Unidentified Submerged Objects — The Ocean Programme

71% of Earth’s surface is ocean. Average depth: 3,688 metres. Almost entirely unexplored. If something has been operating on this planet for longer than recorded human history, the ocean floor is where you’d base it. That’s not speculation — it’s the conclusion reached independently by the US Navy, the Russian Navy, retired NOAA admirals, and classified program insiders. Unidentified Submerged Objects are not a footnote to the UAP story. They are a parallel programme that may be older, deeper, and harder to contain.

The NDAA Definition: Transmedium Is Official

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 defines UAP to explicitly include: “transmedium objects or devices” and “submerged objects or devices that are not immediately identifiable and that display behavior or performance characteristics suggesting that the objects or devices may be related to the objects or devices described in subparagraph (A) or (B).”

Congress wrote USOs into federal law. The objects that enter water, travel underwater at impossible speeds, and exit the ocean back into the atmosphere are legally within scope of the UAP investigation mandate. This is not fringe — this is statute.

Retired NOAA Admiral: “Why Just Limit Ourselves to Looking Up?”

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet — retired Navy oceanographer and former Acting Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — gave Liberation Times one of the most significant on-record USO statements from a senior government official.

“I want to look in the oceans for UAP and evidence of higher non-human intelligence because I know the area really well,” Gallaudet said. “I know all the collection systems out there and the universities and government agencies that do ocean exploration and research. Why just limit ourselves to looking up when we know if we look below we’ll find that evidence too?”

Gallaudet has spoken with retired and active submariners about first-hand encounters with “exceptionally advanced submerged crafts detected through sophisticated military sensor systems.” One retired submariner he referred to AARO described the following incident from the 1980s in the North Atlantic:

During a severe storm with 40-foot waves — conditions that would normally make submarine detection near-impossible due to acoustic noise — the submarine’s sonar detected an object closing at high speed. The signature was consistent with a Russian torpedo. The crew executed emergency evasive maneuvers, diving near the crush depth of the vessel. The object slowed as it approached, circled to the stern, trailed the submarine for a period, then rapidly departed the area.

No Russian submarine could have operated sensors in those sea conditions. No torpedo in any known inventory circles its target, trails it, then leaves. The incident was reported to AARO. What AARO did with it is not publicly known.

Luis Elizondo’s Classified Underwater Video

During the May 8, 2026 Reality Check broadcast, Luis Elizondo — former AATIP director, who worked on the UAP Task Force at US Space Force alongside David Grusch — described a classified video that has not been released publicly.

The object: extremely large. Speed: physically impossible for any known underwater vehicle. Recording format: ultra 4K high-definition, colour, not grainy. Man-made structures visible nearby — providing scale reference. The recording was taken from an orbital platform over a “denied area.”

“When you understand the physics of water — friction, drag, there’s a speed limit in the water,” Elizondo said. “The things we monitored were conducting maneuvers well over 2,000, 3,000 and 4,000 G-forces. Well beyond the healthy limitations of anything biologically to withstand and certainly beyond our material science abilities to create a vehicle that can withstand that.” He described the telemetry data as “enough to potentially make you change your religion.”

NURO: The Agency You’ve Never Heard Of

The National Underwater Reconnaissance Office — NURO — is a joint Navy-CIA body that intelligence researcher UAP Gerb (Sam) identifies as “more classified than the NRO,” focused specifically on underwater UAP reconnaissance and retrieval. It operates outside standard congressional oversight channels and has a documented connection to DOE/NNSA infrastructure through NEST (Nuclear Emergency Support Team) integration.

Operation Laser Strike (1997) — a SOUTHCOM classified mission nominally targeting narcotics in South America — involved NEST units monitoring Russian probes. UAP Gerb’s research identifies this as a cover operation for UAP retrieval with multi-branch and CIA participation. The NEST integration is the tell: NEST deploys when there is a nuclear signature involved. Something in the water, in South America in 1997, had a nuclear signature significant enough to deploy the US nuclear response teams.

The Rockall Trough Retrieval

North Atlantic, 1991-92. A Marine diver — code-named “Mark” in UAP Gerb’s research corpus — participated in a crash retrieval operation in the Rockall Trough, a deep-water geological feature between Scotland and Iceland. The object: a 70-foot triangular craft buried in seafloor granite. No visible propulsion system. No exhaust ports. No seams. The retrieval team was abruptly removed from the site and immediately siloed — separated, debriefed individually, and ordered to silence. Mark has not spoken publicly under his real name.

The Rockall Trough is approximately 3,000 metres deep in places. A 70-foot craft of unknown material buried in granite at that depth represents a recovery operation of extraordinary technical complexity — suggesting the program has had deep-water retrieval capability for at least three decades.

