Ryan Graves

Ryan Graves is a former United States Navy lieutenant and F/A-18F pilot who, in the words of his biography submitted to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, "served for a decade, including two deployments in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Inherent Resolve" and "was the first active duty pilot to come forward publicly about regular sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP)."¹ The same biography states that he "previously worked on advanced military autonomy applications at BAE Systems FAST Labs," is founder and executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, and is the first chair of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Integration & Outreach Committee.¹

2014 Virginia Beach encounters

In his sworn statement of July 26, 2023 Graves said that "In 2014, I was an F-18 Foxtrot pilot in the Navy Fighter Attack Squadron 11, the Red Rippers, and I was stationed at NAS Oceana in Virginia Beach," that after radar upgrades "we began detecting unknown objects operating in our airspace," and that in Warning Area W-72, ten miles off the coast, "two F-18 Super Hornets were split by a UAP," described as "a dark gray or a black cube inside of a clear sphere" that "came within 50 feet of the lead aircraft."² He said the squadron filed a safety report and "there was no official acknowledgement of the incident and no further mechanism to report the sightings," and "Recognizing the need for action and answers, I founded Americans for Safe Aerospace."² He told the subcommittee that "more than thirty witnesses have come forward and almost 5,000 Americans have joined us."²

2019 press accounts

In May 2019 Graves and Lieutenant Danny Accoin, both F/A-18 Super Hornet pilots of the VFA-11 Red Rippers at Naval Air Station Oceana, told the New York Times of unidentified objects they could not explain, flying up to 30,000 feet, appearing almost daily and showing no exhaust or engine plumes. Graves said: "These things would be out there all day. Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we'd expect." He dated the start of his experiences to summer 2014, when the squadron was training off the USS Theodore Roosevelt. The two pilots appeared in the six-part History Channel series "Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation," which premiered on Friday, May 31, 2019. The Virginian-Pilot reported that Navy representatives did not respond to its questions, and that a month earlier the Navy had told Politico it had drafted new rules for reporting "unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years."³

Questions at the hearing

Representative Anna Paulina Luna asked him to describe an event at Vandenberg Air Force Base; he answered that "in the 2003 timeframe, a large group of Boeing contractors were operating near one of the launch facilities" and observed "a very large 100-yard sighted red square approach the base from the ocean," information "received through one of the witnesses that have approached me at Americans for Safe Aerospace," who he said held "official documentation and records."² He told Chairman Glenn Grothman that the commercial aviation sector "has not adapted to the lessons that military has implemented," and, asked what steps should be taken, said "There needs to be a location where this information is centralized for processing and there needs to be a two-way communication loop."² David Fravor and David Grusch testified at the same hearing.²

Americans for Safe Aerospace filings

OpenCorporates lists Americans for Safe Aerospace as a District of Columbia domestic nonprofit corporation, number N00007627058, with filings dated March 16, 2023 ("Initial"), June 9, 2023 ("Amendment"), March 28, 2024 (biennial report), July 2, 2025 (good standing) and March 19, 2026 (biennial report), registered agent Corporation Service Company, and ten officers on record (names behind a login); a North Carolina foreign-nonprofit certificate of authority, number 3088984, was filed on July 16, 2025, with four officers.⁴ The Internal Revenue Service ruling date is January 2024 and the employer identification number is 92-2948733, with 2025 revenue reported at 77,745 dollars in the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer data.⁵ The organization's Forms 990-EZ and Schedule A figures are recorded on its own page. Graves's July 2023 count of almost 5,000 members precedes the 990-EZ statements of "over 8000 members" for 2024 and "over 30,000" for 2025.²⁶

Senate lobbying records name no client or registrant called Americans for Safe Aerospace.⁷ The Federal Election Commission database holds 392 itemized contributions under the name "Graves, Ryan" (reviewed in full on October 3, 2026); the listed employers and occupations include a physician at Banner Health, a Southwest Airlines pilot, an Arcadis engineer and unemployed contributors in Washington and California, and none lists the Navy, BAE Systems or Americans for Safe Aerospace, so no contribution was attributed to the founder.⁷