WEAPONIZED with Jeremy Corbell & George Knapp - The U.S. Air Force Pilot Who Had A Dogfight With A UFO

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

Few military pilots have a career as distinguished as that of Lt. Colonel Ryan Bodenheimer. He flew 70 combat missions in Middle East conflict zones, was selected to join the elite Air Force Thunderbirds team, and spent hundreds of additional hours in the air as a commercial pilot. Until last summer, Bodenheimer, whose call sign is “Neo”, remained silent about his aerial encounters with UAP. Now, he feels like the stigma attached to UFO sightings by aviators has subsided to the point where he can share details about a staggering four different incidents involving strange objects he encountered in the skies, including one close call. In this episode of WEAPONIZED, Bodenheimer opens up to Jeremy and George about the objects he saw, what they might be, and why aerodynamics seemingly had nothing to do with their design. He also mentions his highly popular YouTube channel, “Max Afterburner”, which has half a million subscribers. CHECK OUT RYAN’S WORK : ⁠https://YouTube.com/@MaxAfterburnerUSA⁠ GOT A TIP? Reach out to us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ••• CLIPS : ⁠https://www.YouTube.com/@WEAPONIZEDclips⁠ MERCH : ⁠https://weaponized-shop.fourthwall.com⁠ MORE : ⁠https://WeaponizedPodcast.com⁠ ••• Watch Corbell's six-part UFO docuseries titled UFO REVOLUTION on TUBI here : ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://tubitv.com/series/300002259/tmz-presents-ufo-revolution/season-2⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch Knapp’s six-part UFO docuseries titled INVESTIGATION ALIEN on NETFLIX here : ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://netflix.com/title/81674441⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ••• You can now watch all of Corbell's films for free on YouTube Movies : BOB LAZAR : AREA 51 & FLYING SAUCERS ⁠https://youtu.be/sZaE5rIavVA⁠ HUNT FOR THE SKINWALKER ⁠https://youtu.be/TczkJ6UAQ8A⁠ PATIENT SEVENTEEN ⁠https://youtu.be/gDVX0kRqXxE⁠ ••• For breaking news, follow Corbell & Knapp on all social media. Extras and bonuses from the episode can be found at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠WeaponizedPodcast.com⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I essentially got into a mini dog fight with a UAP, and I'll never forget it. Normalize people talking about it. You know, these things happen. You're an expert trained witness and this is what you saw. Like this. It's moving like this. So there's nothing aerodynamic about this thing. It reminds me of like Mario Brothers like, hey, go through here to go to the next level.

Like, that's what it seemed like to me. Do you allow yourself to speculate what all these things are, where they're from? This is weaponized. This is weaponized. I'm George Knapp here in Las Vegas, joined by my friend and colleague, Jeremy Corbelle. How you doing, Jeremy? We had a good one today. Oh, yeah, I'm excited, man.

We're going to be speaking with somebody who, you know, has seen things for themselves and has a really pretty incredible background. You know, one of the cool things, the many cool things about living in Las Vegas, is it's the home to the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds, this precision flying team that travels around the world demonstrates the precision and the power of American Air Forces and the Thunderbirds, because of the proximity where I live, when they're in the air, a couple times a year they'll practice and then they put on a show over Nellis. When they're in the air, they fly right by my house. So I go up on the roof and watch them, and it's spectacular. These are some of the elite

of the elites in aviation. And I don't know if our friend Dave Fravor will agree that these are the best pilots in the world, but they're pretty close. They're certainly in the conversation. We've never been able to talk to a Thunderbird pilot about UFOs until, you know, a couple of years ago there was a considerable amount of stigma around this topic. But as of seven, eight months ago, one of the former Thunderbird pilots decided to come forward and talk about his encounters, UFO encounters, and I use that plural version because he's had more than one. You want to introduce him, Jeremy? Yeah, sure.

So I think what you're saying is true, though, it's really interesting. The Thunderbirds, I will hear more about it, but it's precision flying. So you have to have a lot of time in aircraft to be able to fly with that kind of thing, but you have to have a whole history before. So we're going to be talking with my friend, Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Bodingheimer. Yeah. Well, George, Jeremy, thanks for me. having me. It's really, really good to be here today.

George, sounds like the Thunderbirds need to charge you a royalty for that view of their takeoffs every day, man. That's awesome. Yeah, so I started in the Air Force, went to pilot training in Texas, got the F-15E Strike Eagle, dream jet, you know, twin-cockpit jets, basically, you know, the top gun jet for the Air Force, two people in that thing, very combat capable. So all the beeps and squeaks, all like different technologies that you could ever ask for. They literally update that thing every month with the newest technologies that the Air Force has. So DreamJet did that for eight years or so, yeah, a little bit less than eight years. And I ended up deploying to Afghanistan during that time

did 70 combat missions, 300 combat hours over there. That would have been 2011 through 2012. And then I came back and I didn't think life could get any cooler. And I threw my name in the hat for the Thunderbirds and yeah, just wild, a very rare, you know, chance to get selected for that. Got selected for it, moved to Vegas and flew with the Thunderbirds for about three years. You do about six months of training, two years of shows, and then six months of instructing and training your replacement. So that was the big military part of my career. Then I ended up flying commercial for about five years.

And now I'm basically full-time washed up fighter pilot on YouTube. That's my job now. Your name, Max Afterburner, that's a great name, and you've got something like 500,000 subscribers. So a lot of these are your fellow aviators, former military guys, I would think. Yeah, I think there's quite a few of them on there, yeah. And that's kind of what led me to do the UAP videos a few months back, I guess, now, was a lot of the people in the comment section were just like, hey, tell us about UAPs.

