Air Force officer breaks silence over ‘red, glowing’ UFO sighting: ‘Not a joke’

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A former US Air Force security officer has spoken publicly for the first time about a UFO sighting in California 20 years ago.

In October 2003, military contractors working for Boeing and Air Force police witnessed an unidentified flying object (UFO) described as a “gigantic floating red square” flying over an air base in California.

The object was over 100 yards long and was allegedly seen hovering over a launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base, which is leased today by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The incident was not spoken about publicly for two decades, but recently came to light during sworn testimony given before Congress by Lt Ryan Graves in July.

Now, an ex-USAF senior patrolman, Jeff Nuccetelli, has come forward to shed further light on the eerie events.

“This is not a joke,” he told the Merged podcast on Tuesday. “These are contractors with top-secret clearances,” he said, emphasising the credibility of witnesses to the alleged sighting.

“These guys are trained observers,” he added. “They’re posted out there, you know, 24/7. They know what aircraft look like. They know what fishing boats look like.”

Mr Nuccetelli also revealed a second reported encounter with the “red square,” in which two of his fellow USAF police patrol officers “got buzzed by the UFO.”

He recalled the events of the day in 2003, saying he was getting ready to jump in the car when “all hell breaks loose and they start screaming over the radio, ‘It’s coming right at us. It’s coming right for us. Now it’s right here.’”

“It was hard to hear because they were screaming and they were scared,” the former USAF patrol officer said.

“This is all playing out on the radio and the dispatchers are communicating with them trying to get more information,’ Mr Nuccetelli said. “It’s just chaos, you know? The dispatchers are basically advising everybody to go on alert trying to get information.”

“When I showed up, it’s just mayhem. Everybody’s excited. They’re scared. Everyone’s freaked out,” he added.

Mr Nuccetelli said things calmed down at the scene when “the object flew off.”

He told the Merged podcast, which is hosted by Lt Ryan Graves, that he interviewed “about six people” who witnessed the event following the alleged sighting.

“Basically what they described was this object came in, was moving strangely, erratically. It got bigger and brighter as it came in,” he said.

“Then it came at a high rate of speed and flew right up to the entry control point, and stopped. And they all stared at it. And it just shot off.”

According to Mr Nuccetelli, this sighting was preceded by a separate sighting earlier in the day, after which three Boeing contractors signed sworn statements that they saw the UFO.

The UFO was described by Mr Nuccetelli as “basically just a big square object, the size of a football field, silently floating over the launchpad, red in color, glowing.”

“As far as I know, it wasn’t a cube. It was like a flattened square,” he added.

Mr Nuccetelli believes that at least 80 people are aware of the alleged sighting, and he has delivered what he knows to the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

His next steps, he told Lt. Graves, are to assist AARO in locating more witnesses to the two 14 October 2003 sightings.

“What I’m trying to do now is track down all the people,” the ex-USAF policeman said, “because my recollection of who was there, and all the particulars, and the details are flawed, right? Because I wasn’t there when these things happen. It’s all secondhand.”

Mr Nuccetelli added that he thinks investigators have taken great interest in the alleged sighting.

“The investigator that contacted me spent a tremendous amount of time talking to me, over an hour for sure,” he said.

“I felt that they were genuinely, genuinely, interested in the case. And genuinely interested in looking into it.”

Hundreds of UFO sightings have been reported in the US in recent months, a senior Pentagon official told CNN in October.

Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Pentagon office established to investigate potential UFO sightings, said that his office received approximately 800 reports of unidentified objects as of this past April, up from 650 reports in August 2022.

Mr Kirkpatrick added that there is potential for “hundreds, if not thousands” more reports in the future.

Public interest in UFOs is growing rapidly. A July hearing in Congress on the matter drew significant attention from the public after veteran and former member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency David Grusch testified during a congressional hearing that the US government is in possession of “intact” craft of “non-human origin” from UAP crash sites.

Meanwhile, public interest in UFOs was stirred up again in September when self-described UFO expert Jaime Maussan testified in front of the Mexican Congress that he had discovered two “non-human” corpses that are not part of “our terrestrial evolution”.

Mr Maussan’s claims have not been proven and he has previously been associated with claims of discoveries that have later been debunked.

A formal office to investigate reports of UAPs was established under the Biden administration.