Original subtitles

ANNOUNCER: This program is rated PG, and contains

ANNOUNCER: This program is rated PG, and contains

mature subject matter.

Viewer discretion is advised.

.

- [Narrator] Tonight on Unidentified.

- [Woman] What is that?

- That thing took off as fast as a tracer round.

- [Narrator] In 2019, the skies over the US

were teeming with unknown objects.

- [Cooper] No way, what the (beep)?

- [Narrator] More than twice the number of UFO sightings

than the year before.

- Just out of nowhere

an orange light just kind of appears in the sky.

- [Narrator] Were they extraterrestrial?

- [Older Camper] Wow. - [Narrator] Or a hoax?

- [Woman] What are those?

- [Woman's Companion] I have no idea.

- [Narrator] Now, as millions point smartphones at the sky.

- [Cooper] Just started filming it right up there.

- [Narrator] Can the team get to the bottom

of this historic surge in sightings?

- [Cooper] What is that?

(tense suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] Everything we know about UFOs is changing

thanks to a team led by former

Pentagon UFO investigator, Lue Elizando.

- That is real, whatever that is.

- [Narrator] And former top

intelligence official, Chris Mellon.

- This is a current and continuing phenomenon.

It's happening, it continues to happen.

- [Narrator] They discovered five unique characteristics

that UFOs have in common called the five observables.

They also released groundbreaking videos.

- [Narrator] That forced the Navy to admit its pilots

were coming face-to-face with unidentified objects.

- [Male Reporter] The US Navy

made a shocking admission today.

- [Female Reporter] Strange flying objects caught on tape

by their own fighter pilots are in fact UFOs.

- [Narrator] Now a new wave of military witnesses

is coming out of the shadows.

- [Obscured Man] I've never seen anything move like that.

Shape, size, speeds, clearly unidentified.

- [Narrator] The team is united on a new mission:

connect the dots to reveal the truth about UFOs.

- [Steve] This thing had no capability

like anything on Earth.

- [Narrator] And warn the world

about the dangers they might represent.

- [Hal] Carl Sagan once famously said,

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

He was absolutely right.

But now we have the proof.

(tense music)

- [Female Reporter] Authorities say they don't know

what they are, but there appears to be a growing problem

of unidentified objects flying through the sky.

- [Narrator] All across America in 2019,

civilians and military personnel

were witnessing bizarre craft.

In Texas, 13 reported sightings of flying disks.

In Florida, 27 fireballs.

40 sightings of floating triangles over California.

(shouting)

- [Man] What the (beep) is that, homey?

- [Narrator] But in North Carolina,

there were over 50 sightings

of something else: glowing orbs.

- [Lue] Well, howdy there, Shaun.

Good to see you. - Oh, yeah, you too, man.

What a gorgeous day.

- [Lue] Yes, it's beautiful, man.

- [Narrator] Lue Elizando is meeting with a former Marine,

who wants to be known simply as Shawn.

In his over 10 years of military service,

he never saw anything like what he witnessed one night

off the Carolina coast.

- So Shawn, I know a little bit about your background,

but do you mind giving me just a brief picture

of your life in the military?

- Yeah, joined the Marines in '91.

Became a reconnaissance Marine in '96.

It's a Marine that's, or an observer behind enemy lines,

surveillance, information collection.

- [Narrator] In September 2019,

Shawn was heading home after a fishing trip.

- Coming in, and instead of going to the boat ramp,

I just went on in the Carolina beach,

kind of tooling around.

It was a beautiful evening.

I noticed an orb over my head,

like not directly over, but maybe 150 feet in the air,

kind of following me.

I was traveling about five knots.

I go, "Okay, somebody's got a drone."

The first thought.

I was like, I couldn't hear it

and obviously my motor's super quiet,

so if a drone was buzzing 150 feet,

I would be able to hear it.

It was round, circular orb, reddish-orange

and it had a haze glow around it.

Wasn't sharp edges at all.

Man, maybe five feet in diameter.

- [Lue] So it had a color to it?

- [Shawn] Yeah, oh, yeah. - Orange-ish, red.

- So I took note of it.

I'm a reconnaissance Marine as well,

so I stopped, looked, listened, smelled.

The basic instincts will follow me forever.

I felt it was following me.

I was traveling about five knots.

20, 30 seconds.

- Yeah, that's deliberate.

- Yeah.

- And usually, if it's starting to go

in front of you or behind you,

but you said it matched your speed?

- Yeah, that thing took off faster

than anything I've ever seen.

