LOU ELIZONDO: They're putting together the mosaic
with disparate pieces of data.
It's a bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
At first, you have all these little pieces on the table,
but little by little, the more pieces you have,
the more the picture becomes in focus.
NARRATOR: Lou Elizondo has just interviewed a second Vietnam
veteran about a strange object he saw in an active war zone.
But he needs to gather more data.
LOU ELIZONDO: If we can establish the things that they
were seeing back then in the past from the Vietnam War
or indeed the same types of vehicles being observed
and perhaps the same type of technology that we're seeing
today, then maybe it'll help us figure out what these things
are and where they're from.
NARRATOR: Today he's sitting down with a veteran who
witnessed a similar object during the NATO
bombing of Kosovo in 1999.
Mr. Tarr, I presume.
Yes, sir.
Hey, how are you, sir?
How are you, sir?
Thank you very much for coming here and speaking with me.
I really appreciate it.
DEREK TARR: My name is Derek Tarr.
I was a senior airman during the late '90s serving
in the United States Air Force.
This is the first time I've ever told this story.
NARRATOR: Derek Tarr was a boom operator on an Air Force KC-10
responsible for the mid-air refueling of NATO jets
between bombing runs.
DEREK TARR: You had a lot of pilots out there,
but you have very few boom operators.
These individuals are trained experts on all sorts
of allied NATO aircraft.
They know the difference between an F-18 Hornet,
between an F-117 night fighter, an F-16.
They know all these aircraft because they see them day in
and day out.
NARRATOR: On March 24, 1999, Tarr
is on a refueling mission over the Adriatic Sea
when suddenly he sees a strange light.
DEREK TARR: I was sitting in the boom
pod in the back of the KC-10 just waiting for the next set
of receivers to arrive.
I noticed a bright light that was behind us
slightly below our altitude.
It just kind of hung back, didn't
seem to make any more forward progress towards our aircraft.
That's when I kind of started to wonder what was going on.
I called up to my pilot on the interphone
to ask him if we had more receivers coming
and said that we did not have anyone scheduled.
NARRATOR: Tarr says the control center
monitoring the airspace reported all known
aircraft were accounted for.
DEREK TARR: We started into a turn, and as I look back,
it's just a bright white orb.
It was very bouncy, almost like a super ball--
very short, very succinct, very sharp movements,
but extremely rapid.
The jostling or oscillations that it was doing
were certainly not minute adjustments,
probably several hundred feet up, down, side to side.
Once I got to about our 8 o'clock position,
it did a rapid climb and just in the blink of an eye
went straight up, and it just shot right up in the sky.
Fastest thing I've ever seen.
NARRATOR: The UFO Tarr claims he saw
was spherical instead of the oblong shape of Tic-Tacs.
But it featured some of the same five observables.
DEREK TARR: We have hypersonic velocities,
instantaneous acceleration, and, of course, positive lift or
in the vernacular anti-gravity.
NARRATOR: Four new sightings spanning decades in Kosovo,
Afghanistan, and Vietnam.
US military eyewitnesses reported
single objects in close proximity to American planes.
And in the 2004 Nimitz encounter,
where an entire carrier strike group was present,
radar operators reported a fleet of objects.
LOU ELIZONDO: What Tarr saw and what the Nimitz folks had
reported back in 2004, there were
some commonalities in the performance of these things.
NARRATOR: The team needs to gather more data to address
the biggest question.
Are these the same objects, and if so, what are they?
In the case of Derek Tarr's sighting,
could the conflict itself offer a clue?
Clearly when we engage Kosovo, we're operating in fairly close
proximity to Russia, and it's an opportunity for them to collect
intelligence on these cutting-edge
aircraft in the US inventory, including the stealth bomber.
NARRATOR: The B2 stealth bomber was first used
in combat in the Kosovo war.
At the time, it was America's most advanced aircraft.
So all of those kinds of technologies
are very pertinent to the Russian military, who
are constantly preparing for the eventuality
in which they may have to engage the United States.
DEREK TARR: The thought did cross my mind that this
certainly could be a hostile.
LOU ELIZONDO: Are they really an adversarial technology
that has managed to hoodwink us and leapfrog
ahead of the United States going back decades?
If that's the case, then I think we have a much, much bigger
problem on our hands, because that means
there is something inherently broken
with our national security apparatus.
DEREK TARR: I think it very well could
be a significant national security issue.
If we just kind of bury our head in the sand or look away,
we're screwed.