And that was around the time, I mean, you guys were getting a ton of press. You were doing great work. So I noticed you guys, you know, and you've since been doing great work. with the congressional hearings and just given aviators a platform to come forward and talk about this stuff. I think it's really great. So you guys have done a great job there. So I saw you guys out there doing it and I thought, hey, my subscribers want to see this. Why not? So and I think there's some positives, massive positives to this whole thing, which we can get to a little bit later too. So yeah, you've had a really a lot of flight hours, as you said, you know, 70 combat missions

and then, you know, working with the Thunderbirds and doing commercial flights. You spent a lot of hours in the air, but one of the coolest things is your call sign. You got to tell it to people. What's your call sign? My call sign is Neo, like Neo from the Matrix. It's amazing, man. As an elite fighter pilot to have the call sign Neo. Now, I know there's probably a story behind that, which I'd love to hear.

But currently your colonel or lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, reserves. Is that correct? I am. Yeah, reserves. Yep. All right. Yeah. Let's talk about stigma because you say it,

you got this great episode about your UFO sightings or encounters, and you admit, hey, there is real stigma about this for current duty, on duty military guys. And until recently, you didn't feel comfortable talking about it. Now you do. Is this something that you talk about with fellow aviators privately about the UFO topic? Does it come up? you know it came up for me after one of the experiences that i have that i'll share with you guys here in a second uh but it wasn't this like huge event it was literally me being like hey i just i saw that

out there on this sortie did you see anything and the other pilots like no you know and they kind of give you that no you know and that's that's the stigma in itself because i mean fighter squadgers it's high pressure high stakes jobs where you got to be dialed in they can't the people around you don't want to think that you're seeing things while you're flying, right? And that's understandable. Because, you know, in the Thunderbirds, you're flying three feet away from someone. So if they didn't see it, that's kind of, I think, where the stigma comes from. That's why I think it's great with Commander Fravor. You know, he had a whizzo with them, had another members of the formation. So I think that's where you can really have some discussions and conversations. But when you're

flying single cockpit fighter jets and someone else might not have seen it, you know, like if I was in the F-15E and I had the chance to talk with my wizzo's about it, which I do in one of the experiences, that was a lot less stigmatized and it was more of just like, whoa, let's, what was that? But in a fighter squadron, man, it's a high-paced life. So you can talk about it for a few minutes, but then you got to get ready for the next training mission or the next deployment. So it's not something that a lot of pilots spend a lot of time on. And I'll be straight up with honors with everybody. I told Jeremy this, we had a quick chat.

You know, I don't have any footage. I don't have any, like, actual footage of this. So my version of footage is trust me, bro, which is like, you know, so I just want to be up front about that. And I just want to tell my stories and have the viewers make their own decisions. So it's, yeah, look, man, I think it's rare that you get good footage to begin with, you know, that comes out, you know, military footage of UAP is really closely guarded. Even if people do get footage. So what I think is valuable, though, is you talking. about the culture. First of all, this is Air Force, right? So we have a lot of Navy pilots that have

come out and there's a culture within Navy. There's a culture within Air Force. We know Air Force has been really quiet, you know, for good or bad, they've been quiet about the UAP thing. So because you're Air Force, and I would like to understand, you know, kind of when you began and kind of where you're ending, if you're saying that there is a change, you know, in this culture by hearing people come forward, hearing people testify, you know, that that has inspired you to tell your story. There's got to be a lot of stories and studies out there were the people haven't talked up. So what do you see about the Air Force and kind of the silence of it? And was that kind of embedded within your training? Or is that just because of the mechanisms and how you run? Super good question. Yeah, that's a really

dialed in question. I think that's important. If you even just look at Top Gun Maverick, there's a reason why Top Gun Maverick was made by the Navy and not the Air Force. The access levels and just the different mindsets between the two services is vastly different. There was a, I was in pilot training and one of the instructors, we were talking about naval aviators and you got to call them aviators or they'll get really upset. So it's, you know, we don't want to bruise any egos. She said, she was like, well, with naval aviators, they have a little book that's this big. That's the things that they're not allowed to do. And it's just like a really small book tells them, hey, this is the stuff that can get you killed in the air.

Don't do this stuff. Right. And then the Air Force has a stack of books this tall. that says these are the only things you're allowed to do. Don't do anything else besides what we've done in these books, you know? And I get it. A lot of that is based on safety, but it does create a bit of a culture of a little less open,

you know, a little less discussions, a little more like, hey, was it in the book? If it's not in the book, why are we even talking about it? And I think that's changing a little bit. As I was kind of leaving the service, the Air Force started to focus on a thing called AFWorks, which is what they saw as kind of a, innovative branch of the military service. And I think it's great. You know, they're trying to adapt

and change. So that's kind of the first thing, a little bit behind the culture. And then, you know, just at the end of the day, Area 51 is like, that's Air Force property, in my opinion. You know, that is where the Air Force epicenter, the nerve center is. So, you know, there's going to be more knowledge. I think on certain levels of the Air Force than there is with the Navy. So you've got to be careful that you don't divulge something that's classified. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank.

Well, let's jump into it. So you came out with this episode seven, eight months ago. I'm curious also what the reaction has been from fellow pilots, aviators, flyers, whatever term you want to use. But the decision that you made to come forward and tell, not about one or two. You've got four, four different episodes encounters, right?

Yeah, yeah, that's right. I don't, I haven't heard too much, honestly, from other aviators. I haven't had too many discussions about it. And, you know, my channel is current events, right? So I'm doing a video almost every day and a lot of it's like high stakes deployments with Iran or, you know, what's going on with Greenland,

things like that. So I feel like maybe there was some comments that I missed. But probably after this, after talking with you guys, there'll probably be a lot more discussions that I can have with some fellow aviators. But yeah, I just, I felt like, you know, this might get into some of the philosophy and I'll just give you like one sentence on that. I kind of had a realization moment with all this UAP stuff because, yeah, I'm from, you know, I'm an Air Force guy. I'm proud of the Air Force.

