Robert McGwier has had a very accomplished professional life.
Former chief scientist at the Hume Center, founder of HawkEye 360 — a data analytics service for observing constellations and satellites — who holds a Ph.D in applied mathematics from Brown University, he also served as a high-security-clearance intelligence officer.
It was on one of these undercover operations that he first had his encounter with an unknown underwater craft.
In an interview with Chris Lehto on Lehto’s YouTube channel, Robert explains that the mission started while aboard a nuclear submarine called the USS Hampton.
During this particular mission, the submarine needed to leave a dangerous area at high speed to avoid detection.
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“We were underway, and all of a sudden I hear this sound.” McGwier explained.
“It’s really strange, because it’s clear that what is going on is something is whizzing by us — and it’s moving so fast, I just can’t believe it.”
The speed of the object, McGwier knew, shouldn’t have been possible.
“This submarine is limited in the speed it can go by the incompressibility of the water in front of it, and this thing blew by us like we were standing still.”
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After the mysterious object rocketed past, a crewmate from the engineering department remarked that it had been moving “faster than the speed of sound, underwater.”
Due to the greater compression of particles underwater, sound travels much faster in the ocean than in air.
In air, the speed of sound is about 761 miles per hour, or 340 meters per second.
In water, the speed of sound is a whopping 1,500 meters per second, or 3,355 miles per hour.
Only a handful of aircraft can reach such speeds (such as the X-43), but certainly none would attempt the feat underwater.
When asked if there could have been an error with the equipment or the readout, McGwier said, “I don’t believe it. The people saying this were submariner sensor experts.”
When McGwier mentioned to the crew that they should report the incident, they quickly dismissed him and said it wasn’t pertinent to the mission and they didn’t want to cause a stir.
McGwire later had a mission aboard the USS Blue Ridge, which served as a helicopter carrier.
“We went through a typhoon. The typhoon had 90-knot winds and 40-50 foot seas. It was rough,” he said.
“I was on the bridge … right underneath the American flag, looking out the windows. That’s when I noticed that, even though we were in the typhoon and it was raining like mad, there was no rain hitting the ship. … I looked out the window and looked up and I could see a glow above us in the sky.”
“Whatever it was, was blocking off the rain from the entire ship, stem to stern.”
“It suddenly grew brighter and took off, straight up, and the rain returned.”
Now retired, Robert said that although he is unable to release the classified elements of his missions, he’s more than happy to share what he encountered with anyone who cares to listen.
Sadly, he’s left with more questions than answers.
Later, he said, “I told the intelligence staff what I saw and they didn’t want to do anything about it. … We didn’t gather any evidence, nothing happened to the ship, so there’s nothing to report.
“If you report an incident at sea … they send an investigative team, and they didn’t want that to happen … because they always find something you don’t … want them to find.
“I just know what I saw, McGwier told Lehto. “That, I’ll never forget.”
