Ovnis, une affaire d'États

On December 16th, 2017,

footage shot by the U.S. Navy

spread panic among the American population.

Until then classified as a top secret defense matter,

three videos of unidentified flying objects

filmed by F-18s were made public.

They would be authenticated by the Pentagon in April 2020.

The first video dates from November 2004.

It was filmed by a patrol

flying near the U.S. aircraft carrier, Nimitz.

In the footage, a capsule-shaped object

is performing maneuvers that defy the laws of physics.

On that same day,

the radars of the missile cruiser, USS Princeton,

confirmed the presence of several flying objects.

An F-18 patrol was immediately dispatched to the spot

and filmed one of what are commonly known as UFOs,

but what experts prefer to refer to as UAPs,

Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

Around the same time,

the serious and respected New York Times

revealed the existence of a secret program.

Tonight, CNN has learned

the Pentagon had a secretive program to research UFOs

like the one Fravor spotted.

The project was called

the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program

run by an official named Luis Elizondo.

Tens of millions of dollars

for the project were pushed through

by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

I was a leader of the Senate at the time,

and I went and talked to Senator Inouye from Hawaii,

Senator Stevens from Alaska.

They were the two leading members of Corporations Committee

that determined where money would be spent for defense.

They also controlled what is called the dark money,

the black money, that didn't show up any place.

It was secretive, it was classified.

And so, I asked them to meet in a secure room

in the United States Capitol.

And I said, "Give a little bit of background."

I said, "I want to spend some money trying figure out

what the hell is this all about."

the U.S. media leapt on these revelations.

The disclosure of the existence of a secret program

to study UFOs at a cost of $22 million

was taken very seriously.

Alain Juillet is the former head of intelligence

for the French Secret Service Overseas.

The fact that it was a US Senator

who insisted on this inquiry

shows that there was a very real problem.

And the American authorities decided,

due to the senator's request,

to carry out this inquiry.

And it did so because there were

a certain number of phenomena

about which American pilots, along with some others,

were asking very serious questions

due to the images they had filmed or seen.

In the States, the story hit the headlines,

and David Fravor, one of the F-18 pilots

flying during the Nimitz case,

gave his account on CNN at peak viewing time.

Well, the first thing is it had no wings,

so you think, "Okay, it's a helicopter."

But there's no rotor wash in the water.

There's no rotors.

This was extremely abrupt, like a ping pong ball

bouncing off a wall.

It would hit and go the other way,

and change directions at will.

And then the ability to hover over the water,

and then start a vertical climb from basically zero

up towards about 12,000 feet,

and then accelerate in less than two seconds and disappear

is something I had never seen in my life.

I believe, as do the other folks

that were on the flight, when we visually saw it,

that it was something not from this world.

For the experts,

this eyewitness account was mind-blowing,

and legitimized the film.

Until then, the military had rarely given its opinion.

a massive shift had just taken place in the United States.

The United States military has said,

okay, there's no need trying to keep all this secret.

So pilots can report these phenomenon

without fear of not being promoted.

They can report these to their superiors.

They couldn't do that before.

But the Americans aren't the only ones

to study this subject seriously.

Across the globe, a number of countries

have established organizations or programs

to carry out research into UAP.

In France, the SIGMA 2 commission

examines the most credible incidents like the Nimitz case.

So we tried to reconstruct

what had been observed during the Naval exercises

carried out around the Nimitz, the Princeton, et cetera,

between November 10th and 13th, 2004.

A certain number of repeated detections

were picked up by the radars between eight and 20 miles

to the South of Catalina Island off California

at 80,000 feet and moving at about 100 knots.

Now, 100 knots is extremely slow

for an aircraft flying at such an altitude.

Formed in 2013, SIGMA 2

was made up of fighter pilots, engineers,

military officials, and even astronauts

such as Jean-Francois Clervoy.

As for Pierre Bescond, he's a former director

of the space center in Kourou French Guiana,

where the famous Ariane rockets were launched.

I don't agree with scientists

who immediately say it's baloney.

No.

If observations are made by those

whose job it is to make observations,

like fighter pilots, for example,

then what they've seen isn't baloney.

If you don't understand something,

then you put it on a shelf

and wait till there's a better scientific understanding

of the physical phenomenon,

until the correct study of it can be carried out.

But you don't just discard it as baloney.

In my mind, that's nonsensical.

It's not a question of believing

in UFO's or UAPs or not.

Serious research is being carried on on the subject.

This radar detected 14 echoes

spread uniformly over a distance of about 100 miles

at altitudes of between 28,000 feet and 500 feet.

And these readings correlate with those from other radars.

SIGMA 2 works closely with the CNES,

the French National Center for Space Studies,

and more precisely with one of its branches, GEIPAN,

Group for the Study of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

For more than 40 years, they've been trying to shed light

on the origin of certain UAPs.

GEIPAN is tasked with collecting,

examining and analyzing sightings made by eyewitnesses

on French soil.

Indeed, it was one such incident in France,

very similar to the case revealed by the U.S. Navy,

which was behind the founding of GEIPAN.

A former head of the group Jean-Jacques Velasco

in charge for 21 years and now an independent expert,

clearly remembers the unsolved case

at the origin of the group's creation.

In France one siting in 1951

involved the air force.

Fighter pilots out on a patrolling mission

observed over the town of Orange

an object moving at the same speed as their own planes.

when they flew alongside to intercept it,

it suddenly accelerated

and flew off at incredible speed.

A report was submitted to the air force chief of staff.

And it went all the way up to the minister.

And then recommendations were made

to create a French agency

to collect and analyze data on UAPs.

And that's how Claude Poher, the ufologist and astronomer

at CNES was given the task of founding GEIPAN.

It was a very brave move

by the CNES at the time

to decide to respond to such questions and create GEIPAN.

It was very brave because it was a scientific approach.

Certain phenomena are cited that we don't understand,

so we'll question the people who saw them,

said about studying them and try to find some answers.

It was a very scientific approach.

At first patrol was sent out

to about 60 miles from the Nimitz.

A trace of foam was observed at sea level.

So one of the F-18s made a fast downward move

towards this area of foam.

There was an object described as a big Tic Tac,

which changed course and began to climb.

So there was a maneuver

which could be considered intelligent.

A second patrol was sent out,

but it wasn't until the third group

of F-18s reached the area equipped with infrared cameras,

that they could capture the famous images.

And along with the images,

the comments of the stupefied U.S. Navy pilots.

There's a whole fleet of them. Look on the S.A.

My gosh.

They are going against the wind.

The wind is 120 miles to the west.

Look at that thing, dude.

That's not a (indistinct), is it?

Look at that thing!

It's rotating.

Here was something undeniable as it were,