I love the Air Force, you know. And so I kind of felt for a while that if I talk about it, I was, you know, maybe biting the hand that feeds me, right? But I've since thought about it. And I think this is honestly one of the best things for aerospace, space aviation, military combat aviation, because it's creating like an extraterrestrial arms race. And I think that's good because it drives engineers within the military. Engineers maybe right now at Area 51, if this isn't U.S. technology, they're looking at this and they're like, how do we do that? Or, you know, if there's some of these craft that have been, you know, gifted, you know, intertwining that into what looks like traditional. military hardware, that's awesome. Because now it's going to keep my fellow colleagues alive more.

And who knows, maybe some of that technology I was already using, unbeknownst to me. But I think there's so many advancements here from this, just seeing it, that can make aviation safer, can make your fighter jet safer, can make you more combat capable and to, you know, survivable. You know, you're up there flying in these austere environments, being more survivable and more lethal, super important. But if you want, I can just dive in to some of the encounters. Sure. I'll get off my soapbox and tell the people what they came here for. Well, before you do, our friend Dave Fraver, the reaction he had after seeing the Tic Tac and chasing it and see what it could do, he was amazed. He wasn't freaked out. He was amazed at what he told us, Jeremy, you would recall, I want to fly that thing. That's what he said.

I love it. Yeah. I think that's a great perspective. So I guess I'll start there with what was kind of the most similar to a ticker. tech that I saw. This was in 2010 to 2012-ish time frame. So right before I was preparing to deploy, we were doing a lot of operations off the east coast of the U.S. So it's called the whiskey areas out there. There are MOA. So there's ships and things operating below you. You know, commerce is happening below you. But you're up there and you typically own, typically it's like you own like a thousand feet above the water, sometimes surface up to like 60,000 feet. So you own like all that airspace, which is great for training, right? You can do all kinds of different situations,

defensive counterair, offensive counter air, strategic strike, like all this stuff. But typically, I mean, it was happening almost every sortie where at the end of it, you've completed your training mission, you've done your big air war. And then on the way out, the weapon systems operator in the back has, you know, this amazing, we call it like a Gucci technology, which just means fancy. it's a targeting pod I mean you can just see amazing things I can't give the exact numbers

on what you can see with it let's just for the sake of this it's amazing what you can actually see with this thing but on the way out of the airspace for almost every sortie we would see these little orbs and to me they looked like a sphere

but not maybe half the size of a car is what I would estimate based on some of the ranging that you can see in that targeting pod and then a lot of times they'd be, you know, going with the wind or going opposite direction of the wind. It seems like the wind didn't really matter for the flight path of these things. And the weapon systems operate in the back, you know, would just cue these up and try to track it. And sometimes it was

hard to track because we were far away or the object was a little too small. So when I started to see, I think it was, there were some other sightings off the coast, off the east coast. I started to see some pilots come forward and I thought, well, yeah, we've seen these a lot. So So that's just something that I think was a normal thing for us, where we were just like, yep, it's more of these orbs. And then we would think that, hey, maybe these were launching from ships, like there were small drones because there was tons of big container ships or oil tanker type ships below us.

So we kind of just wrote it off as that. But that was kind of my first experience. So an orb doesn't really look like a drone that we know of, right? And they're going against the wind in some cases. So likely not a balloon? Yeah, I would say not a balloon just based on going against the wind. And then I didn't see any like quadcopter type things, you know, on it that you could, you probably would be able to see at least on some of them.

You'd be close enough on some of them to see that. And then some of them would just disappear. You know, while they're being tracked, they would just disappear. So, you know, that's something that we saw as well. So again, we don't really know what it was, but it was kind of, it became like a bit of a game for the weapons systems operator. Because it's hard sometimes to track those things to keep the cursors on them. And so, you know, I'd hear from the backseat, oh, I got this one. I got, I got another one.

It was like fishing in the back seat, which is holding their skills for other things. It pops up on a screen or a sensor as you're getting closer to it in general? Oh, you have it on the screen the whole time. So you have these multi-function displays in your cockpit. And so you just, you know, while you can see it, it's appearing on your screen all the time. But then as you kind of fly the fighter jet around the airspace, like this camera, you know, it can't look through metal. And so if the actual jet itself, you know, gets in between the visuals,

then it'll just break contact and you can't see it. But yeah, it'll be on your screen the whole time. And you can flip through those screens. You can see the screen that the weapons system operator in the back is using, or you can be on something else. So it's super, like really great user interface in those fighter jets to be able to see that. And so the weapons system operators, when they're back there tracking things and you're flipping through, you can see exactly what they're.

So you're looking at like thermal imagery if they're taking thermal imagery. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. And so you've probably seen out of these thousands and thousands of hours of flight time. And also when you're flying on your own compared to having a backseater, you probably seen a lot of this type of footage before, right? I think it was it was it Graves, the F-18 pilot who came forward with some footage, like Tick-Tac type footage?

Commander Underwood filmed the Tick-Tick-Tuck UFO footage. and then there have been other pilots that have brought stuff forward through Ryan Graves, yeah. Yeah, so I remember seeing that, and I think there was one, there was a video where I think it was the backseater in the F-18, you know, their Navy F-18s saying like, this thing's going against the wind

or something like that. So, yeah, so I remember I've seen that footage and it just kind of queued in my brain, like, oh, yeah, I've seen that before. Well, I'm sorry, I'm leading your question here is that, George and I have some other footage. We'd love to show you at some point, maybe not today, but just,

you know, we're trying to determine if you're seeing a sphere or like an orb, you know, people like to just throw out this debunk. Well, these are, you know, birds or balloons. And I'm just wondering when you go in and you look, you're actually out there, find these missions. I mean, it's not typical for a wizzo to lock onto a bird, right? I mean, they've all told me it's not, you know, in your experience. Yeah, that's not a normal thing. I don't think I ever saw that, you know, unless it was a massive bird. Unless there's a teradactyl out there. I don't think we're going to see them lock onto a bird.