Like it traveled as fast as a tracer round.

- [Lue] That fast? - [Shawn] Yeah.

- [Lue] Thousands of feet per second?

- [Shawn] Yeah. - Even bullets,

when they break the sound barrier,

they have that crack.

That miniature sonic boom.

That's what I wanted to ask you.

- Absolutely, no sound at all or thrust.

- [Lue] Right?

- Like power thrust or something.

- [Lue] Shawn is a trained observer.

He's just wired differently.

He sees this really weird, strange light.

The way he described this object really fell neatly

within several of those observables.

- [Narrator] Elizando immediately recognizes two

of the five observables.

Instantaneous acceleration and hypersonic velocity.

- [Lue] Instantaneous acceleration, because you said

within the blink of an eye.

It went from a hover directly over his boat

to disappearing over the horizon.

And of course, hypersonic velocity.

He actually used the term, "A tracer bullet."

Just taking off, but without any type of trail.

- I didn't think anything of it until it left.

The whole question is what did I see?

- Is it possible that these things

have a very rational explanation: IE flares?

- [Shawn] Every flare I've launched has a trail.

And it left.

Flares come, they don't go.

- You don't expect a flare to simply hover.

It falls with gravity because it abides

by the laws of physics and flares don't just take off

at breakneck speeds in one direction and disappear.

- [Narrator] To Elizando,

Shawn's sighting is eerily familiar.

- [Pilot] Hey, got it.

(laughs)

- [Narrator] Previously, US Navy Lieutenant Ryan Graves

told Elizando he and other fighter pilots repeatedly

witnessed orb-like UFOs off the East Coast in 2015.

- This is more like I was looking at a flashlight,

so just a singular point of raw energy.

I'm literally just seeing a flash,

a constant flash or flashlight shine out there.

- [Narrator] The biggest connection:

the orb-like objects were spotted near the same waters

where Shawn was fishing.

- Here we are right off the coast of the Atlantic

and in 2015, the US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt,

there were several pilots

who encounter something very interesting.

They describe these orbs.

These little round things that they couldn't explain.

- [Narrator] This area is also home to some

of the largest military installations in the US.

Could these mysterious orbs

be targeting nearby military assets?

- I did think it could be maybe

some type of foreign government surveillance.

- [Narrator] One troubling theory is that these objects

could be advanced Russian drones.

- If it's a red threat, that would be enormous.

If it was someone operating drones out there,

that would be enormous, too.

- [Narrator] A Russian spy ship known as the Viktor Leonov

was patrolling international waters

off the east coast of the US,

both in 2015 and near the time of Shawn's sighting.

Could the Leonov have launched such drones

or be coordinating with them to spy on the US?

- Is that something we need to be cognizant of?

If the Russians, let's say,

develop this new secret technology,

that they could launch a probe over our US cities

and at the drop of a hat,

take off at supersonic speeds without any signature,

would that be something you would want to know

that this technology exists?

- Oh, yeah, for sure.

Everybody should understand what possible threats

are out there from foreign governments.

- [Narrator] Elizondo's teammate, Chris Mellon,

is concerned with the ability of a foreign power

to penetrate American airspace.

- We're already on thin ice in terms of having

any clear idea of what these things are,

where they're from, who's operating, what their intent is.

Have we been technologically leapfrogged?

Could it be the Russians or someone else?

In either case, they don't seem to be ours

and that's the alarming, concerning issue.

- [Narrator] But can Russian spy drones

be the source of the dozens of mysterious orbs

reported last year over the Carolinas?

Can they account for the strange videos of objects

that seem to travel in groups of two or four or even 14?

Coming up on Unidentified.

- At first I thought maybe it was a helicopter

because it wasn't moving.

And then realizing there was no sound,

that made it kind of strange.

Okay, now there are four.

How that happened?

I don't know.

- [Lue] Are these technologies from a foreign adversary?

It's certainly possible.

Are these technologies from somewhere or someone else?

Yeah, it's possible.

(dramatic music)

sic)

(digital chirping)

- [Narrator] Lue Elizando has just met with a former Marine,

whose sighting of a reddish orb

could be a Russian spy drone,

but his sighting was only one of over 50 in the state.

- There's been video and photographs of these things.

They seem to be fairly pervasive here in the local area.

There's enough eyewitnesses here,

both on the civilian side and the military side,

that there may be a pattern.

Now what that pattern is?

I don't know yet.

- [Narrator] Now, Elizando's

on his way to meet Cooper Booth,

a restaurant worker who also saw strange reddish orbs

near Wilmington, North Carolina.

