What are pilots reporting, and how do we turn those accounts into evidence we can study?

I sit down with Jonathan Miller, known as JMill, to discuss his work on sensemaking and MIT's Confronting Unknowns program. We explore how researchers can study ambiguous data, separate signal from noise, and stay open to new information without jumping to conclusions.

Then we turn the tables. JMill asks me about the encounters that led me to speak publicly, my 2023 congressional testimony, and the work underway at Americans for Safe Aerospace. We discuss pilot reporting, witness privacy, the development of a structured research database, and a longer-term vision for connecting witness accounts with sensor data.

We close with accounts reported to ASA, including luminous spheres, objects described near aircraft, and black triangles. I discuss what witnesses have described, how satellite effects can complicate observations, and why credible testimony still needs careful investigation. These are reported experiences and open questions, not established explanations of what the objects are.

Learn more, report an encounter, become a member, and support our work at https://www.safeaerospace.org/

Learn more about JMill's sense making work at: https://www.sensemaking.wtf

Subscribe and share this episode to support independent aviation-safety research and conversations.

Chapters
00:00 Opening: pilot reports and unanswered questions
01:05 Introducing Jonathan Miller (JMill)
04:27 MIT's Confronting Unknowns and sensemaking
08:21 Finding signal in ambiguous data
11:57 Discussing government UAP releases
18:39 Turning the tables: JMill interviews Ryan
20:06 Navy encounters and the road to Congress
24:46 Pilot reporting protections and state policy
29:47 What ASA's reports can tell us
32:15 Building a structured research database
34:37 Oshkosh plans and membership support
39:40 Sharing witness accounts through the podcast
42:36 Protecting witness privacy
43:57 How ASA's mission has evolved
46:41 A vision for connected sensor networks
51:30 Confirmation bias and independent analysis
58:56 Patterns in the reports: spheres and lights
01:00:44 Satellite effects and ambiguous observations
01:04:08 A close-range account from Marines
01:05:57 Black triangles and reported near-misses
01:09:24 Why reporting matters and how to help

A crashed spaceship. A career left in doubt. And six days later, a backyard full of light he couldn't explain.

Brian Binnie was the second person to fly a private spacecraft to the edge of space — a Navy veteran with 33 combat missions, advanced degrees from Brown and Princeton, and the test pilot who flew the final flight of SpaceShipOne. Six days after a hard landing damaged its landing gear and left him wondering whether he would ever fly it again, Binnie described watching roughly a dozen glowing, translucent spheres move through his backyard in Rosamond, California, at four in the morning. He kept the account within a small circle for years. He passed away in 2022.

I sit down with filmmaker Kevin Curran, who documented Binnie's story in Beyond Blue Sky: The Untold Story of the First Private Astronauts, and aerospace engineer Matt Stinemetze, who led the SpaceShipOne program and shared an office with Binnie for years. We trace Binnie's path from Gulf War Hornet cockpits to the high-stakes, low-budget test-flight culture at Scaled Composites, the crash that nearly ended his career, and the encounter he described six days later — a dozen fixed-shape spheres, some patrolling his fence line like sentries, two of which he said drifted through his bedroom window and passed into him before the whole scene dissolved back into darkness.

Binnie looked for every prosaic explanation and never claimed to know what he saw; those closest to him describe it not as a fright but as something that gave him peace and, in his telling, the resolve to climb back into the cockpit. Whether it was a genuine anomaly, an artifact of a sleep-deprived mind under enormous stress, or something we don't yet have the science to describe, the conversation returns to a question this show keeps running into: what do we lose when we dismiss a credible, sober observer simply because their account doesn't fit the paradigm — and who pays for that silence?

Watch Kevin Curran's documentary, Beyond Blue Sky: The Untold Story of the First Private Astronauts, on Apple TV: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/beyond-blue-sky/umc.cmc.3scqjpza3p8lkaz5tr55ksmu9

Learn more, become a member, and support our work at: https://www.safeaerospace.org

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode to help us continue producing independent aviation-safety research and conversations.

Three passes. A persistent radar contact. A brief glimpse of something silvery off the wing.

Former Navy F-18 pilot Austin Hulbert and his weapons systems officer called it a balloon and moved on. Years later, Austin started building stratospheric balloons for the military. That explanation no longer made sense to him.

I sit down with Austin, one of my instructors during Navy flight training, to revisit his encounter off the coast of Virginia Beach and what changed his mind. We discuss what he remembers seeing, what the radar was tracking, and why neither crew member thought much of it at the time.

Austin also takes us inside his career in naval aviation and special operations, the return of balloons to modern warfare, and the challenge of detecting objects our air defenses weren’t built to find. Throughout the conversation, we return to a question familiar to many military aviators: What gets missed when pilots dismiss something they can’t explain?

Learn more, become a member, and support our work at: safeaerospace.org

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode to help us continue producing independent aviation-safety research and conversations.