President Donald Trump has once again pulled back the curtain on one of the strangest conversations of his time in the Oval Office. In a newly broadcast television interview, Trump said U.S. Air Force pilots told him they had watched a round object pass an F-22 Raptor at three times the fighter’s speed – and that the men who described it were anything but conspiracy theorists.
“They were the real deal,” Trump said of the pilots, adding that they had told him “things that are very strange.” At the same time, the president was careful not to sign up for the alien hypothesis, describing himself as “not too much of a believer.”
An F-22 left behind
The comparison is what makes the story so remarkable. The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is one of the most capable air-superiority fighters ever built, able to cruise at supersonic speed without afterburners and reach roughly twice the speed of sound. An object moving three times faster would be travelling at a velocity that no known aircraft can sustain in the lower atmosphere – and, according to the pilots’ account, doing it with a simple round shape and no visible means of propulsion.
Trump did not identify the pilots, nor did he say when or where the encounter happened. There is also no public sensor data, radar track or video linked to the incident, so the speed figure rests entirely on what the aviators reported to him.
Not the first time Trump has told this story
UFO followers will recognise the anecdote. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump told a television audience that “three or four pilots” had visited him in the Oval Office and described a round object “going four times faster than my F-22.” Back then he also said he did not consider himself a believer, but promised to push the Pentagon to release more UFO footage if he returned to the White House.
That promise has since turned into one of the most ambitious disclosure efforts in modern history. Under a presidential order signed earlier this year, the Department of War has been releasing declassified UAP files on a rolling basis since May 2026. The batches include military videos, FBI statements and decades-old Air Force reports – among them the recent account of FBI agents watching a silent black triangle rise over a mountain ridge.
“I’ll look into it immediately”
Perhaps the most intriguing moment of the interview came when Trump was asked about long-running claims that a secret government program has been hiding UFO material – possibly even from sitting presidents. Trump said he had never heard of such a program, but promised he would look into it right after the interview.
That answer is likely to be replayed again and again in UFO circles. Former intelligence officials and whistleblowers have spent years alleging that crash retrieval and reverse-engineering efforts were shielded from congressional oversight, while the Pentagon and its All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) have repeatedly said they found no evidence of such a program.
What we know – and what we don’t
- Pilots reportedly saw a round object overtake an F-22 at about three times its speed.
- Trump calls the pilots credible, but says he personally is “not too much of a believer.”
- No date, location, pilot names or sensor data have been made public.
- In 2024 Trump told a similar story, then quoting a speed of “four times” the F-22.
- Trump says he will look into claims of a secret UFO program he was never told about.
Skeptics will point out that the speed estimate has already shifted between tellings, and that visual estimates of distance and velocity in the air are notoriously unreliable – the same problem AARO has flagged in many official cases. Believers, on the other hand, will see something unprecedented: a sitting U.S. president publicly vouching for military pilots who say they were outrun by an unknown craft.
Whether the promised look into a hidden UFO program leads anywhere remains to be seen. But with new UAP files still being released and the commander-in-chief openly repeating the pilots’ story, the pressure for answers is unlikely to fade any time soon.
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