Inside the 2019 USAF Emails: 'We Cannot Confirm' as Navy Wen

Inside the 2019 USAF Emails: 'We Cannot Confirm' as Navy Went Public on UAP

In September 2019, as the Navy confirmed that three widely circulated videos showed unidentified aerial phenomena, U.S. Air Force public affairs staff circulated queries from The Drive and The New York Times. Internal emails show the 633rd Air Base Wing and 1st Fighter Wing could not confirm Joint Base Langley-Eustis airmen witnessed the phenomenon, while the Air Force Safety Center said it does not track UAP unless a pilot nearly crashed — and OSD took the lead on all such queries.

Published

September 11, 2026

Declassified

Date not listed

Source agency

The Black Vault (FOIA archive)

usafnavyuapfoiainside2019emailscannot

USAF Public Affairs Scrambles as Navy UAP Disclosure Lands

Force found itself answering questions it had no apparatus to answer. The trigger was external: the Navy had confirmed that three widely circulated videos were recordings made by naval aviators during training evolutions, and that the phenomena observed in them had always been considered unidentified. Journalists at The Drive, The New York Times, Politico, and Aerospace America followed with pointed questions about whether Air Force pilots had encountered anything similar, whether the service had formal reporting guidelines, and whether it had seen the same increase in incursions the Navy described.

The email chain that resulted, archived by The Black Vault, shows the response taking shape as a public affairs exercise rather than an investigative one. Maj. Malinda Singleton of the Air Force Press Desk forwarded the queries down the chain, noting that OSD had taken the lead on all such queries.

From there, the work split along organizational lines: Air…

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Based on the official release at https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/air-force-spokespeople-e-mails-on-ufos-uaps/

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