His were captured on video.

- [Lue] Nice to see you.

Thanks for taking the time to talk with me.

Appreciate it very much.

- [Cooper] Yes, sir, absolutely.

- I came here a few days ago to see if I can determine

if there's really something weird going on here.

Here I am at this marina and as serendipity would have it,

lo and behold someone says, "Hey, listen.

"You gotta talk to this guy

"because you're not gonna believe this.

"Literally like just the last few days he saw something."

- 10:00, 10:30 on Saturday night,

I saw a group of red orb-looking things in the sky

and they were in somewhat a formation.

An octagon kind of shape. - Okay.

It was just solid red orbs

and I was just like in awe of what I saw.

I was like, "Oh, that was crazy."

like they were right above me and that's when I--

- Really? - Yeah, it freaked me out.

It freaked me out completely.

I had to get something to show that I did see something.

- Do you mind if you share that video?

May I see it?

- [Cooper] No, it's on.

- [Lue] Whoa, yeah, okay.

(tense music)

- [Cooper] It shows red orbs in the sky.

They're kind of flickering a little bit

and it didn't look like they faded out.

They just closed in, gone.

- [Narrator] The objects appear to be moving

without any signs of propulsion or lift.

It's one of the five observables Elizando calls antigravity.

- Would you be okay with showing me specifically

where you saw them?

(tense music)

- [Cooper] I started seeing the lights right around,

once I got past this little treeline up here.

I'm just staring at it.

I wanna drive back and forth.

Poke my head back under the things.

"What is going on?

"What is that?"

- This is a young man who's been working all day

and just wants to get home.

These lights in the sky are so unusual

that he actually tries to chase these things

so he can take a picture so people would believe him.

- And I pulled up right up right here,

past that mailbox, hopped out of my car

and just started filming and they were right up there.

No way, what the (beep)?

So I was sitting right there

and they were right up there in the sky.

(tense music)

- And we're facing right now southeast.

- [Narrator] For Elizando,

the fact the orbs were seen near a US Navy exercise zone

raises the possibility they could be military in origin.

- They don't appear to be aircraft or helicopters.

No sound and these are these little glowing orbs.

The same orange-ish, yellowish,

reddish glow that Shawn had described.

What he witnessed is consistent

with what other people are reporting as well.

- [Narrator] One of those people is Chris Larkin,

who also captured a video of reddish-orange orbs

while fishing off the Carolina coast.

- Wife and kids went to bed.

It was like 9 o'clock.

I just had a couple lines then.

I'm just sitting in a chair, had some music on

and just out of nowhere,

an orange light just kind of appears in the sky.

No noise, no movement.

It was just very stationary, very silent

and it was very unexpected to say the least.

At first I thought maybe it was a helicopter

because it wasn't moving.

Because there are a lot of

military installations out there,

you do see helicopters out there all the time

and you hear 'em.

I mean, it's clear.

And then realizing there was no sound,

that made it kind of strange.

Okay, now there are four.

How that happened?

I don't know.

- Describe for me if you can

at the time the atmospheric conditions.

- Sure, it was very clear.

I don't think there were really any clouds

and I could see the reflection of it on the ocean,

so that's how I knew it wasn't that far out.

- When I met Chris, I was struck by his sincerity.

He didn't seem to have any type of agenda at all.

Frankly, when I asked him what he thought it was,

he didn't know.

He just wants some answers.

Now, whether these things are anything from balloons,

military flares, drones and the whole everything in between,

we simply don't know.

Are these advanced technologies from the US?

Is it possible?

Sure, very doubtful.

Are these technologies from a foreign adversary?

It's certainly possible.

Are these technologies from somewhere or someone else?

Yeah, it's possible.

- [Narrator] The objects described by Shawn

and captured on video share some similarities,

but Elizando wants to know are they the same?

And what are they?

He contacts retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Chris Cooke,

an aviation consultant and former top gun pilot,

to analyze these sightings.

- Hey, Lue, how are you?

- Mr. Cooke, I'm doing better than I deserve.

I appreciate it.

Mr. Cooke, what I'm gonna do is if it's okay with you,

I'd like to send you some videos to take a look at.

I'm not gonna give you too much information

and see what you think you're seeing.

- Okay. - [Lue] All right,

let's go ahead and watch that.

- [Narrator] They begin with the one shot by Chris Larkin.

- [Chris Larkin] Okay, now there are four again.

