NATIONWIDE — The objects seen in three video clips from declassified military footage are, in fact, UFOs, the U.S. Navy has acknowledged.

• US Navy say it doesn't know what objects in 2 videos are
• Navy wants to reduce stigma associated with reporting phenomena
• Military crews aren't the only ones to report unidentified objects

U.S. Navy spokesman Joe Gradisher called them "unidentified aerial phenomena" to CNN and said that officials do not know what they are.

Captured by advanced infrared sensors, the objects in the video clips from 2004 and 2015 appear to be oblong objects moving extremely fast.

The 2004 clip shows one of the objects being locked on by sensors before quickly accelerating out of the frame.

Two 2015 videos contain audio from U.S. fighter pilots as they tried to make out what they were seeing.

"It's a f****g drone, bro," a pilot says to a colleague in the first clip.

"My gosh! They're all going against the wind."

"Look at that thing, dude!"

Citing safety hazards, Gradisher said the U.S. Navy wanted to be transparent about the UFOs, or UAPs, so trainees and pilots would feel comfortable to report any sightings.

Gradisher, in an interview with CNN, said that pilots often see unexplained objects but do not report them.

"For many years, our aviators didn't report these incursions because of the stigma attached to previous terminology and theories about what may or may not be in those videos," he said.

The clips were released by To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences between December 2017 and March 2018.

The U.S. Air Force was one of the first government agencies to investigate UFO reports, with the famous Project Blue Book, which ran from 1947 to 1969. Of the 12,618 cases that Project Blue Book investigated, 701 remain "unidentified."

More than military reports

For many years, military and commercial pilots and crews have reported seeing unexplained objects, often described as lights or metal saucer-shaped discs that seem to move faster than current aircraft are capable or make seemingly impossible turns or stops in midair.

A nonprofit group that calls itself the National UFO Reporting Center documents reports from citizens describing unexplained objects in the sky, dating from the 1970s. Its website includes a searchable database of tens of thousands of anecdotal reports of sightings of unexplained objects, many anonymously. Examples include:

• A "large orange glowing rectangle" was seen hovering in the skies over Land O'Lakes for about 3 seconds before it faded to black on August 10, 2019.
  
  
• More than a dozen oval lights spotted over Orlando and Orange County on June 19, 2019. "While driving home at 10:20pm, traveling West on Conroy road, South of Orlando, Florida, we watched 15 oval lights move very quickly over us traveling in a Southwest direction where they all stopped over the (Williamsburg) area and hovered just above the low clouds that were about 500' (feet). Then after hovering for about 10 minutes, each one in turn traveled in an upward direction until the light could no longer be seen. This was the most unusual night sky we've ever seen."

In 1986, veteran pilot Capt. Kenju Terauchi reported seeing three objects — two small ones and a large one he nicknamed "mothership" — following his Boeing 747 cargo jet for 400 miles during an Iceland-to-Anchorage flight on November 17, 1986, reported the Washington Post in 1987.

Terauchi, his co-pilot, and flight engineer saw the multi-light objects, and it concerned them so much that they asked the Federal Aviation Administration for permission to change course to avoid them, the Post reported. But the pilot of JAL Flight 1628 said the lights stayed close. During the 32-minute encounter, the objects moved quickly and stopped suddenly.

The FAA confirmed that government radar picked up the objects and said all crew members were "normal, professional, rational, (and had) no drug or alcohol involvement," the Post said.