Um, it looks similar to that. And also the one moving between like those windmills and stuff. It looked very similar. Yeah. So you're talking about the drop from the department of war, depending on when this airs, that might best be referred to as the first drop, but yeah. Okay. I think we'll all know what you're talking about. Okay, up close. Um, cause it

24:30 did zoom in pretty close to it. And what I saw, it appeared to be like three vortexes on the top and bottom. Very, very faint. It was really odd. Uh, it was still like that white hot spear, but it had these three very transparent vortexes on the top and bottom and like side by side or like one, two, three. Yeah. And then, and, and the water itself, it almost looked like a, like a laser underwater. Like as the object was going across the waves right underneath, it was like this, almost like a point of energy. I couldn't tell if it was like a reflection or something under the water, like underneath it, but it was like a straight line of what looked like a laser or a very tight reflection of it. Interesting. Yeah. Potentially some kind of higher energy coming out the bottom into the ocean for whatever reason. Yeah. It's interesting how low it is too. Yeah. That's, that's, that's very interesting, especially, you know, if it is putting out some kind of energy into the ocean, you know, there's things we can learn from that.

25:30 How did, how did this video end? I mean, it just keeps tracking it for a while. And then it just, I guess the drone just like, okay, we're done and just lets it go off screen and that's it. You know what I mean? Right. So this one is somewhat ambiguous, right? It could be some kind of strange platform. We were not seeing this thing rocket off or anything, but it's a data point, right? So what happens next kind of, as you see this video and you're like, Hmm, you save it. What's next? Yeah. I told the ASR guys like, Hey, save this video. Like that's, that's pretty cool. You know? And so we did, we had it saved in there. And from that point, moving forward, I was watching every drone in that area and 24 seven, you know what I mean? And activity did pick up like the amount of assets that we're deploying out there almost seemed like we were looking for this type of thing. Hmm. And what gives you, what gives you that, you know, what makes you confident to say that? What did you see either out of the new availability of aircraft in that area or how they were searching the area that gave you that impression? When the first video happened that first event,

26:30 it was one MQ-9 out there, just in the middle of the ocean, which is already weird. You know, why have it flying a mission in the middle of the ocean for no reason. Right. And then after that incident, there'd be two out there split apart, like in different regions, almost doing like a search pattern and different sections. Right. So, and then they'd be working in shifts when one, a third one would be on the way to relieve another, the other one's going back. So they started continuous coverage in this area. Yeah. Which means they've prioritized it. Yeah. What else did they see? The second one was another highlight is when I came into work, looked in the highlights. I was like, oh, there's another one. You know, I don't remember how many, how much time had passed between the first and this one. It's been a while, but it was on the highlights again. I looked at this video and it was another object, white, hot and IR. Um, this one though, they switched to electro optical color, right? And they got it in three frames in color. And it was like this brown rust color,

27:31 almost, which is odd because, and the shape was different too, because an IR, it was the circular shape, but in color, it was almost, um, elongated, almost like a cocoon or like a peanut, almost. It was super weird, but we only got it in three frames because the drone couldn't get a lock on it and EO, but then it switched back to IR and was following this thing. And then it looked like a sphere in IR. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. All right. So brownish, rusty, peanut shaped object. Altitude? Couldn't tell. Close to the, every time it's always close to the water. In proximity of the water speeds or kinematic behavior. I don't think it was going like impossibly fast, you know, but it was moving, you know, especially for something of that, uh, that shape that like aerodynamic wise, that makes no sense. How far are we from like the nearest landmass? I can't tell exactly. I know on the third one that I saw, I did map it out. Like, okay, exactly how far off are we? And it was like

28:33 almost a hundred miles offshore of South Korea. And so this one kind of same thing, you see it and then they just disengaged from it or did it end in some other way? I think it was doing some maneuvering. It was tracking it for a while because it was trying to get it in color and IR, switching back and forth. Was the object maneuvering? Yeah, it was. This one was actually changing directions. It was almost doing like almost a J hook maneuver, you know, almost turning back away. Like a vertical one? No, I'd say like a turn, like a left, right turn. If I, if this is like the ocean here and like this, the angle of the drone, it was coming across and doing like a J hook like that, you know, and this, that's not the first time, the third video that happened as well. And in this second event, it was broken up into two different videos. I don't know why, but it's like sometimes in UVDS, the same event, just in different time increments will be broken up into different sections, you know, but it's the same event, you know. So now we're spheres, we're peanuts.