Yeah, okay. But yeah, happy to look at it after this, for sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So that was kind of the basic thing is you go to the East Coast and you said more often than not is our previous conversation. You know, you're out there and you're seeing these unidentified or at least you're picking them up on radar and it becomes kind of a game. We've heard that over and over and over.

George reported on that that every day that there were these encounters and sightings and, you know, it was a mid-air collision issue, at least potentially. And nobody believed George when he first reported on that. And now we know it is true and that that is something. And you're kind of, you're just confirming that on the East Coast that's what you were experiencing. Yeah, I never had any mid-air collision scares with these orbs. They're typically, you know, pretty far away from us when we pick them up. So, but yeah, I mean, you know, even a, you know, a drone or something like that,

something even really small is going to be very damaging to a fighter jet. So, yeah, you would want to avoid if you could pick these things up and you saw them, you wouldn't like want to fly near it, you know, just for safety reasons. When you come back from that flight, that training flight, do you tell anybody? Is there a reporting process for pilots? Yeah, there's like after-action reports we can do. So a lot of times we would write up a few of those encounters and then it basically goes in a safe. And yeah, I don't know.

I don't know what happens from there. It gets delivered to the Intel department in the fighter squadron. Every fighter squadron has its own little intelligence office. And so at the time, I mean, we were preparing for, you know, combat. So for us, we're like, okay, cool. Here's that sheet of paper. We got other things to think about. See you.

All right. So the Air Force, they're going to lock that up because there's no, like, you know, reporting structure, like in the Navy where they're saying you should be reporting UAP, right? Yeah. I never really got, well, I was in. And this could have changed. You know, when I was flying fighters full time, that was never really an avenue for that. I think, I think maybe towards the end, you know, a few more discussions would happen with our intelligence, you know, officers in the vault. And, but that was pretty much it.

All right. Episode two. Episode two. All right. So this one, I think this one's probably my favorite one. And the reason why is because I feel like I essentially got into a mini dog fight with a UAP. And I'll never forget it. I mean, what we were doing was we were coming back.

This is when I was actually on the Thunderbirds. And we'd come back for a Thunderbird pitch where you come in, you're 400 or so feet above the ground and you're in tight formation. And everybody pitches sequentially and then lands. So this was at Niles. This was right by George's house here. And so we're coming back in. And I'm looking at the boss, who I stay in formation position with.

And then something catches my eye. And all of a sudden, what I see is all, the only way I can describe it is a triangle-shaped fighter-looking UAP. And the reason why I say fighters, because this thing just looked like it was built for speed. I mean, if you look at the difference between a commercial airliner versus an F-15, it's obvious which one's built for speed, right? So this one had like a diamond or a triangle shape with the front of it, kind of looking like a, you know, a copperhead snake.

you know, it looks very aggressive and it had what looked to me to be some sort of welding marks on it. And it reminded me of the same look of a cyber truck now. You know, now that I've seen that cyber trucks, I'm like, oh, yeah, that reminds me of the UAP I saw. So almost like an unfinished paint job on this thing. But yeah, triangle and it came past me, dusted me off. And that's a move that we actually use in dog fights is a dust off where you do a merge and you get really close. You know, if you're in combat, you want to rattle the other pilot. that's the goal before you get into emerge with them to make them make a mistake.

And so that's what I felt like. I was like, that son of a bitch just dusted me off. You know, it was like right next to my jet, probably, you know, if I had to guess 700 or so not to closure,

maybe more. And no sign of a cockpit. If I had to guess the size of it, I would say maybe the size of a lawnmower, maybe a little bit bigger than a lawnmower, you know, like a smaller type object. But it definitely,

definitely had the what looked to me to be some sort of maneuverability. And how far away? That woke me up. Yeah. So yeah. Did you report that one? Does that something you tell somebody about? So that's the conversation that then I then had with the flight leader.

And I said, Hey, did you see anything out there? Because, and I kind of, and then, and to be honest, we didn't really have a relationship that was very open with communication at the. time and so I didn't really push it too hard and then I brought it up to some other members that weren't in the formation that had that were coming in behind us so they were coming up behind us but higher and they were there was two of the two other f-16s and so I had a conversation with them afterwards too and I just you know told a close friend of mine who was one of those pilots behind us I was like hey this is what I saw have you ever seen anything like this before and he just

said no I haven't man but I'll keep my eye out I'll keep my eye out now the best base, would the base have sensors that would have picked it up, presumably? Yeah, you would think. I mean, you would think on radar, you know, something that size would show up relatively well. So, you know, a Cessna or something like that is obviously going to be completely obvious to see how this thing would have showed up on the air traffic control ATC radars. I don't know. But there should be some sort of, you know, if this thing has the same properties of a fighter jet with the same reflectivity, then, yeah. You should be able to see it.

But again, this was maneuvering under some kind of intelligent control. It would be your guess, not a balloon. Yeah, it was maneuvering in the fact that it came really close to me and was at a place where I could basically, like, see it very clearly. So it didn't do any, like, moves or rotations as it came close to me. It was just like a quick pass. Like, pass me. But you know, so you were in an F-16 at this time, right?

And you're growing pretty damn fast. And this thing also had its own acceleration in your close proximity towards your direction. You said it was about 20 feet away, if I remember the account. So you're used to flying really close to craft going fast, but usually the same direction. This is pretty harrowing. And the thing was propelling towards you on its own volition, I guess, right? Yeah. I mean, it definitely had some sort of propulsion.

