UFOs

Steven Spielberg says the U.S. government is hiding info about UFOs from you and everyone else in the country.

The 'E.T.' director was blunt on 'The Late Show' with Stephen Colbert ... "I think the secrecy that is shrouding all of these sightings and the lack of transparency until the Freedom of Information Act compels certain materials to be released publicly, I think that there is something going on that simply needs extraordinary due diligence.”

SS is clearly intrigued by all the sightings, including the Pentagon's conclusion that it cannot explain more than 100 UFOs -- "I think what has been coming out recently is fascinating — just absolutely fascinating. I would like to hear more about it. I don’t know what they are."

Spielberg thinks there's something in the air for sure, and the government is hiding info from us.

A U.S. Air Force pilot has a unique keepsake from the Chinese spy balloon crisis -- a selfie snapped with the device in the background ... before it was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean.

The Pentagon released new images Wednesday, showing the balloon in flight on Feb. 3 -- the USAF eventually fired a missile on Feb. 4 to take it down. The photos were taken from the cockpit of a U-2 spy plane, which is capable of flying at an altitude of up to 70,000 feet.

The spy balloon was reportedly floating around 40,000 feet when it was destroyed. Interestingly, the new photos show it was still over land on Feb. 3, and that the U.S. military was keeping a close eye on the balloon.

U.S. officials said China's super snooper was about the size of 3 school buses, and you can see in the pics ... it had huge solar panels attached to the spying equipment.

President Biden said he gave the order to shoot it down on Feb. 1, but military advisors said it would be best to wait until it was over open water.

President Biden has finally addressed the spate of UFOs that caused enough alarm that we shot 4 of them down, and although the government doesn't know what they are, he has a theory.

Biden spoke for 7 minutes about the 3 smaller objects that our military shot down over the last week or so, but he did not take questions.

He says they're not part of China's spy balloon program -- like the first balloon that was shot down from the skies -- and are most likely balloons that were launched by private companies for various purposes.

Biden says he doesn't believe there are more objects than usual popping up over the U.S. ... he says we've simply enhanced our ability to detect these objects so we're seeing more than in the past.

Now, on the subject of aliens -- something his Press Secretary addressed earlier in the week -- Biden never used the word, nor did he reference it.

As for why the 3 objects were shot down -- he says it's simply because they posed a danger to commercial air traffic.

With the recent takedowns of unexplained flying objects in the sky -- and mass speculation they may be of another world -- one former Navy pilot says the convo is long overdue.

We talked to Ryan Graves -- a retired naval lieutenant who used to fly F-18s and who's attested to seeing UAPs -- to help make sense of these latest mysterious incidents ... namely, the U.S. government shooting objects down but not knowing what they are.

On "TMZ Live" Wednesday, Graves weighed in on the latest piece to this wonky puzzle ... the alarming cockpit audio that was just released, where the pilots are baffled by what they were seeing over Lake Huron this past weekend ... ultimately calling it an apparent balloon.

According to RG, they probably only landed on "balloon" because that's the best thing they could refer to describe this -- even though it's clear that whatever they saw fell outside the parameters of a typical orb they might normally see floating around.

With the White House now explicitly saying "alien" -- specifically, to deny that the UFOs that were shot down were E.T.-related in any way -- Graves says this topic is finally breaking through in a meaningful way ... this after years of military personnel having seen them.

He tells us there are likely things in this world, and universe, that we simply don't understand and can't quite explain ... and now that we're zeroing in on some of this stuff -- by actually seeking it out, he adds -- it's going to be a difficult road in making sense of it all.

The best thing Uncle Sam can do, he suggests, is to be upfront and transparent about what we know or don't ... as that's the best way to maintain trust and get to the truth.

Audio from the cockpit of Air Force pilots tracking down the unknown object at Lake Huron over the weekend has been released ... and confusion's in the air as they try to identify what exactly they're looking at.

The audio, released Tuesday, reveals the F-16 Falcon pilots attempting to describe the object -- with one referring to it as "metallic" with lines coming from below it, adding it was "smaller than a car."

It sounds like it's hard for them to spot it because of a glare from the sun, but discussions over it being a balloon definitely comes up -- with one ultimately classifying it as one.

As we reported, Sunday's shootdown came after FAA closed down airspace over sections of Lake Michigan amid UFO reports ... being the fourth object recently decommissioned in the skies.

You'll recall, an unexplained object over Canada was shot down, as was one over Alaska -- not to mention the Chinese Spy Balloon kerfuffle from earlier this month.