- So I don't know the orientation

of where this video was shot,

but you can see them flickering,

dropping down towards a possible undercast

or it could be smoke.

It looks to me like illumination flares.

Two of 'em are descending.

- There's no instantaneous acceleration

or crazy velocities.

They are following relative to what you would expect

some sort of illumination round or flare.

- [Narrator] Both Elizando and Cooke believe these objects

could be explained by military flares,

but what about those in Cooker Booth's video?

- [Cooper] These things are moving

through the sky and disappearing.

There's a third one right there.

- I don't if they could be planets.

I don't know if they could be part of the space station,

you know, moving across the sky.

- I had the opportunity to speak in person

with the person who actually shot the video.

He saw these red light, orbs, off in the distance.

No other stars in the sky.

No aircraft, no blinking.

And they were moving.

I'm pretty convinced what he filmed is the same thing

that continues to be reported over and over again.

- [Chris Cooke] Did he have any perception of distance,

of how far these things were away?

- I asked over and over again,

"How far away ..."

The problem, it's so hard to tell when you're looking

at a point of light on a black screen, right?

If it was just him reporting this, I would say, "Eh,"

but there were a lot of people I personally spoke with

who swear up and down they saw it.

- I honestly can't tell what it is.

- [Narrator] Elizando also wants Cooke's thoughts

on whether the objects seen by Shawn

could be a Russian sky drone.

- He felt this thing was intelligently controlled.

That it was actually following him.

And then after a short while,

took off like a bat out of hell.

Now that is unusual.

- That is unusual.

- Curious if you've ever heard of anything at all like that.

- I certainly have not.

- [Narrator] Lue Elizando and Chris Cooke

are unable to determine whether the objects seen

by Shawn and Cooper Booth are advanced drones,

and if they are, could that explain another rash

of sightings 1500 miles away?

Coming up on Unidentified.

- [Colt] Some would be really close

to the ground and hovering.

- [Joel] We're right here.

- You'd get close and they'd go up and take off.

- The most I ever saw together was about 10.

- You have this huge amalgamation,

this alphabet soup of federal, state, local agencies

all trying to figure out what this is,

and at the end of the day, we came up empty-handed.

(tense music)

- [Male Reporter] Local authorities

are investigating the growing mystery

of unidentified objects flying at night over Colorado.

- The media has recently reported a lot

of interesting sightings in the Colorado skies.

What has been described by local law enforcement

and other eyewitnesses as being

some strange lights flying in formation.

- [Narrator] After traveling to the Carolina coast

to investigate a rash of sightings of reddish orbs,

Lue Elizando is turning his attention

to a new hotspot 1500 miles away.

In late 2019, hundreds of witnesses reported seeing

unknown objects in the skies over Colorado.

- [Female Reporter] The drones were seen as far as Nebraska.

- [Male Reporter] Federal Aviation Administration

says they don't know what they are.

- [Narrator] Dozens of these UFOs were captured on video.

- One of the things I wanna do is determine

are these things really man-made objects

or is there something else to this?

- [Narrator] Colt Baker and Joel Wagner

are farmers in Northeastern Colorado.

- We first started hearing about people

in the northeast part of the state that had seen drones

and then one night, my neighbor said,

"Well, there's drones up in the sky."

So I went out and looked.

- I'd go out every night and look through my binoculars

to try and find them.

- [Colt] We started seeing them about 7 o'clock.

They'd come about an hour after the sun went down.

They started flying and we'd see them from there

for about two hours.

- The most I ever saw together was about 10,

but anytime I'd see two or three or four,

up to five or six.

- [Narrator] Night after night,

residents and local law enforcement reported seeing up

to 30 lights at once.

- A lot of people started saying,

"Oh, everybody just got a drone for Christmas

"and they're flying 'em," and we just kind of laugh.

We said, "No, there's no way."

We could tell they were much larger than a drone.

- You could tell they were pretty massive

just by the space between the lights.

- We know what we saw in the sky was not normal

and I can't say with certainty what it was,

but we know that there was something up there

that we hadn't ever seen before.

- [Narrator] Baker and Wagner use drones daily in their work

and are very familiar with their capabilities.

These objects did not act like normal drones.

- Some were going east and west,

some would go north and south,

and some would be really close to the ground and hovering.

And then you would get close and they'd go up and take off.

A few people reported that they turned their lights off

whenever they got close.

- Some nights it'd seem like they were on a grid,

just going straight some direction

and then some nights you'd see 'em bounce around.

