Republican Rep. Tim Burchett said in an interview Wednesday that an admiral — whom he did not identify — informed him of an unidentified craft moving at incredible speeds in the sea.
“They tell me something’s moving at hundreds of miles per hour underwater… as large as a football field, underwater,” the Tennessee congressman told former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, who now hosts a show on right-wing news outlet One America News.
“This was a documented case and I have an admiral telling me this stuff.”
Burchett, known for claiming that the United States government conceals the existence of UFOs and other alien activity, stated that anything is possible given “the vastness of God’s great universe.”
However, he advised Americans not to be concerned about the suspected extraterrestrials’ extraordinary advances.
“I’m not worried about them harming me,” he told me. “I mean, with that capabilities, they would have barbecued us a long time ago.” There is no evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth.
However, Congress has taken a more serious approach to reports of mysterious flying objects, treating the once-mocked topic of UFOs — now commonly referred to as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) — as a serious issue.
In March 2024, the Pentagon issued a report stating that it had no proof of UFOs, claiming that many suspicious sightings were actually weather balloons, spy planes, satellites, or other normal activity.
The Pentagon denied claims made by a former Air Force intelligence officer during a congressional hearing in 2023 that the US government had recovered a series of crashed unidentified aircraft and even non-human “biologics” over the decades.
In November, the Pentagon office investigating UAP reports received 21 reports last year, providing enough information for the intelligence community to continue its investigation.
UAPs include a wide range of unusual objects or data points discovered in the air, on land, and at sea. The most well-known UAPs have been reported by military pilots, who typically describe round or cylindrical objects traveling at impossible speeds with no visible means of propulsion. Some of the objects were captured on video.
In recent years, the military has launched initiatives to assist pilots in reporting UAPs, and the Pentagon office tasked with investigating the incidents has received hundreds of reports.
Many UAP reports have been shown to have innocent origins, but one subset has defied simple explanation. The issue has received renewed attention from lawmakers in recent years, with increased concern about the national security implications of unidentified objects flying in US airspace.