PENTAGON'S FOOTAGE OF UFO

The UFO encounter :

Washington : US fighter jets were sent to investigate a mysterious flying object as it hovered off the coast of San Diego, previously classified footage has revealed.

A video released by the  US Department of Defence [DOD] shows Navy pilots reacting with astonishment as they tracked the whitish oval as it glided above the Pacific Ocean.

The footage was studied by a secret multimillion dollar progamme tasked with investigating reports that unidentified flying objects [UFOS].

The Peantagon has admitted the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification programme [AATIP] ran from 2007 to 2012 with US$ 22million in annual funding buried in DOD budgets.

The recently released  showed footage shows a 2014 encounter between an apparent object, roughly the size of a commercial plane, and two Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets, from the aircraft carrier  Nimitz.

Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Jim Slaight were on a routine training mission  100km out into the Pacific when they were asked to investigate the object.

The object has been detected appearing suddenly at  80,000 ft by the USS Princeton, a Naval cruiser, which had been tracking mysterious aircraft for two weeks.

''Look at that thing, dude,'' one of the pilots is heard exclaiming in the clip.

''It's rotating,'' he said.

Farvor told  The New York Times the object was about 40 ft long, had no plumes, wings or rotors, and outpaced their F-18.

''I have no idea what I saw  -it accelerated like nothing I have ever seen,'' he added,  admitting he was  ''pretty weirded out.''

The pilot's Navy superiors did not investigate any further and it remains unclear what the object was.

Experts say there is usually a worldly explanation for UFO sightings and caution that an absence of an explanation  is not proof of extraterrestrial life, says the Independent.