A highly trained U.S. Air Force pilot on a classified mission reported a football-sized cylindrical UFO zipping dangerously close to his jet over California last September, according to newly leaked audio.
Flying a Beechcraft 350 C at 20,000 feet, the pilot, identified only as “Troy 21,” made a tense call to air traffic control, describing an unidentified, dark gray object passing just ten feet beneath his wing.
“This is going to sound weird,” Troy 21 told an L.A. controller. “But I just had something pass underneath my wing. Maybe a football-sized object right under my wing.”
This is absolutely incredible.. A football sized UAP passes right underneath a passenger planes wing. It was caught by pilots, video, and sensors. @NewsNation #ufotwitter #ufoX #uaptwitter #UAP pic.twitter.com/bdVfAOlQmd
— UAP Reporting Center (@UAPReportingCnt) February 20, 2025
The pilot, conducting a military-related operation with the Department of Homeland Security, was asked whether he thought the object was a drone. He wasn’t sure. While some military and civilian drones can reach those altitudes, they aren’t common.
“I’ve got my sensor operator looking for it on the camera right now, we’ll see if we can find it,” he added.
The sighting became even stranger when the pilot picked up an object on radar—this one 60 miles away just seconds later. If it was the same object, it would have had to travel at over Mach 2 speeds to cover the distance.
In a now-leaked recording, a different air traffic controller can be heard saying, “There was a UFO reported here, but that’s all taken care of now.” One controller later reported the encounter to the National UFO Reporting Center.
This bizarre event mirrors a similar UFO sighting by former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao, who reported two cylindrical, metallic objects flying dangerously close to his personal aircraft over Texas last summer.
Chiao, a three-time space traveler, was stunned. The UFOs he saw had no visible propulsion system and flew right at him before vanishing. “There was nothing around me other than the panhandle of Texas,” he told The Post. “Suddenly, these things appeared.”
These reports also echo Pentagon footage released in 2023, showing a cylindrical object flying at high speed over controlled airspace in Iraq.
Chiao voiced the same concern as many: Are these secret military projects? Or something else?
“What the hell are they doing flying where airplanes are operating? Especially under instrument flight rules? Why wouldn’t they be in military airspace?” he asked.
For now, the mystery remains unsolved.