- We thought it sounded like a small jet engine,

but the way they move, they would've had to have had

some sort of propellor also to change directions.

- Are these private drones

that are being flown by hobbyists?

Are they commercial drones being flown by professionals?

Are we talking about some sort of secret military operation

or are we talking about no-kidding UFOs?

I'm not sure right now there's really any way to know.

(tense music)

- Nobody had any real hard evidence.

A lot of people's videos were just a white dot.

Super zoomed in and all grainy

and it could've been anything.

- It's hard to determine what a ball of light is

when you're looking at the night sky.

It's very hard to get perspective.

It's very hard to get altitude and speed

because there's no way to relate what you're looking at

to anything else that's static.

- I have a night vision scope on my rifle

and I actually used that to film the drone in the sky

and then took a picture of the screen with my phone

and that's how I got the best look at it.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] As the number of credible sightings increased,

concerned authorities opened an official investigation

in early January, 2020.

It included over 70 different government entities.

- The FAA convenes a meeting and they bring together

a lot of the local counties, some federal agencies.

They brought some people from the state.

The feds were involved.

- [Narrator] Sam Tabachnik is a reporter

who covered the mysterious sightings for the Denver Post.

He says investigators used a sophisticated

surveillance plane outfitted with thermal cameras

capable of detecting a heat signature from 28000 feet.

- [Sam] Sending a plane up there certainly showed

that the state was taking it very seriously.

That the federal agencies were taking it very seriously.

- [Narrator] Despite the exhaustive investigation,

the objects were never identified.

- The Colorado Department of Public Safety plane

saw a lot of things and none of them were drones.

- [Narrator] With no official explanation,

locals were forced to speculate.

- Residents had a whole bunch of different theories

about what was going on.

Some people who thought

it was a Big Brother sort of situation,

where they were spying or they were mapping their houses

for some sort of nefarious reason.

People thought it was aliens.

- [Narrator] Could the objects be doing

some kind of reconnaissance?

But for whom?

And what purpose?

- We were talking to the FBI.

We were talking to Homeland Security.

We called the Air Force.

We called DOD.

We called Air Force bases.

We called Google.

We called Amazon.

We called drone companies.

We called the oil and gas companies.

- They said, "It wasn't us."

(tense music)

- You had this huge amalgamation,

this alphabet soup of federal, state, local agencies

all trying to figure out what this is,

and at the end of the day, we came up empty-handed.

Whatever is flying over the continental United States,

we better know what that thing is.

The fact that we still don't know

what these were, that's problematic.

- [Narrator] Lue Elizando and Chris Mellon

are also concerned that some sightings show the objects

flying less than 50 miles

from the F.E. Warren Air Force Base,

home to an arsenal of nuclear missiles.

- That area, it's very interesting

because that occurred in close proximity to some

of our strategic ballistic missile forces.

It's a very curious area

for these sightings to be occurring.

- There are sensitive facilities in Colorado.

You have Norad and Cheyenne Mountain, STRATCOM,

and all these organizations

that have been involved in national security.

So anytime you have a report of

some sort of activity that's not ours

involving some sort of sensitive military installation,

that always piques my interest.

- [Narrator] One theory is that the objects

were a classified test of military drones.

- Across the field of conflict,

there is increasing reliance on drones

to fill gaps and to do things that couldn't be done before.

Either to help you understand the enemy

or to destroy him.

- [Narrator] Tom Rogan is a journalist

who covers foreign policy for the Washington Examiner.

- [Tom] The ability of drones to move against an enemy force

to overwhelm it, to create mass destruction upon it

and to do so without any human cost on your side,

is highly significant.

- [Narrator] But Chris Mellon doesn't believe these objects

were being tested by the military.

- There's no clear reason why you would test it

over farms and ranches when we have very large test ranges

throughout the west provided exactly for that reason,

and if it had been a military test,

they should've promptly informed the FBI

and others who were investigating.

Something went awry if it was a military program.

- [Narrator] But the team still has questions.

If these objects don't have a commercial

or military explanation, then what are they?

And where did they come from?

Coming up on Unidentified.

- [Tony] I couldn't imagine not knowing

that this technology exists

and then just seeing something like this in the distance.

What is that?

- [Lue] Wow, can you imagine waking up

in a tent in the middle

of the forest and having this over your head?

- [Camper] It looks like a physical flying object.

- When you hear people say they reported seeing a UFO,

it was doing all the characteristics of that.

(tense music)

(digital chirping)

- [Narrator] Lue Elizando has come to New Jersey,

looking for an explanation

for the increase in strange objects

seen over the US from North Carolina to Colorado.