29:35 What's next? Yeah. Next one. Third one. I saw this live. And what's funny about this is I was coming into work to relieve, uh, the day shift guys. And cause by now we were chatting about it all the time. I was like, Hey, watch this video that, that I found on UVDS. That's on the share drive. You know, the guys were kind of getting interested in it. You know what I mean? And I'm like, well, how do you like, show me exactly what drones you're looking at so I can watch this stuff when I'm working. So I was like showing them. I was like, okay, you want to pull these drones up, you know, and I was doing it as an example. I was clicking this MQ-9 and when I pulled up the screen, it was on this UAP flying over the water. I was like, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah. You know, look and you shall see, you know? Yeah. So I'm watching this live with my coworker and I'm like, okay, yeah, perfect example right here, you know? And, uh, this one, we got it in color and IR. It was an IR, it appeared to be the same spherical shape,

30:35 but this one was like blinking like a star. Almost it was, it was different, you know, it got zoomed down really close, like almost filling up the screen and it was, uh, radiating almost like in IR. Yeah. I'm blinking like a star. Like if you look at a star through a telescope. Like pulsing kind of or twinkling? Twinkling. I'd say twinkling. Yeah. And can you make out a shape? Not really. Cause it was, it was very radiant. It was circular shape, I guess, you know what I mean? How do you interpret that as someone who's seen all this video? Yeah. I don't know, man. That's why I'm coming to you. You know, I want the people to see it so they could decide for themselves. You know what I mean? I want like analysis of it. I want to know what I saw. And you know, cause when it would switch to color on this one, it was a white sphere. Uh, almost like almost tic-tac looking, you know, just cruising across the water, you know, blue water, white object, IR. Could you tell the size of this one? Or this one got, this one did get measured by the drone. This is the one that varied between one to three meters. At first it showed the square

31:38 was like one meter and then I did it again. It was at three meters. Still down right above the ocean. Yeah. Does this have that tumble appearance or as the previous one did, or is this more? I want to say so. Yeah. Estimates of, of speed at all. If you're capable. I really can't say. Yeah. Maneuvering. I can't remember if it's on the second or third video where in color, it did this J hook maneuver and it came, it came down and it almost did a one 80 back the way it came this wide arc and went back the way it came. So moving intelligently. You're right. And this is more of the elongated kind of tic-tac shape or not that elongated. Cause I've seen like the rendered, like the example that they use of the tic-tac almost looks like a propane tank. Right. I want to say like a pill like that. You know what I mean? More circular. Yeah. Okay. What else about this one? As the drone was tracking it, it was trying to switch into EO, you know, color and going back and forth like that. And eventually it lost it. It had it like zoomed up all the way on

32:38 screen. And then it panned out like assuming that, you know, the height, the altitude of the drone and how far away it is from the object, it could have been like a couple of miles from end to end of my screen that I'm looking at. You know what I mean? But it was just gone. It disappeared. And you could see the drone like look like where to go. You know what I mean? And it was just gone. Yeah. I don't know if it went underwater. I don't know. That would have been great to capture. Yeah. It would have. Right. Yeah. What's next then? Did this continue? That was, that was the last one that I saw there. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And how much longer were you there? I was there to do like a probationary period with this company, this contractor, because I knew that if I was with them for a while, they had contracts in Korea, which I was trying to go back out to, which I eventually did. Right. You know, I was there for just over eight months, I think. What do you think? I mean, were you just not looking? Do you think they just stopped? You know, it seemed like it was somewhat consistent for a period and then nothing for eight months. What do you think happened? Yeah. Cause I know as soon as the first one

33:38 happened, like I mentioned, they seem to prioritize this, right? They had assets out there all the time, like 24/7. So they continue to have assets in that area where you're seeing the, the one we just talked about, the sphere that had gone on. So how, I mean, how many assets are we talking about here? Like I said, always two MQ-9s out there at least, right? Okay. A third on the way to relieve another type of thing. And they're, I don't know if you can provide a loose estimate, maybe a few hundred miles from a landing there like their base of operations or these things traveling, you know, across the world in order to do this. Not that far, but uh, yeah, I'd say within the endopac region, right? Yeah. So they are prioritizing this with, with local assets. Okay. So we have multiple instances, people are capturing them. A lot of times it's not even you capturing it, other people. I'd love to hear what else they've seen perhaps, right? Maybe they have their own folder that you don't have access to. That's what I'm saying. Cause you know, that's just our folder in DISA. I know there's guys in other skiffs somewhere that have

