President Donald Trump says U.S. Air Force pilots told him about a round, unidentified object that passed an F-22 fighter jet at roughly three times its speed. He described the alleged encounter during a 60 Minutes interview aired November 8, 2026. Trump did not identify the pilots, give a date or location, or provide radar data or footage. His remarks are a fresh, on-the-record account of what he says pilots told him, not independent confirmation of an extraordinary aircraft.
The interview also raised a second question: Could a secret government UFO program operate without the president’s knowledge? Trump said he had not heard of such a program but would investigate if it existed. That answer does not establish that any hidden program exists.
What Trump actually said about the F-22 UFO
Correspondent Ross Douthat asked whether the administration’s UFO releases had shown Trump anything that suggested more than ordinary objects in the sky. Trump said UFOs were among the subjects people asked him about most often, even in private.
He described meeting Air Force pilots in the Oval Office during his first term and, to a lesser extent, his second. He called them credible professionals and said they had shared strange experiences. In one example, he claimed a round object flew past an F-22 at three times the jet’s speed.
The shape caught his attention as much as the reported speed. Trump described the object as round rather than aerodynamic. He also said he was not especially inclined to believe extraordinary UFO explanations. His remarks mixed curiosity with skepticism rather than presenting a definitive explanation.
The original interview and transcript were published by CBS News on November 8. Reports followed on November 9 from Fox News and other outlets, making the exchange a current UFO news story rather than a resurfaced old sighting.
What evidence is missing?
The account is secondhand. Trump says he heard it from pilots, but the public interview did not identify those witnesses or establish whether they witnessed the same incident. No flight logs, sensor recordings, photographs or official case number were presented to substantiate this particular encounter.
That matters for the dramatic speed estimate. Without knowing the aircraft’s speed, the distance to the object, its direction of travel and how the comparison was measured, observers cannot reliably calculate its velocity. An object that appears to streak past an aircraft may have a very different actual speed than a pilot initially perceives.
Likewise, an apparently round shape does not by itself establish unusual technology. Viewing angle, distance, lighting and limited observation time can affect how an airborne object appears. None of those possibilities identifies what the pilots reportedly saw. They simply show why the story remains an allegation rather than a verified performance record.
Did Trump confirm a secret UFO program?
No. Douthat asked about whistleblower allegations that a secret UFO research program could exist outside normal presidential oversight. Trump said he had seen no evidence of it and had not heard of such a program. He added that he intended to find out if the allegation was true.
The distinction is important. A presidential promise to ask questions is newsworthy, but it is not proof of recovered alien craft, hidden technology or a clandestine operation. The interview supplied no documents identifying such a program, no budget records and no named officials who could verify it.
Why the timing matters
Trump’s comments arrived amid a renewed government push to release records on unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP. The Pentagon began releasing additional UFO-related files in May 2026, and later batches included reports of puzzling aerial observations.
One recently discussed case involved federal agents who reported a dark triangular object near mountainous terrain. That was a separate account. It does not corroborate the alleged F-22 encounter, and witness estimates in such reports should not be confused with instrument-confirmed measurements.
Newly public records can reveal what witnesses reported and how officials handled those reports. They do not automatically prove that the observed objects had extraordinary origins. Each case needs to be assessed on its own evidence.
What happens next?
The most useful development would be identification of the pilots and release of any associated flight or sensor records. Those details could help investigators determine when the event occurred, what the witnesses observed and whether the reported speed can be checked.
For now, the confirmed news is straightforward: the president publicly repeated a striking UFO story and said he would look into claims about a hidden program. The alleged object itself remains unverified. That gap between an extraordinary claim and independently testable evidence is exactly what makes this story intriguing.