And it was shaped like it had propulsion in a certain direction. aerodynamically. This one actually looked like it had some sort of aerodynamic properties that a U.S. fighter jet would have, similar to that. But, you know, I talked to Jeremy a little bit about this. You know, this is definitely the worst place to test some sort of technology like this. So I don't think this would be U.S. technology or testing just because of the massive safety issue, right? I mean, there's area 51's close by. Just take it out there. You've got your choice of every fighter jet in the inventory to test it against. You don't need to test it against the public relations team of the Air Force, right? I mean, if a mishap happened there, I mean, man, it'd be over for that

entire project and technology. So that's why that one to me, I was like, this doesn't seem like anything that our guys would be launching towards us. All right. Number three. Number three. All right, so that's the 2018. This one was out over the Nellis ranges. We did. I got like the sweetest deal in the world. So after I left the Thunderbirds, I became an instructor. And then there were times where I just needed to take an F-16 out and stay current. And so, I mean, it was just an amazing time in life. And so I was actually in a two-seat F-16 at this point, flying with another member of the team.

And we're out over the, over Death Valley. And there's certain restrictions there where you have to stay like, I think it's 2,000 feet above certain areas. And just some background. we would go over the areas at 2,000 feet and stay legal, but then there was other areas where you could drop down and do little mini low levels and things like that. And so, of course, I had to do that on every mission, right? Go low, go fast.

And there was these areas where people would go out in camp. And so I would always say to myself, like, I know there's a guy down there with his girlfriend, and I'm going to fly over at 150 feet max afterburner and give them like the best air show of their life. And then she's going to be like, oh that was amazing and he's going to be like I set that up for us you know like that was my goal I wanted to give everybody an opportunity to say that so we were doing that just raging around

raging around the desert and then it was kind of sunset was kind of settling in we popped up and as we're kind of popping up out of the low level I saw what to me just looked like a reverse explosion so an implosion I guess where it was like a big circle of sky was turned kind of purple and red and then went really small got like incredibly small like and then disappeared so it was almost like something big like a big like atmospheric anomaly was very obvious and then it just went really small and then was gone so um you know i'd say the colors were probably like you know it was sunset so it was kind of matching that colors like purple issues and reds um no sound or anything like that but i mean that's gonna you know we're in a jet with with ear protection in and so

But that caught both of our attentions and we were just like, whoa. And I kind of just had the feeling of like, yeah, let's go the other direction. Let's not figure out exactly what that was right now. But you know, we're out there flying by Area 51. We're flying by a lot of the test areas. So, yeah, that one, I don't know. It's funny because you've, you know, you've had so many experiences with aviation. These are these things that stand out to you.

And by the way, we're pulling these experiences from you compared to all your combat experiences and all this. We want to know about the odd stuff. And we want to normalize people talking about it. You know, these things happen. You're an expert trained witness. And this is what you saw. We don't have answers for all these things. But, you know, just the fact that these are the things that stand out to you that are so outside of the norm from everything that you did in your career.

Now, this last one really freaks me out. It is one of the weirdest, you know, kind of UFO, UAP encounters that I've heard of mainly. I'm just, I want you to go through it. But also, can you talk a little bit? This is during a commercial phase of your life, right? Yeah. Yeah, it is. So basically transiting in a big aircraft.

It was somewhere in Southern Wyoming. And, you know, just another day. You're flying as a commercial pilot. I mean, things are pretty boring until you, you know, you really have to use a lot of focus when you get into, like, you know, certain wind situations and things like that. For the most part, though, it's pretty, it's pretty chill, right? And so you're up there. We're on autopilot.

This was in 2024. And, you know, just another day, it was like day three of a four-day trip. So you're a little tired, but, you know, you're doing your best to stay alert as you're up there. So I'm just scanning, you know, and that's just something that I would do. just to try to stay awake is scan, chug the caffeine, you know, and just make sure you're alert. So that's what I'm doing. And I just pick up what looks like just a white glint. Like to, so I'm in the right seat of this aircraft. There's another pilot next to me. I pick up a white glint. That's probably at my 11 o'clock or so. And I'm like, oh, it's almost like a reflection.

And so I was like, oh, okay, another aircraft, right? Got it. And so I'm kind of watching this thing. calls from ATC telling us about anything up ahead of us, which air traffic control, if you're going to come within a mile of anything, they are on it. Like, they are really good at their job. So a mile or a thousand feet or sometimes even, you know, more than that, they're going to be chirp in and say, hey, do you see this? Do you see that? You know, to make sure everybody sees each other. No calls from ATC. And then as this thing starts getting closer, I bump the pilot next to me and I'm like, hey, look, look at that. And he's like, whoa. And even prior to that, I had it started to make out what looked to me to be like a pulsing square.

So it was almost like a perfectly shaped square and bright white around the edges. And then it kind of went into a cream color towards the center and then just clear in the center. You could basically like see through it. And so I looked for immediately, I looked for some sort of a tether because I'm thinking like balloon. And then he says the same thing after the fact. He was like, I was looking for a tether as well. but there was no tether. So there was nothing that would make this thing

a weather balloon that was attached to the ground. And it was basically, so if you think of it like this, it's moving like this. So there's nothing aerodynamic about this thing, right? If it was an aerodynamic rectangle, you would want to orient it like this so that it could slip through the air a lot more efficiently. This just stayed like this.

And as it got close, I could really make out that glowing sensation in the middle and I told Jeremy this. It almost, it was in my mind, I've played some video games in my day. It reminded me of like Mario Brothers. Like, hey, go through here to go to the next level. Like, that's what it seemed like to me was like a pulsating sensation.

Like, look, look at us. Look at me. Like, look at this thing. It wasn't trying to be a camouflage at all. And so then it starts coming down the wing line. And prior to that, there's this thing as a pilot where you're always very weary about anything that stays static on your canopy because that means you're on a collision course. So for a while, it looked to me like we were on a collision course with this thing.

I click off the autopilot and I just waited and then all of a sudden I started to get a line of sight on the canopy. So that tells me, okay, we're not going to hit this thing, but it's going to come really close. And when you're in a big aircraft and you're up at altitude, you don't want to maneuver aggressively. The air is thin. Your airspeed margins for stall are a lot tighter.