34:39 their own folders that are saving stuff as well. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's, it's hard. What's your, what's your mind state? You know, you're like, all right, I've, you know, we've seen these, this hearing has happened. What led you to, you know, what'd you do next? Did you report this to someone? I assume you've been talking with your colleagues a little bit and I want to talk about their reactions too, but you know, what, what happened next for you? Never really reported to anyone at DISA. Like, honestly, it's, it's a very laid back environment. Like you tell a guy, Hey, that's the aliens again. They're like, yeah, anyways, back to work. Right. Yeah. It's, you see all sorts of stuff at this job, right? You know, we're watching everything around the world. You know, there was really no, nothing set up within this to be like, okay, if you see anything like this, let us know. I never heard of anything like that, you know? So that's when I saw your guys' hearing and I was like, and then, you know, ASA was created, your guys' organization. And, uh, I reached out to you guys and I was like, Hey, I've very vaguely,

35:41 I was like, I work in government contracting. I've seen some stuff in the right environment. I'd like to talk about it, you know? So that's where I went from there. This was pretty early on. I think this was a time when we were, um, taking our witnesses to the relatively newly formulated Arrow office. Can you tell me about that experience? Once I made contact with you guys and, uh, reported what I'd seen in order to get and talk with someone in a classified environment about the exact details that would be Arrow exists to facilitate that supposedly. Right. I remember this was like, this must've been the early days of Arrow because I, I remember in the email chain, it was like, Hey, so, uh, if you want to talk to someone about this, I know you're not working with this anymore, but tell one of your buddies to email this super address. And I was like, I was like, are you kidding me? Like, this is it. This is the government, this is the government process for this. Like, that's ridiculous. You know, uh, I'm, I'm good on that. I'll wait until you guys have

36:41 something better going, you know, because that's, that's just Arrow. I think has been a controversial organization, you know, especially early on under the leadership of Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, you know, who I've interacted with. There, there is new leadership under John Kolosky, um, you know, who I've spoken with, and I think he is doing the best he can within, you know, the constraints of being within the DOD, you know, working on this issue. And even just recently, it seems like there's been some, uh, mending of the fences between him and that office, uh, and some of, some of the critics of the office in Congress. And I hope that reconciliation is earnest because Arrow has decided to, to cooperate with the intent of what Congress. Yeah. It looks like they've got their stuff together. Yeah. They are taking it serious. I'm, I'm cautiously optimistic. And, you know, I think as an organization, there's a role for Arrow to play. I don't think Arrow should be necessarily the whole of government owner on this topic. It's

37:41 too big just for, for that office and, and those authorizations that they have. But I am, I am optimistic that there might be, you know, a positive path forward for them. But regardless, at this point, under Kirkpatrick's leadership, you weren't getting the warm fuzzies that this was going to be a professional, clean process. And so, uh, we look for another path. What, what, what did we do then? Yeah. We got in contact with the FBI, surprisingly, the FBI took it really serious. They were actually all, they wanted to hear everything. And that was, that was pretty good. I was impressed with how they handled it. You know, I gotten a call with them and discuss things and, uh, they seemed to take it really serious because, you know, they're working with FAA and all this stuff. So I guess they're trying to compile their own database. Right. Which I was happy to help with, you know, um, it just surprised me that there's different government agencies trying to go at it themselves and compile their own individual studies of this. And there's not like a centralized place that they can pull it from.

38:42 I agree. There needs to be that. I think that people were perhaps hoping that arrow would be that, but they saw that there was perhaps a misaligned incentives with the DOD investigating what could potentially lead to the uncovering of illegal activities in the DOD. So obviously there's some, you know, misalignment of, uh, incentives there. And so while I would normally, you know, preach that we do need a centralized location, I think early on, you know, the time period that we've had over the past couple of years, it's been very productive to have multiple organizations providing independent audits, if you will, some of this information such that one group can't necessarily control the conversation. And I then think, you know, the outcropping of that is a more centralized trusted, you know, government database, uh, on the, it appears that like, you know, you have different agencies going at it by themselves. Well, it incentivizes the other agencies to be like, okay, we need to. At the end of the day, the FBI is better resourced and better staffed and has the experience to actually run investigations, right? That's not what

