Last week
The War Zone reported a
significant update in our ongoing investigation into a strange series of drone swarm incidents that occurred near U.S. Navy vessels off the coast of Southern California in 2019. A new release of documents via the Freedom of Information Act provided the greatest level of detail yet about what happened during the incidents. The documents we received last week made references to video files included in the briefs, five of which we have obtained from the Navy today.
Readers unfamiliar with the incident should read our longer piece here, which provides a great deal of additional detail and context on the events.
Two of the videos were taken from the
USS Russell, a destroyer that has been of particular interest due to leaked videos of the incident released last year. The unusual appearance of the objects in the videos led to widespread speculation that they were "flying pyramid" UFOs due to their triangular shape. In a recent
congressional hearing about unidentified aerial phenomena, Deputy Director for Naval Intelligence Scott Bray explained that "the triangular appearance is a result of light passing through the night vision goggles, and then being recorded by an SLR camera." Similar assessments were quickly made by
independent civilian researchers when the videos were leaked in 2021. While Bray's testimony and further documentation have cleared up that these objects were drones, it remains unknown
exactly who was operating them.
In the first video taken during an incident on July 17th, a sailor's voice can be heard narrating the location of the ship. The sailor identifies himself as the SNOOPIE team leader. SNOOPIE refers to Ship Nautical Or Otherwise Photographic Interpretation and Exploitation team. These teams consist of sailors trained to conduct onboard photographic intelligence in order to document unknown contacts and events of interest. The sailor can be heard saying, "we have visual of four probable unidentified drones, with course unknown and speed unknown. Contacts are operating at a range of a thousand yards, and holding. Tail numbers are unknown."
Jun 15, 2022, WZ (1 of 5 Vids)
www.thedrive.com