So you're very cautious, but also at the same time in my mind, I'm like, the last thing I want to do is hit whatever this thing is. But once I realized that wasn't going to happen, then my mind just totally went to like, all right, try to take in all this detail as much as I possibly can. And then it came down the wing line. I would guess it was probably 100 feet off of our, like in the left quadrant of our cockpit, about 100 feet down. And it just came right next to us. I could see the outline, the square, and then gone. It didn't look like it was moving very fast because a line of sight wasn't like a breakneck speed, kind of like that last, the fighter-sized UAP that I told you about.

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And so guess who was the lucky one to do that? Yeah. And that pilot, the pilot next to me, he didn't want to talk too much. much about it after that day. Just that's the, that's the feeling I got from him. But he said, hey, we need to call air traffic control and make a, you know, a pilot report. So good luck. So yeah, I call air traffic control and air traffic control.

I need to report an anomalous object. Here's what it looked like to me. It was a square with pulsing edges, bright white. Can you mark this location for other traffic behind us? And there was other traffic on the radio. you at the time, you know, and so air traffic and control goes copy, thanks. But then they did ask, they asked some clarifying questions too. They were like, can you tell us the color again? So they took it seriously. But they also were shocked too, which I understand. I mean, that's normal. You don't,

you don't get these types of PIRPs very often. PIRP stands for pilot report. And then I heard a few other aircraft on the same frequency speak up and say, uh, all right, we'll keep an eye out. You know, things like that. And everybody's just kind of like, and we didn't see, we didn't hear anything. the next couple days. There was a little report that we did file just through some things that we needed to do, but there wasn't, you know, any report of anyone else seeing it. So. How big was it?

I would say probably 50 feet tall, like 40 to 50 feet tall. Like, it wasn't small. Do you allow yourself to speculate what all these things are, where they're from, what's going on up there? You know, yeah, I think recently I have. So after I made the video, I kind of popped the top off just, hey, I'm just going to be honest about what I saw, tell my story, let everybody else decide for themselves. So, you know, I can go down some, are you guys okay if I go down some deep rabbit holes here? Yeah. Okay.

You know, I think with all this UAP stuff, I mean, we've seen there's like the jellyfish UAP, you know, there's UAPs that have been seen in combat zones that have been, you know, struck with a hellfire and not a lot has happened. So I'm constantly, you know, asking myself why? Why would we be seeing this? What's the point? And I think there's there's one thing that continuously comes up for me. And it, to me, it seems like if our military, you fast forward us a couple thousand. years in the future. The technologies that we have, is there a way for us to get that technology back to us today to prevent some wild, terrible situation from happening? We're talking nuclear war,

something like that. You know, if my military brain was fast forwarded 2,000 years into the future and I could do that and I could get it to, you know, what I see is the good guys. I see the U.S. military is the greatest force for good on the planet. You know, people can argue with that or, you know, it's not perfect. It's not what I'm saying, but I think we are the greatest force for good guys. on the planet if you just look at history. So if I could if I was in the future and I could get that technology back into the right hands I would why not I would try to get it to the US military or at least get it into the brains of US military decision makers innovators so that we could start to develop things that who knows maybe this technology leads to some sort of deterrence for a nuclear

war you know down the road you know that's something that I think the US military giving a gift to its past self to be more effective is plausible. And I think to me that's what makes sense a lot of times. That's not the only theory I have, but that's kind of one of the main ones that I've come to. So you don't feel threatened by it. You don't feel whatever these things are, they're necessarily a threat.

No, because I think with this type of advanced technology, if they wanted to blow your fighter jet out of the sky, they would have done it long ago. You know, I think there's something different here. There's something way, way better that we can take from this than a threat. Yeah, so you're saying this is what Jacques Valais said as George is that there's a control system that the UAP, UFO thing might or appears to be that it's a learning process.

It's an educational, systematic process to kind of teach us. And this is why we call you Neo as your call sign because you're thinking, you know, kind of big picture that the benefit, you know, to our nation is that, you know, whether if it's from past human or future humans or whatever, the benefit. is we're constantly having to improve and adapt and change maybe for our own protection, but also just because of the inspiration of seeing UAP maneuver, these little winks and these hellos and these strange appearances, it does encourage humankind to advance. And that's kind of what you're saying is that the technological evolution could be something

that is being provoked by a different intelligence or a street, if we go really down the rabbit hole, like a future intelligence. It's a fascinating theory. Yeah, I look at it like human advancement through competitive pressure. You know, if you are under pressure in really high-stakes situations or you're seeing something that's really wild, it's going to drive you to action. You know, I mean, think Manhattan Project, Apollo program, all these things that really drove humans to the edge of technological innovation. To me, this is just another gift in that same category that can help us advance. and I look at my family's history.

So my grandfather flew the B21. My dad flew the F4 and the F-16 in the Cold War, you know, basically ready to drop a nuclear bomb at any time. And then I got to fly the F-15E, which is like all these are just massive leaps in technology. When you go from a B-21 to an F-4 to an F-15E, and now my colleagues are out flying F-35s and F-22s, and we got the F-47 on the way. So the advancements in aeronautical technology are insane.

And I can't help but think some of this advancement is probably because of that competitive pressure that's pushing us. And again, it could be even being intertwined by certain government contractors right now that have access to it. And that's got to stay pretty hush-hush. You know, if you're to keep it from Russia and China, I think David Grush commented, you know, it shouldn't be just one contractor that has access to this. And I think that's true, but you can't, I don't think you should have a hundred. And I'm a capitalist. Trust me.

I believe in capitalism. But when you start to thin it out to so many different people, you just run the risk with every extra person you add on or every extra company you add on. You do run the risk of exposing it to China and Russia. I'm just doing that out there. A lot of this is the cool stuff that happens. All the innovations happen out right out there at Area 51. is it out of bounds for you as an aviator or pilot to ask questions about that area or to speculate or chit chat with fellow pilots?