One theory is that these objects

could be highly advanced drones,

but can drones move in the ways reported?

- We are heading to the engineering department

of Rowan University to talk to some of the experts

who are on the cutting edge of drone technology.

From a military perspective,

we call it swarm technology

and they can coordinate with each other in real time.

- [Narrator] Elizando has been invited

by the founders of Verge Aero,

a startup company at the forefront

of drone swarm technology

to check out one of their test flights.

- [Lue] Howdy, sir. How are you?

- Doing all right. How you doing?

- That's pretty impressive.

I'll tell you from the road, looking at those lights,

I thought it was a runway.

- Did you really?

- And it turns out those are all drones.

- Yeah.

- That's unbelievable.

Let's do it.

- [Tony] Alright. Executing in five seconds.

(drones buzz)

- And just so you're looking at 130 individually lit drones.

Each one performs their own flight operation,

but they actually work together as a fleet, as a swarm.

(drones buzz)

They create objects and shapes in the sky.

- Wow.

Can you imagine waking up in a tent

in the middle of the forest

and having this over your head?

Wow.

And they go right back to their prearranged location, huh?

- Yup.

- [Narrator] Drone swarm technology

was first introduced by the US military in 2015.

It allows for hundreds of drones to work in coordinated ways

and conduct precise maneuvers.

- For the record, this technology,

at least from a commercial perspective

has only really been around now for how long?

- Probably the past two and a half years.

- It's possible but quite plausible

that people have seen drones like these

and confused them for unidentified flying objects.

And unless you are up close and personal

and see it's a drone,

it's really hard to tell what the hell it is.

- 100%.

I couldn't imagine not knowing that this technology exists

(drones buzz)

and then just seeing something like this in the distance,

of course, what is that?

It's an unidentified flying object.

But like with that mothership the negative space,

it looks like a physical flying object.

- That negative space,

it appears that there's a solid object behind it.

- Yeah.

(drones buzz)

This is pretty crazy to watch this final maneuver.

- [Lue] Wow.

You know, in recent headlines,

Colorado has been experiencing a rash, if you will,

of drone sightings.

Now, they call them drones.

We don't know what they really are,

- Yeah, right.

- But FAA has looked into it,

the military's looked into it, local law enforcement.

They can't find the people

who are driving or flying these things.

- Right. - It's they seem to be flying

in a very regimented flight path and pattern

doing either survey or reconnaissance.

- Right.

- What are your thoughts on what's going on in Colorado?

- It could be a system like this,

maybe some prototype system

that some tinkerers are working with

and they're getting pretty good at.

- So it would not be out of the realm of possibility that,

really, these are drones being tested

by either some large corporation

or unique military activity that people don't ...

They wanna remain

either anonymous or secretive. - Right

Exactly, yeah.

(door shuts)

- [Narrator] Elizando notices a line of spectators,

which could provide real time data

on how these objects are perceived.

- We're just driving down the street.

We had no idea what's happening

and we definitely ...

Kids are playing on their little iPads,

I'm listening to music, talking

and I'm like, "What is it?"

- "What the heck is that?" - Yeah.

I mean, I was like,

"That's not supposed to be there."

- [Woman] It looked a lot ...

We couldn't figure out exactly where it was coming from.

- [Man] When it disappeared,

I said "now, that's weird".

That's when I really thought.

We gotta be seen something that's not normal.

And it had me going.

- 'Cause it was spinning

- And it was spinning.

- Yeah.

- It was changing shape, doing everything that,

when you hear people say they reported seeing a UFO,

it was doing all the characteristics of that.

- If you didn't know better, it looked like a solid object.

Obviously got your attention, right?

- You see all the cars that pulled in here?

- I know.

- There's a parade of cars coming in here.

- These things are maneuvering so precise in the air

that the eye actually believes

there's a solid object

that is holding these points of light together.

And as we saw with just average American citizens

on the road,

they actually pulled their vehicles over

and looked at it

and the first thing they thought was, "My God,

"that's a UFO."

- [Narrator] Advanced drone swarm technology

could account for some of the thousands

of new UFO sightings in 2019,

but can it explain them all

and can artificial intelligence

help identify the ones that can?

(tense music)

Coming up on Unidentified.

- I would say that out of all the videos I've seen so far,

that's one you might wanna investigate a little further.

- Something's up there, dude.

What the (beep) is that?

- Now more than ever, it's really important

that we have the ability to differentiate

between those videos that are clearly fake

and then those that are authentic.

