The New York Times has made waves with a new report on sightings by U.S. Navy aviators of unidentified flying objects between 2014 and 2015. But the UFO issue, which follows a similar 2017 story, is far more interesting than the reporters let on.

The U.S. government does not know what these UFOs actually are. The report focuses on witnesses of so-called "Tic Tacs," but other shapes and sizes of UFOs have also been credibly recorded by the U.S., British, Chinese, Russian, and other governments for the past 65 years. But what are these strange things?

Most informed individuals I have talked to believe that the Tic Tac-like UFOs are unmanned vehicles operating under direction from either a manned or larger unmanned vessel. A particularly interesting evidentiary point here is the witness testimony by Cmdr. David Fravor during his time as commanding officer for a naval fighter squadron assigned to the Nimitz carrier strike group. In the November 2004 Nimitz incident, Fravor describes seeing both the Tic Tacs and "something in the water... looks like waves are going to crash over the top and you're going to get this white-water."

Some discredit these witness reports. The New York Times report, for example, interviews astrophysicist Leon Golub. Golub suggests that the aircrew testimony is a result of "bugs in the code for the imaging and display systems, atmospheric effects and reflections, neurological overload from multiple inputs during high-speed flight."

I strongly disagree, because the credible witness statements are numerous, matched to data recordings, and associated with a far larger set of similar incidents currently not public. But while natural phenomena such as that under the theoretical phenomena of ball lightning is a strong possibility in some UFO cases, I strongly believe other UFOs reported by naval aviators and other military professionals are not natural phenomena.

First, UFOs have repeatedly shown what seems to be intelligence in their operation and behavior-response to manned aircraft and monitoring systems in their vicinity. I am led to believe that the Russians (including in the Soviet era) have repeatedly tried and failed to shoot down UFOs, which have practiced evasive techniques.

In addition, UFOs have shown an ability to travel at hypersonic speeds with anti-gravity characteristics. Some underwater phenomena are also capable of supercavitation speeds of hundreds of miles per hour underwater. Note that when it comes to underwater objects, the recorded size indicates they are not torpedoes or vessels of any known type.

Third, UFOs manifest a continuing and special interest in military-nuclear technology (I believe it is notable that credible sightings began following the first use of atomic weapons). Former nuclear forces officers have testified that UFOs have, on occasion, even deactivated U.S. nuclear missiles during test operations.

Fourth, UFOs often show evidence of plasma manipulation, possibly in relation to manifested cloaking capabilities.

I am also extraordinarily confident these UFOs are not the creation of any current government or private interest. They are definitely not U.S. in origin, and they are far in advance of Chinese and Russian capabilities — including in the field of hypersonic capabilities (which the Russians lead in).

So where does this leave us?

With many questions and the need to do more research. Fortunately, albeit secretly, the U.S. government continues to do just that, as do private interests. But the key here is for the collected data to be central in our analysis.

You should, for example, listen to credible individuals such as Luis Elizondo — former head of the Pentagon's former UFO research agency, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Elizondo does not talk about aliens. But you should not listen to Elizondo's To The Stars Academy colleague, Tom DeLonge (the musician is overexcited and says things that are unbound from analytical credibility).

Still, this is an interesting issue in many areas. Take the research by NASA into space-time manipulation, for example. Or the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program-contracted study into faster than light travel. Take a guess why the study was authorized.