Hey, I wonder what's going on out there? Yeah, I mean, I think it is. It's kind of just something that you don't do. You know, there's a big respect in the fighter jet world for anything that could endanger anybody's life. You know, if there's an advanced technology that we don't want anybody to know about, It's like a football team and a playbook, right? Like you don't want that other team finding that playbook.

So unless you're really heavily involved in that program itself, then you just don't talk about it. And there's, you know, there's certain areas where you can talk about things. There's areas where you can't. I think the Air Force, you know, they're maybe a little overprotective, but for good reason, right? I mean, if this technology is going to save thousands of aviators' lives and, you know, be an amazing deterrence against somebody, you don't want the other team having that playbook. Yeah. Out there is sort of what the future holds. I mean, they're working on things that we won't see for 10, 20 years, something like that.

I would imagine for a pilot like yourself, you think, gosh, I sure would like to be able to come back and fly in 20 years. Maybe you're from the future, and that's why you've had four encounters. They set you back, too. Maybe that's why I got the call sign Neo, you know. Somehow they just inserted that into the Matrix. So they're like, we're not only going to send them back, we're going to give them a call sign Neo as well. But yeah, it is interesting, you know, and privately, you know, I definitely have thoughts where I'm like, oh, I wonder, I wonder about that. I wonder about this. Like, I'm a human. I love aviation. You know, I still have that little kid inside that lights up every time I see a fighter jet. So just thinking about what they could have is amazing to me. And I mean, it's really cool, too. We live in a time now where some of these programs are being delivered to the public, like the F-47, you know, President Trump talking about the F-47. That drives people forward in innovation as well, too. I think getting things out to the public of like, hey, this is what's going on with your tax dollars that we can talk

about. And that's a super advanced program to talk about. I mean, they've even said that it's been flying for years. Like, that's amazing to hear that. And so it gives me hope that, you know, we have transparency, but we also have secrecy in a way that hopefully, you know, allows people's imaginations to think about what's possible, but also protects, you know, the warfighter out there. So you'd say there are good reasons. If we have recovery. covered craft materials from somewhere else and we're working on it in secrecy. You think probably there's a legitimate reason for that secrecy. Yeah, absolutely. I think so. I mean, I'm all about transparency, getting things out to the

public. But I think the thing that I want the viewers to know is there's probably technology, I don't know, there's probably some technologies out there that if Russia and China had it, it would impact your life in a very negative way, like personally. And so I think the fact that, I know it's hard, you know, America, we're a bunch of rebels and I love it. That's what we're here for. We're here to innovate, be rebellious, you know, figure things out. But at the same time, you know, you have to be very, I'm speaking to myself here, we have to be very aware that Russia and China do not have good intentions with a lot of this technology. And they are, they are not constrained by the same ethical decisions that most of the people who want a lot of

this to be released. I think the people that want this to be released are coming from a great place. They've got good hearts. They want transparency. But also, Russia and China don't care about that. They want to do nefarious things that you could probably never imagine if they had some of the technology, hopefully, that we have that we're working on. So if Russia or China had a tech tack, we'd know about it by now? I don't know. I mean, I think so. If you look at, you know, what Russia and China do, let's just specifically say China. I mean, a lot of times in China, one hand's not talking to the other. So Xi Jinping might not even be in collaboration with his version of the chairman of the military.

They might, because their honor is a big thing there. So they might not even talk. And that's some of the rumors that I've heard with like the Chinese spy balloon coming over the U.S. Like they literally had, I think it was the one of the foreign minister of China was supposed to visit the U.S. that next week. And they're going to fly over this big spy balloon. you know, and they wanted to work out some economic deal. That totally thwarted that, right?

That threw that off. So what's the strategy there? Why not just wait a couple weeks? So, yeah, I think they might be a little more reckless with the technology than we would be. But, I mean, we could also be surprised, too. And they could be, you know, holding it under rafts for something. Jeremy, did you talk to Ryan about the Hellfire Missile video? Yeah, he did a whole online.

Everybody should go watch. Ryan did a whole breakdown of the Hellfire. missile hitting the UAP, and it's really great. And he's got a really clear perspective about it, George, which was why I want him to look at some of the footage that you and I have considered. So, Ryan, what was going on there? Yeah, I mean, I think it's really, really worth everybody looking at and seeing, right? Because that's something that, you know, would the U.S. military, if that was a top secret program,

would they expose that to the world? I mean, all you've got to do is just not shoot it with a hellfire, right? then you don't expose it. So yeah, I think it puts us in a very interesting position where now it just, you know, a lot of a lot more questions and answers, but extremely cool for that to come out. And again, I look at it as driving weaponry forward. I mean, as a fighter pilot, as any military combat coded pilot, your whole job is weaponry, basically.

How do you get weaponry onto the enemy and protect, you know, the good guys? So in that situation, it makes me think, all right, well, let's say some other country has that technology to not be harmed by our hellfire. Well, that's the first thing I'm going to think of is how do we compete with that? How do we get it? How do we make sure that we're staying on top of that? And then if it's, you know, if it's something else, then it brings up a lot of great questions as well. You know, we're the untrained eye. We don't really know what we're seeing with that video, but it looked like the missile hit an object and then either bounced off or the

object broke into pieces that continued to fly along in a formation. Balloon? Could it be a balloon? Yeah, I mean, I think it's, so it's in infrared, if I'm not mistaken, is that right? So it's actually thermal image, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, hard to tell on that one. It does look like some pieces kind of flew off and then came back together. So does that mean some sort of, you know, material that can expand and shrink and change, you know, some sort of transformational material. That's what would make more sense to me. A balloon, you know, unless there's some technology with a balloon where it's going to be like a solid state thing. I don't really see it being a balloon. So yeah, I think it really, you got to ask the question what can do that? And my question is,

how do I get a fighter jet that can do that? That's what I want. Have you in your career ever encountered something that was really intense, that it was a black project. So you had to go be debrief signed an NDA. Did that ever happen to you in your whole career? Were you accidentally get exposed to a black project? Not accidentally. Okay.