- Absolutely.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Lue Elizando has just witnessed

drone swarm technology fool onlookers

into believing they saw a UFO,

but can this technology explain all of the strange orbs

and lights scene in 2019?

And what about those captured on video

by some of the 250 million Americans

with smartphones pointed at the skies,

those shaped like triangles or Tic Tacs or fireballs.

- This year we had a lot of people

providing us hard video data

and pictures of what they believe to be UFO/UAPs

and a lot of these were actually very compelling to me.

However, equally frustrating is the fact that

cell phones are very specific.

They are designed to, in essence,

take a picture of myself, what we call selfies.

They're not designed to have a telephoto lens

to take pictures of aircraft that may be miles away.

Some point when you are zooming into an object,

it's gonna get blurry.

Plus you have auto focus issues.

They were good for what they're designed to do,

but not necessarily

for what we need them to do involving UAPs.

- [Narrator] Elizando is hoping new technology

can help separate the mysterious from the mundane.

- Hey Joe. - Hey man.

- [Narrator] Today, he's meeting with Joe Shurman

whose artificial intelligence program

is a potential breakthrough

in examining videos of unexplained sightings.

He calls it the Vault.

- So one of the things that's very, very interesting for me

is that up to this point,

we've been really focusing on the military individuals,

but there's a lot of average, Joe Americans

capturing images on their cell phones

and their personal devices.

And I think now more than ever,

it's really important

that we have the ability

to differentiate between those videos that are clearly fake

and then those that are authentic.

- Absolutely.

- [Narrator] The Volt uses artificial intelligence

to look for layering issues and pixel irregularities

in UFO videos

to see if they have been altered or faked.

It can also determine if the UFO has matched known objects.

- We can create libraries of known object types.

So that will discount some scenarios

where you had misreportings

of drones or low-hanging flights

and bad weather pattern type scenarios.

We would be looking for a frame irregularity

and color pixelation issues

at the same time. - Right.

- Oh wow.

- [Narrator] They begin with a video taken

in Salt Lake City

that shows three lights hovering and moving in bizarre ways.

- Basically, you can see in this video,

they're clearly behind those power lines, right?

And you'll see here that the object below here

appears ahead of the actual ...

It blocks right there.

It actually blocks out - Interesting.

- The power line itself.

What the system did detect was an appearance issue.

It shows a positive trend towards layering.

So what that means is this video

could have been taken separately

and then superimposed on top of a separate video.

- [Narrator] Another video shows a triangular UFO.

- What the (beep) is that?

Look straight up, dude.

Watch the spotlights.

I'll tell you when to look.

- Yeah, actually this one did not pass.

The pixelation is different between the surrounding lights

versus the light that is pulsating,

the bright light...

- [Narrator] The Vault flags issues with the focus

on the outermost lights

and pixelation differences on the pulsating light

in the middle.

That could mean the video was doctored.

- If you notice on the screen, there is a clear difference

between the surrounding pattern,

the pixelation of that object

and the pixelation of the background in the environment.

- [Narrator] These issues could also be caused

by low quality video.

- Not having access to the raw data

and spending more time

matching this up against another marker,

I'd say it might have a 20 to 30% likelihood of being real.

(plane engine zooms)

- [Narrator] Elizando and Joe Shurman

evaluate several more videos using the Vault.

Like this one showing a Tic Tac-like object.

- So labeling it picked up as a aircraft.

There were no issues related to pixelation,

no issues related to file manipulation.

It passed the gate checks.

I don't know what it is, to be honest with you.

- Fascinating.

- Fascinating.

- [Narrator] This one appears

to show several fireballs over Milwaukee.

(crowd talks)

- [Woman] I can't see

- [Man] It's the end of the world

- Vault has come back from a AI analysis perspective

and stated aircraft debris, weather comet, night sky stars.

The video is not altered at all.

There is no audio issues, no frame, no layering.

I would say that out of all the videos I've seen so far,

that's one you might wanna investigate a little further.

(calm music)

- At the end of the day, we're trying to solve a puzzle

and get to the truth.

Even if you can get five really interesting videos

from 1000, then you know, that's great

because now those five

are the ones you're going to pay attention to a lot.

For us to have the ability technologically speaking,

to determine whether or not something is legitimate,

is it real,

is it truly an unidentified aerial phenomena,

I think is tremendous,

- [Narrator] But journalist Tom Rogan

believes it may be impossible

to capture UFOs on video

because they don't wanna to be seen.