39:44 the primaries, you know, background and responsibilities of the staff, uh, arrow are. And, you know, just to be clear, you know, in case folks weren't aware, you know, a few years back, there was a small group of, of folks within the FBI who were earnestly trying to understand the situation, uh, and what national security threats, um, they might be able to address with the information collected here, not just the one, you know, not in a, you know, okay, UAP, but really counter UAS kind of mindset, but really looking into UAP as its own category. And that, you know, organization has grown when you come to ASA. And if your case touches on potential national security or classified information, or even certain, you know, types of sightings, because we are starting to pick up some trends that are important for national security, we asked a permission witness and let them know that, you know, if they so choose, they can do either a anonymous or, you know, or standard interview with the witness where there's an

40:46 ASA rep on the call and they get to share that information added to a data set that's extremely actionable right now, that's going to Congress, uh, and it's changing the conversation. Of course, if you come to ASA and you don't want that information to share, then that's the default state. So I don't want people to fear that, um, you know, we're just willy nilly sending their information, but I think most people, and you took this route, chose to pursue that as an avenue. Uh, why'd you do that? Yeah, I felt personally compelled to, you know, um, like I said, I've ever seen the hearing and seeing exactly our government's representatives capabilities of getting answers on this, which is almost none. It really concerned me. And that's, it was really concerning to me, you know, and, um, I felt personally compelled, uh, my own curiosity, you know, I feel like we have a responsibility to address this and we have the right to know, right? If indeed, you know, we've reverse engineered stuff or whatever recovered crashes, you know, that type of technology, you know, then that's, that's

41:48 American treasure, right? It belongs to we, the people, you know, and the people want to know what this is, right? So that's kind of my perspective on it. Your organization has been great for this. You know, you, you guys are the ones that put me in contact with the FBI, you know, you got me the route to arrow, you know, that didn't work out. Um, what I will say, um, to guys come up forward is, you know, the standard route, you know, arrow and, you know, the DODIG, they will facilitate a place where you can talk about the classified stuff. Now it's probably gonna get stonewalled. It might be released. We don't know, but it will be compiled there. You know what I mean? And that's in my experience is where it sat, right. Cause, uh, I think arrow did confirm that they saw those videos, right? The FBI, you got me in contact with them. That was great. You know, they're doing their own thing. They've been really serious about the topic, you know, and they did facilitate and accept the videos that, uh, that you knew where they were. I'll say, not that you had, they weren't in your possession, right? Um, well, good. I'm glad we had a

42:50 positive outcome from that. There's a lot going on right now. Congresswoman Luna has requested certain videos from the DOD. Did any of those look familiar? Yes. The list that she just put out, um, of ones that are supposedly going to be in the next drop. One of them, the date and time is in the region that she mentioned. I'm like 99% sure that that is one of my videos. And yeah, a lot of those drones, the names like toxic and wily, those are in the list. I've, I've watched those drones personally. I'm familiar with those names, right? Um, but yeah, one of the ones in that list is I'm pretty sure one of the ones that I I'm talking about. Yeah. Interesting. So I'm excited. Yeah. I mean, how's that feel? Right. I mean, you started, you know, in, in this dark, as I, as I imagined it, dark, cool office, you know, somewhere. And, uh, you see these things, you go through this process, you report it, and now you see that, you know, you're, some of the videos that you've been around are now being requested by members of

43:52 Congress. It must feel pretty good. I hope that all of them get released, you know, not just that particular one. I feel like context can be gained from all the ones that I've reported. Yeah. I think it's important, uh, that the people see it and decide for themselves. You know, I want it in the hands of people to analyze themselves and tell me like, what am I looking at? You know what I mean? Like, was this. And what can we learn from it too? Exactly. Right. Yeah. I think it's very important. Yeah. Now let's go into a couple of side things. Uh, you know, this is such a great conversation, but I want to remind people and ask you, you know, if you'll come back about a week after this airs and provide our, our members at Safe Aerospace the opportunity to pick your brain and ask some questions, uh, we'd love to have you. Sure. Awesome. Good. Well, great. So if you're, if you'd like to be a member of America's Safe Aerospace, just head over to safeaerospace.org, sign up to be a member, and you'll get early access to these interviews, invitations to private events. And you'll get to join our guests like Kevin