I'm not going to get any more from you about that. Yeah, we'll just have to leave it at that. Okay. So, but from what I understand, there are protocols for that. And that's why when George and I see footage that has been labeled UAP, by our military. If it was a black project of ours,

it wouldn't be put into this category of unknown. That type of communication. If you encounter something and you film something as a pilot that you're not supposed to, there are protocols. We've talked to a bunch of people that have accidentally come across these black projects, and they are taken, debriefed, had to sign NDAs. You are not to talk about this again. So that's why a lot of the times when we receive footage that is designated UAP,

we go and we ask around, but we make sure this is not something that is a known black project by U.S. government. So if it has incredible flight capabilities, like apparent instantaneous acceleration, that's something our government is analyzing, again, to your theory, because we want to advance our own technology. But I was just curious if you've ever come across something like that accidentally. But I guess you have not come across a black project accidentally. Correct. I have one more question for our guest, Ryan.

You know, you had four encounters, four sightings of something strange. I would guess that most pilots go fly their whole lives or whole adult lives and never see anything. Why you? I guess because my call signs Neo. I don't know. You're one of them over there, yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know.

I think, I don't know. I just, maybe I'm open to like, I don't know, there's like, there's history, historic precedence for, you know, the foo fighters, right? Seeing those fireballs in the sky. Which pilots saw them, which ones didn't want to talk about it, which ones just compartmentalized it and were like, you know what? No. Then some of them that have a little more of an ability to think in that gray area came forward. And I think, you know, if people have seen my YouTube channel, they probably know. by now, I think in the gray area. And I love to hear myself talk. So, you know, I think there's

something in me that is curious and I'm constantly wanting to drive innovation. And so if I see something that to me aligns with that pursuit, I'm going to, at least it's going to be something that I don't discount. It did take me a while to come forward and chat about it to kind of, you know, when you go through the military, you have, you got to think of the pressure too, right? Because Because a lot of these, you know, my goal was never to be a career military guy, but there's a lot of people that their goal is to be career military. And so, you know, there's probably a lot of military members that look at me with like, you know, a little bit of that side eye. And they're like, dude, you know, you're a little bit out there. And that's okay. That's something that I always found through my whole career was, you know, I was Neo trying to break free of the Matrix, always questioning. Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing things this way? Oh, because it's always been done that way before. What if we change that up and try this? Is it. be more efficient. So I think those types of pilots are out there. You know, the Commander Favors of the world, Ryan Graves, you know, people that have come forward and talked about it, they're not going to be your cookie cutter pilot. And that's great. I mean, we need all types. We need the pilots

that are like the NEOs. And then we need the pilots that are not that go out there and just do the job every day. And then we combine ourselves together and we all get better. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere of the crowd. But too often, life gets busy. Or the price holds you back. Priceline is here to help you make it happen. With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars, you can go see the game live.

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or targeting correction for a more natural vibe. At only $12, it's great for affordable touch-ups on the go. Get this new must-have concealer at Sephora or at Sephora.com today. Ryan Bodenheimer, man, it's great talking to you. It's been a fascinating conversation. I hope people will check out your YouTube channel, Max, Afterburner, a lot of cool stuff on there. Jeremy, anything else?

No, just thanks so much for sharing that. And I bet you that now that you've kind of talked about the weird things you've seen, the UAP things, I would, you know, ask around. You didn't tell people for a long time. I'd imagine there are a lot of fighter pilots and just people in aviation that have encounters and experiences that they were unwilling to tell at one point, but are now more willing to tell. So I encourage people to go to you and just tell you what it is that they've encountered or seen

because that's how we're going to make progress with understanding the UFO phenomenon. That's awesome. Yeah, and I'm all ears. You know, if there's other aviators that want to chat with me first, I'm kind of the gateway to them like, you know, telling their story. I'm, I'm here for it. So absolutely. And then thanks to you guys for, you know, driving the ball forward. I'm sure you guys have faced a lot of scrutiny before. But again, I think having these conversations about innovation, about UAPs, it drives everybody forward. It makes our military better, makes our country better. So just keep going, guys. I'm proud to be a part of this. Thank you. Something extraordinary is coming.

Subscribe now to our all-new clips channel, weaponized clips. Well, Jeremy, I mean, he's a really impressive guy. I would imagine all those Air Force Thunderbird pilots and combat pilots are impressive people, but really he was so open and candid about the experiences he's had and sharing with us. I hope that the intended effect is that that other aviators, military guys, will come forward and share what they've seen. Yeah, he was awesome, man. This is like, you know, maybe nine months ago or so, you're like, you know, can you get a hold of him?

And I tried every way to get a hold of him. And he was difficult to get a hold of. But what I really appreciated about it was that we're asking him to come talk about just out of his flight history, you know, coming from the Air Force, 70 combat missions, flighting with this elite Thunderbird group and even his commercial aviation were like, hey, tell us the four weird things that happened when you flew.

And a lot of people just don't want to talk about this. I really appreciate that he just threw down number and order. Here's the weirdest shit that I've ever seen. And he's very open-minded and he's very thoughtful. You know, privately when you talk with him, you know, his main theory is really what Jacques Belet said. It's so interesting. He knows or he suspects that,

there is some sort of intervention with human beings to help propel us and move us forward, which I thought was such an optimistic point of view about the UAP thing, not that there are a threat and we should all be scared and protect our airspace, but it's an opportunity for innovation. So he's just a very brilliant individual. He's got a great YouTube channel, Max Afterburner, coolest call sign ever, Neo. But I also think that people like him can inspire other people to come forward, especially from the Air Force.

the Air Force has been so quiet about this and he kind of shed a little bit of light on that which is in the culture of Air Force it's very different than let's say Navy so maybe it'll encourage more Air Force pilots, aviators to come out and tell their story. Yeah, I agree. That was a fun episode. Talk to you later.