- Why in the era of a cheap, portable recording devices,

do we not see more evidence?

Is that in a lot of the most compelling cases,

whatever these things are either willing to be seen

at certain times or unwilling.

So, the expectation there would be

you know, some effort at a concealment.

- [Narrator] Coming up on Unidentified.

If technology can't answer all of Elizando's questions,

maybe his team of experts can.

- You have a lot of people reporting

some strange lights in the skies.

A lot of folks are saying no, they're just drones.

- [Chris] When we see Tic Tac shape objects

and then they're shooting up to 80,000 feet,

I think things that fall into that category,

we can pretty safely assume was not made by our government.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] Lue Elizando has been gathering new data

about the thousands of unidentified objects

that were witnessed across the US in 2019.

- There was almost a doubling of reporting of UFO sightings

and I think that's significant.

- [Narrator] Some of these objects

appear to be flares, others drones

and some seem to defy the laws of nature.

(crowd shout)

(digital chirping)

Now, Elizando and Chris Mellon

are meeting with the rest of the team

to help understand what's behind this surge in sightings.

- [Lue] Alrighty gents. Appreciate everybody's time.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] Hal Puthoff was a research scientist

for the CIA

and advises the Department of Defense

on cutting edge technology.

Steve justice helped run to Lockheed Martin Skunkworks

which builds some of America's most advanced war planes.

- You gentlemen will definitely know more than me

when it comes to whether or not some of these technologies

are being fielded right now

and if they are being fielded,

who's fielding them.

And could this be causing some of the confusion

and at least some of the sighting

that people are reporting to us?

- [Narrator] One possibility for the confusion

is conventional technology like satellites.

In 2019, a Space X launch of 60 Starlink satellites

created a line of mysterious lights

that spread across the sky.

- It's always been the case

that the great majority of sightings

have had conventional explanations.

It is true that some UFO reports

are the result of increased satellite activity,

either a launch or deployment.

- So now we have all these things in the sky

that weren't there before

and they're strange shapes

and at a distance,

they can trigger all kinds of reports.

- I wanted to get your thoughts on whether

what some of these people are reporting really

are nothing more than new technology

that's either being secretly developed by the US Government

or some private industries out there

and people are confusing those capabilities with UFOs.

- We now know that many of the UFO reports of decades past

were in fact, classified US platforms

being flown out of desert test ranges,

F-117s, B-2 Bombers and the like.

- U-2s.

- You can expect that to continue.

However, there are a residual number of cases

that are not explained by any of this technology.

And so we're still in a quandary

and we still have work to do.

- [Narrator] To the team, certain objects,

like the one witnessed by Shaun over North Carolina,

exhibiting some of the five observables remain unidentified.

- In given cases, you could take each one of these and say,

"Okay.

I can see a case there where

someone would mistake something that was one or the other."

But at the level that our pilots have been seeing,

I don't think there's a way to match that

into a series of false alarms.

- So when we see saucer-shape things

that are flying at hyper speeds

or Tic Tac-shape objects

and then they're making radical maneuvers

and shooting up to 80,000 feet,

I think things that fall into that category,

we can pretty safely assume or not something that's --

- Not one of ours.

- Was not made by our government.

- [Narrator] The team also cautions

against assuming unknown objects.

Like those seen over Colorado are drones.

- You have a lot of people reporting

some strange lights in the sky, strange activities.

A lot of folks are saying no, they're just drones.

- And then people assign drones to this phenomenon

because you have these giant stage shows

where drones flew in formation

and made patterns in the sky.

And so when people would see a bunch of lights in the sky

in a pattern becomes drones,

I always hesitate to label something

because instantly you stop looking elsewhere

for what the answer is.

- [Narrator] Whether the objects are drones or not,

the team agrees that if they are adversarial technology,

terrestrial or otherwise,

it represents a significant threat.

- I would say right now we are defenseless

in terms of our border areas.

The attacks that the Iranians undertook against Saudi Arabia

using a drone is an attack

that could be undertaken against

the continental United States today

if they had sufficient range.

So this trend is certainly

greatly exacerbating the security challenge,

particularly when it's combined

with other trends in technology that we're seeing.

- Whether you want to ascribe this

as being some drone technology

or super secret US technology or Russian

or advanced Chinese technology, great.

Maybe you're right.

Maybe you're wrong.

I would be very wary of anybody telling you,

"We know exactly what these are."

because we studied these in the government,

at least, in my group for 10 years

and we don't know exactly what they are.

(tense music)