44:52 here and ask them the questions that you're begging me to ask right now through the screen. So you'll have that opportunity. You know, why, why do you think what you saw is a, a true UAP or something that, you know, could ultimately be understood to be something exotic versus perhaps a adversarial technology that we were observing? I would say mainly just because of the physical appearance of it, as well as the response of our own assets to it. Right. It just didn't seem like if this was some sort of unknown, like classified program, something we've built that we're testing out, the location makes no sense. Yeah. That's not worth it. You know, right. In China's backyard, you know, um, that, that wouldn't be the place to do that. Right. The, the characteristics of it, the location, the, how after the first event, we were starting to look into it more with other assets. We clearly prioritized it. You know, there's, they were, something's going on there, you know, that piqued the

45:54 interest of the DOD for sure. What do you think should be different? I mean, what do you think should be done here? Right. So we've, we've provided data. We've talked a little bit about there being a centralized location. What do you think based off of your experience and perhaps your understanding of where different data sets might exist? What do you think should be done? Hopefully more eyes come to this, the topic, especially the people who are working inside these environments, these classified environments. I think you should feel compelled to at least report, you know, through classified channels, and then just get, get it into the hands of Congress or whoever, whatever government authority is investigating this stuff for us. You know, you know, the, the folks that you, you worked with, did you hear anything about other, you know, things they might've seen that they didn't mention to you? Do you, what, what are your thoughts on other data sets or how common this is? You know, just what's the scuttlebutt that you've heard around this on your own experiences? Right. Um, I haven't

46:55 been in contact with the guys back at Dissa for a while. I know last time I did check in with, uh, one of my colleagues, he's like, yeah, the videos are still there. You know, they're just chilling right there. Anyone could come in and look if they had the clearance and, you know, so that's why, you know, coming to you, I, and knowing that like Burleson and Luna are looking into this very seriously, you know, if they wanted to go view those directly, you know, if I was set up in a skiff with them and authorized to talk about it, I could tell them the exact information, you know, it's relatively easy to find, you know what I mean? Yeah. So, and that's, that's kind of what I want guys to understand that are working in the field too, is that there are avenues for you to report this and this will get to the right people and they'll carry out the investigative work, you know, because I know a lot of guys are, uh, scared of like whistleblower protection and that type of stuff, you know, which is valid, you know, you have to be cautious and careful navigating, you know, the, the transfer, the sharing or the communication of classified information, of course, like I

47:55 mentioned earlier, I've, I saw it on my UVDS side. We saved it in our program folder there at DISA. And there's by now, thousands of people have seen this video, you know, not just our guys at DISA, because on UVDS, I guess it shows how many people have viewed it. Yeah. Let's talk. I remember I was talking about that. I wanted to address that earlier, uh, but I slipped past. So you did mention that, yeah, there's video accounts. I know we've talked about in the past how you said these are actually pretty popular videos. So who else has seen these videos inside? Do you think how many people? I don't know. I guess anyone on Sipper side that has access to UVDS, if they were there at the time and, uh, just so happened to be browsing through the highlights, they would have seen it. Do you remember some of the specific counts on any of the videos that we're talking like 10 or 15 people or? Eventually it was in the hundreds by the time I left. Yeah. So I've heard that there are large collections that people have been kind of chatting about, trying to play Sherlock Holmes on, trying to figure some of these out. And I think a lot of these are what we've started to see. I think the first release are probably some of the

48:55 more ambiguous ones. Yeah. Um, that are part of that collection, but I understand that there's well over 10,000 of those, you know, that are just floating around there. Some of them kind of combined into a central place, some of them not, but you know, that's part of, I think the work that's ahead of us is to collate that information, have real processes, right? We, we move a lot of data in the U S military. We can move this to, to understand this problem better. Well, awesome. This was really fascinating. Thanks for coming forward. Thanks for coming to ACE over trusting us. I hope it was a positive result. And it's been a few years, you know, since we've been working together and we've been looking forward to, to telling your story. It's been a long time coming. It has been a few years, you know? Yeah. Uh, and there's others like you that were, were excited with this podcast to finally be able to, to get out there and, and show people that, you know, this is common. This is something that real people are having issues with. And we do need these processes in place to resolve it. So thank you. No problem. Thank you guys, uh, for listening in. If you want to help ASA, you can become a member, get access to our videos

49:57 before everyone else, join our guests and ask me anything. Uh, and every subscription to like helps us as well, do our mission. So, uh, please subscribe and we'll see you next time. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.