A former US Navy pilot weighed in on the issue of UFOs, saying they are “more common” than people think.

Nick Graves, a former F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter pilot, said he had previously encountered a UFO, and even reported sightings to the Pentagon and Congress. When news broke that the US military had shot down three high-altitude objects over Alaska, Canada and Lake Huron, he wasn’t that surprised.

“We were flying our jets from the East Coast to our work areas with our F-18s. And once we upgraded our radars, we started noticing objects in our workplaces that we didn’t expect to see,” Graves said Monday on FOX News.

“And we all saw it. We were seeing them on our radars. We were seeing them in our camera systems and our flare systems. And finally, we even saw them with our own eyes.”

He explained that at one point, his fellow pilots almost had a mid-air collision with one of these “objects” and had to file a distress report, so the rest of the fleet knew there was a safety issue. The crew who saw the object described it as a “dark gray, or black, cube inside a clear sphere,” Graves said.

The veteran operator describes the UFOs as having no conventional propulsion

The Navy veteran also said the aircrew routinely saw “objects” to fly in a “static” mode.

“They would be static against the wind as if they weren’t moving – when we were fighting to keep our aircraft in the area. At other times, they proceeded in a straight line or in a holding pattern, often at speeds in excess of Mach 1.0.”explained.

“They were also out there all day, whereas our aircraft usually only lasted about an hour, an hour and 15 minutes when we fly regularly, these objects would be flying at high speeds for most of the day.”

White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre said Monday, however, that there was “no indication” of extraterrestrial or extraterrestrial activity with the recent downings, citing that he loves the movie “ET the alien”.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin echoed that, saying that while the U.S. does not know what the objects are, “they are not a threat.”

“They are not a military threat to anyone on the ground,” he said. “However, they present a danger to civil aviation and potentially an intelligence gathering threat. And we will get to the bottom of the matter.”