Trump recounts pilots’ ‘very strange’ UFO stories but says he remains sceptical

United States President Donald Trump has recounted stories from air force pilots who told him they encountered UFOs, while saying he remains sceptical and has seen no evidence of an alleged secret programme to study unidentified flying objects.

“I’m not too much of a believer,” Trump said, while describing the pilots as credible people whose accounts he took seriously.

“They’ve told me things that are very strange. They said that, in certain cases, they said, ‘Yes, there’s something going on out there’.”

Speaking in an interview broadcast on Sunday on the CBS News programme 60 Minutes, Trump described meetings with pilots in the Oval Office during his first and second terms.

He said their accounts included a round object travelling past a fighter jet at what they described as three times their speed.

“They’re flying F-22s, which are the best, fastest planes, and something goes by them at three times their speed. It’s round, it’s not aerodynamic. Maybe it’s a comet,” Trump added.

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Asked whether a secret programme – unknown even to US presidents – existed to study such phenomena, Trump said: “No, and I haven’t heard of that. If there is, I’m going to find out about it right after this interview.”

The Trump administration has promoted an unprecedented level of transparency around UFOs, including the Pentagon’s October release of its seventh batch of declassified records. Critics have labelled the extraterrestrial spotlight a distraction from domestic controversies.

From both an aerodynamic and an astronomical standpoint, the notion that fighter pilots are pacing comets inside Earth’s atmosphere does not hold up to scientific scrutiny.

According to the US Air Force website, the F-22 relies on dual Pratt & Whitney F119 turbofan engines that require ambient atmospheric oxygen to combust jet fuel, capping the aircraft’s operational ceiling at around 20km (65,600 feet). Above that altitude, the atmosphere becomes too thin to sustain combustion or lift.

Comets, by contrast, are celestial bodies composed largely of ice and dust that traverse deep space. When Comet Neowise passed near Earth in 2020, its closest approach was still more than 100 million kilometres away, according to the European Space Agency.

At such vast orbital distances, comets appear virtually motionless against the night sky to human observers, making any visual comparison to a high-speed craft zipping past a fighter jet physically impossible.

Trump’s public remarks come amid an unprecedented push for official disclosure of government spending and intelligence-agency transparency about UFOs that began earlier this year.

In February, Trump directed federal agencies to systematically review and declassify government archives related to UFOs and potential extraterrestrial life.

The US Defence Department launched a dedicated website in May, initiating rolling disclosures of previously restricted files. The continuing publication includes cockpit camera footage, sensor telemetry, pilot interview transcripts, witness testimonies and inter-agency investigation reports.

The latest records were declassified on October 23, when the Pentagon unveiled dozens of historical files and modern incident summaries documenting radar tracks and encounters that military analysts said they still cannot explain.

Despite the steady drip of declassified material, the initiative continues to generate political controversy.

Some critics and political opponents have argued that the high-profile focus on extraterrestrial speculation serves as a distraction meant to divert public attention away from pressing domestic issues and political headwinds that the administration faces.

In May, former Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested the administration was trying to divert attention from high petrol prices, overseas conflicts and promised release of information about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“The most transparent administration in history still hasn’t released all the Epstein files or arrested anyone, but rolled out some UFO files today,” she posted on social media.