Navy veteran mocked over UFO sightings demands public apology from Defense Department

A former Navy pilot has demanded a public apology from the Defense Department after being mocked for years following UFO sightings in 2004.

Kevin Day, a former Senior Chief Operations Specialist, wrote several Facebook posts after the government released its anticipated UFO report on Friday.

“From 2004 until 2009 when I walked away from [the Department of Defense] out of frustration, I had tried in vain to get somebody, anybody, to listen to me,” Chief Day wrote on Sunday.

“Yet, every time I tried to describe what we had witnessed ... I was openly laughed at, made the butt of jokes, and once even asked by my then-boss just WTF I had been smoking,” he added.

Chief Day wrote that “sociocultural stigmas about UFOs” prevented him from making his case to his superiors at the time.

“The stigmas also cost me a second career in [the Defense Department],” he added.

“I paid a very high price personally and I hold [the Navy and the Department of Defense] directly responsible for their complete and utter malfeasance and dereliction of duty which, indeed, did nearly result in AIR-TO-AIR mishaps with unknown objects and Navy aircraft in the years that followed.

“I also hold [the Navy and the Department of Defense] directly responsible for what I and others went through as a result of trying to uphold our own duty and simply do the job the American people paid and expected us to do,” he wrote.

“I and others deserve a formal public apology and a redress for the costs I/we paid?” Chief Day concluded.

In a Saturday Facebook post, Chief Day said he “simply do not have words for the vindication I now feel” following the release of the UFO report.

“I was laughed at, mocked, and talked about behind closed doors within [the Department of Defense] whenever I tried to describe what we had seen off [the coast of Southern California] in 2004.

“The price I paid personally might have been high but, knowing what I know now? Would likely do it all over again,” he wrote.

The then-Navy pilot began to see unidentified flying objects on his radar screen on 10 November 2004, according to a New York Magazine report from 2019.

The objects appeared on his screen again four days later, going into an area where pilots were training. Four pilots spotted the object, which was shaped like a white Tic-Tac.

One of the pilots, David Fravor, told The Washington Post in 2017 that it was “about the same size as a Hornet, 40 feet long with no wings,” adding that it was clear the object was “not from the Earth”. It hovered above the water before vanishing as the pilot got nearer.

“It was a real object, it exists and I saw it,” Commander Fravor told The Post.

“As I get closer, as my nose is starting to pull back up, it accelerates and it’s gone,” he said. “Faster than I’d ever seen anything in my life. We turn around, say let’s go see what’s in the water and there’s nothing. Just blue water.”

The report released to the public on Friday from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence indicated that the 144 “unidentified aerial phenomena” are a national security risk, but that no “single explanation” exists.