Video released by the Pentagon last April shows United States Navy pilots reacting to unidentified flying objects in the sky. Former President Barack Obama was asked about the UFO sightings and aliens during an interview with James Corden.
In the wake of an explosive "60 Minutes" story highlighting UFO sightings by U.S. Navy pilots, former President Barack Obama opened up about the existence of UFOs and alien life in an interview on "The Late Late Show With James Corden."
"When it comes to aliens, there are some things I just can't tell you on air," Obama said jokingly to Corden.
Obama said to Corden that he was eager to find out about real alien encounters when he became president.
"Truth is that when I came into office, I was like, 'Alright, is there a lab somewhere where we're keeping the alien specimens and spaceships?' And they did a little bit of research and the answer was no," Obama said.
But that doesn't mean we're alone in the universe. "There is footage and record of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are," Obama said.
Three videos that show "unidentified aerial phenomena" and Navy personnel reacting to one of them with surprise made headlines after they were released to the public by the Pentagon last April.
One of the videos was taken in 2004 over the Pacific Ocean as fighter pilots investigated a UFO that the Navy tracked for a short period of time. Two of those pilots, Cmdr. Dave Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich, spoke out for the first time on "60 Minutes" about what they saw.
"We saw this little white Tic-Tac-looking object… and it's just kind of moving above the whitewater area," Fravor said.
"No predictable movement, no predictable trajectory," Dietrich added.
The unidentified flying object was traveling so fast, radar could lock on to it for just seconds before it disappeared.
The other footage was recorded in early 2015 on the East Coast between Virginia and Florida.
Last August, the Pentagon announced that it was forming a task force to investigate UFO sightings that have been reported by the military in recent years.
"The Department of Defense established the UAPTF [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force] to improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs. The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security," the Pentagon said in a statement.
And now that UFOs are being taken more seriously, more people are coming forward with their own eyewitness accounts. An Ipsos poll found that just under half of all Americans believe UFOs exist and have visited Earth.
