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• Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb highlights three "remarkable" testimonies from the Pentagon's 5^th tranche of UAP materials released on Friday, including a 500-foot silent triangle over Bagram.
• Loeb claims no operational aircraft matches that object's size and speed — despite publicly admitting his council has no access to classified data.
• A 1999 French military-intelligence report, only now surfacing in the same document release, warned decades ago that government secrecy over UFOs carries real political and defense consequences — a warning Loeb's own post never mentions.

By Samuel López | USA Herald

WASHINGTON - On August 7, 2026, the U.S. government released its fifth tranche of UAP-related materials. Within hours, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb — now leading the newly formed UAP Science Advisory Council — published a Medium post walking through what he called the most remarkable testimonies in the release. Loeb wrote that he was hopeful his council could, in his words, eventually "resolve the nature" of the anomalies as more data comes in.

But buried in that same document release is a paper trail with a very different origin story — one Loeb's post never references.

The Testimonies Loeb Flagged

Loeb pointed to three cases as standouts.

The first involves a September 2021 incident in the Gulf of Oman, in which the crew of a U.S. Special Operations AC-130 gunship reported roughly two dozen unidentified objects during a live-fire exercise. According to the account, two orbs approached a flare the crew had dropped into the water, hovered briefly, and then accelerated away the instant the gunship's weapons officer opened fire — after which the crew reported as many as 25 objects moving in coordinated formation at speeds approaching 1,300 miles per hour. Loeb noted the objects were described as "cold," which would rule out jet exhaust or combustion-based propulsion — though he also acknowledged that coordinated, high-speed drone swarms were already real, fielded technology by 2021.

The second case, drawn from an FBI report, describes an analog clock that gained roughly 20 minutes relative to two digital clocks during a UAP encounter — a discrepancy that reportedly persisted afterward. Loeb argued the scale of the anomaly rules out any gravitational explanation and instead points toward some kind of electromagnetic interference that affected the digital clocks but not the analog one.

The third — and the one drawing the most scrutiny — comes from two American pilots who described a silent, unlit, triangular object roughly 500 feet across moving at a steady 150 knots over Bagram, Afghanistan. Loeb's post states plainly that no existing operational aircraft matches that size and speed, pointing out that the Stratolaunch Roc — the largest aircraft ever built — spans only 385 feet.

“No existing operational aircraft matches this size and speed. The largest aircraft ever built is the Stratolaunch Roc (described here), which spans 385 feet (117 meters)” - Avi Loeb, Medium Post

That same set of pilot reports also referenced a separate, recurring phenomenon: dim, slow-brightening lights observed at high altitude, mostly between midnight and 3 a.m., across roughly ten sightings in different parts of the U.S. and North Atlantic since October 2023. Loeb walked through why the pattern doesn't fit standard satellite explanations — the viewing windows run far longer than a typical satellite pass, the timing falls outside normal twilight-illumination windows, and some of the lights reportedly changed direction, which orbital mechanics doesn't allow.

“No orbital mechanics produces a two-hour continuous visual event from the ground or from an aircraft.” - Avi Loeb

The Problem With Loeb's Certainty

Here's where the story gets complicated. Loeb has said publicly, on multiple occasions, that his UAP Science Advisory Council has not been granted access to classified material or data. That's a significant admission — because it means his statement that "no existing operational aircraft" matches the Bagram object's size and speed isn't something he, or anyone without a security clearance, is actually in a position to verify for certain. The U.S. military's classified aircraft programs are, by definition, not things Loeb can rule in or out. Stating it as settled fact, under the banner of his official council position, risks presenting an assumption as a conclusion.

The Report Loeb Didn't Mention

Nearly three decades before Loeb's post, a very different group reached a strikingly different set of conclusions — and reached them through a very different process.

In July 1999, a committee operating under France's Institut des Hautes Études de Défense Nationale — the country's institute for advanced national defense studies — published a nearly 90-page report titled "UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For?" The committee, known as COMETA, wasn't composed of fringe researchers. Its members included retired French Air Force generals, a former head of the French space agency CNES, engineers, admirals, and a national police chief.

Their conclusions were built on three years of work: interviews with fighter pilots, cross-referenced radar data, decades of French gendarmerie case files, and cooperation with GEPAN/SEPRA — the CNES division that has formally investigated unexplained aerospace phenomena in French airspace since 1977. Unlike Loeb's council, COMETA's investigators worked with institutional access most outside researchers don't get.

The COMETA report's authors reached a conclusion that made even skeptics take notice: they judged the extraterrestrial hypothesis to be, by their assessment, the best available explanation for a significant subset of cases — and they went further, warning that continued government secrecy on the subject, particularly in the United States, carried real political, religious, and defense consequences.

That report has now resurfaced as part of the same fifth-tranche document release Loeb wrote about. He referenced the release itself. He did not mention the French report — or its warning about the cost of silence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Samuel López is a Senior Legal Analyst, investigative journalist, and legal researcher for USA Herald, where his work centers on the conjoining of government transparency, national security disclosures, and the legal frameworks that govern them. With more than two decades spent analyzing complex litigation and high-stakes legal controversies, López brings his legal acumen to scrutinizing claims made under official titles and institutional authority. His reporting has focused on holding public statements to the same evidentiary standard courts demand.

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