As UFOs 'Arrive' In News, See Latest Delran Sightings

DELRAN, NJ — UFO sightings never really left the news, but they’ve arguably never been more prevalent. Navy pilots recently spoke of seeing mysterious objects — with no discernible engine or exhaust fumes — flying at hypersonic speeds.

President Donald Trump recently said he was briefed on UFOs. A group of Senate lawmakers received a classified briefing this week about such objects. And let’s not get started on that strange Facebook video that seems to show a creepy-looking alien doing some sort of jig down someone’s driveway.

Virginia Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Warner wants answers on UFOs, whether it’s “weather balloons, little green men, or something else entirely,” Rachel Cohen, his spokeswoman, told CNN. And the Navy has drafted guidelines to allow pilots to report UFOs, and so that the military can track them, though the military branch prefers not to use the term “UFO.”

“So, we don’t actually use that term,” Joseph Gradisher, a spokesman for the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, told Patch this week. “We use ‘Unmanned Aerial System.’”
The term, shortened to UAS, refers to things like recreational flying drones people can buy at a store. For the “other” things, the Navy uses the term UAP, meaning “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.”

“We constitute anything unknown or unidentified in the airspace as an ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon,’ no matter what it is,” he said.

In that spirit, Patch took a peek at the most recent UFO — or UAP, if you prefer — sighting in Delran and New Jersey as a whole using a database compiled by the National UFO Reporting Center. Spoiler alert: So far, no little green men have been seen running around.

There were two sightings reported on consecutive days around Christmas in Delran. The first was on Dec. 23, 2018, when a resident reported a streak of light in the night sky caught on their security camera. The incident lasted one second.

"I have live footage of a very fast moving object appearing to be turning and climbing in altitude. It went over a large amount sky in a split second," the resident reported. "The camera lens was too slow to actually pick up its speeds. This leaving identical spaces in between the light beams. I caught it on my security camera. My neighbor just so happened to be walking out the door at the same time, triggering the camera. When I looked at it, I was amazed what it caught."

One day later, there is another report of a light that lasted 1.2 seconds captured on a home security camera. There are no further details for the Dec. 24, 2018, incident, and it's not clear if the same person reported both incidents.

The most recent incident in New Jersey as a whole was reported in Sicklerville on June 18, 2019.

Summary: Objects were in groups 6-8 Seem to be oval in shape Orange light or beam was on the objects. Objects were floating in groups

Duration: 30 minutes

According to data compiled by the Center, there were nearly 500 sightings across the country in May and more than 300 in January, March and April. The Sicklerville sighting is the most recent sighting logged by the trackers,

The Navy seems convinced of the existence of UFOs, telling POLITICO in a statement there were reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft “entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years.”

“For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report,” the statement said.

And Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress, told The New York Times last month he was one of multiple pilots who saw UFOs. The pilots began seeing the objects in 2014 and 2015 after receiving upgraded equipment.

Initially they believed they were getting bad readings.But the sightings kept happening, showing up at 30,000 feet, 20,000 feet and even at sea level. The objects could speed up, slow down and then reach hypersonic speeds.

“These things would be out there all day,” he said. “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.