The U.S. Navy has verified for the first time that military videos circulated since 2017 showing what appear to be unidentified flying objects are real and that they should not have been publicly released, according to media reports.

The videos were released to Luis Elizondo – a former military intelligence officer who claims to have directed the Pentagon’s UFO research arm, Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program – in 2017, for use in a database about aerial threats. While declassified, they were not cleared for general public use.

Three widely-circulated clips depicting military aircraft interacting with UFOs – mysterious objects performing maneuvers not possible using existing aviation technology – were never supposed to be released to the public, the Navy’s Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare spokesman Joseph Gradisher told the Black Vault earlier this month, but the videos are genuine – and their contents can’t be explained.

The three videos were obtained and released by the To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Post reported, and show recordings by Navy pilots of encounters with unknown objects during maneuvers or training exercises.