Shag Harbour, 1967: Government-Confirmed USO

October 4, 1967. Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canada. Multiple witnesses — including RCMP officers and Coast Guard personnel — observed a large object with flashing amber lights descend and impact the water. Canadian Coast Guard and military vessels responded. Divers found no wreckage but reported a strange luminescent yellow foam on the surface. Canadian military records confirm the incident occurred and that the object was not recovered. The Shag Harbour incident is unique: it is one of the only USO cases with contemporaneous official government documentation, RCMP witness statements, and military search records — all confirming the object entered the water and was never found.

AUTEC: The Bahamas Triangle

The Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center operates in the Tongue of the Ocean — a deep-water channel in the Bahamas, adjacent to Andros Island. Run by the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Newport, AUTEC is the US Navy’s primary deep-water sonar, torpedo, and submarine testing range. Its official mission: “Mastery of the Seas at All Depths.”

AUTEC sits in the middle of one of the most documented USO hotspots on Earth — what researchers have called the “Bermuda Triangle of naval testing.” Navy and civilian pilots operating in the area have reported objects entering and exiting the water with no acoustic signature consistent with any known submarine. AUTEC’s extensive hydrophone arrays would capture these events. Those recordings are classified.

The Soviet Navy Files

The Russian Navy accumulated extensive classified USO documentation during the Cold War — partially released following the Soviet collapse. The files include:

Lake Baikal, 1982: Soviet military divers at 50-metre depth encountered humanoid figures in silver suits, approximately three metres tall, with no visible breathing apparatus. Three divers who attempted to pursue the figures were propelled to the surface by an unknown force, resulting in decompression sickness. One diver died. The incident was classified at the time and appears in released Russian Navy documentation.

North Atlantic encounters: Russian submarine commanders documented multiple encounters with objects exceeding any known submarine’s speed — tracked on sonar, confirming physical presence — that could not be attributed to any NATO or Soviet vessel. Admiral Yury Beketov, who commanded Soviet submarine forces, stated publicly before his death that these encounters were routine in certain ocean zones and that the Navy had concluded the objects were not manufactured by any human nation.

The “quacker” phenomenon: Soviet sonar operators began documenting a class of anomalous underwater sounds in the 1970s — described as frog-like quacking — that preceded or accompanied USO sightings. The sounds did not match any known biological or mechanical source. The Soviet Navy created a classified working group to study them. The working group files have not been publicly released.

Operation Prato: UAPs That Burned People From the Water

Colares Island, Pará state, Brazil, 1977. The Brazilian Air Force deployed Operation Prato in response to mass civilian reports of objects emerging from and returning to the ocean near the island. The objects emitted concentrated beams of light that caused physical burns, puncture marks, and in some cases permanent health damage to civilians. Brazilian military personnel photographed the objects extensively over months of deployment. Medical records of injured civilians were compiled.

The Colares incident is unique in the USO canon: documented military observation of objects transitioning between the ocean and atmosphere, with physical injury to human witnesses from emitted energy, confirmed by a national military force. The files were classified for 30 years. The commanding officer, Captain Uyrangê Hollanda, later broke his silence before his death — describing what he witnessed as definitively non-human and expressing regret that Brazil had not been more transparent.

The North Atlantic Reporting Gap

A Liberation Times investigation published March 2026 identified a structural gap in Atlantic UAP reporting: approximately 2,000 aircraft cross the North Atlantic daily. In US-managed airspace, controllers are required to formally record and escalate UAP observations. At approximately 30 degrees west longitude, as aircraft cross into European-managed oceanic airspace, that formal reporting requirement disappears. Encounters in the middle of the Atlantic — over the deepest water, furthest from any coast — are the least likely to be officially documented. This is not a coincidence. It is a gap in the coverage that anyone operating beneath the Atlantic surface would benefit from.

Intelligence Assessment

The pattern across these cases — Soviet Navy, US Navy, Brazilian Air Force, Canadian RCMP, NOAA Admiral, classified AATIP video — is consistent. Objects of significant size operating at physically impossible speeds in the ocean, transitioning between water and atmosphere without deceleration, exhibiting apparent awareness of military vessels and aircraft, concentrated in specific ocean zones particularly around deep-water geological features and near nuclear facilities.

If these objects are based in the ocean — using deep-water geological formations as infrastructure — they have been there longer than any known human civilisation. The ocean floor would provide near-perfect concealment from surface observation, protection from electromagnetic detection, and access to geothermal energy. It would also explain why UAP encounters cluster around coastlines, naval bases, and submarine operating areas.

The NURO exists. The Rockall Trough retrieval happened. Elizondo’s video exists. The Gallaudet interviews are on record. The question is not whether something is operating in the oceans. The question is how long it has been there — and what the US Navy actually knows.

Sources: Luis Elizondo, Reality Check / NewsNation (May 2026). Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet interview, Liberation Times (April 2024). UAP Gerb research corpus — NURO, Operation Laser Strike. Brazilian Air Force Operation Prato files (partially declassified 2009). Canadian government Shag Harbour records (1967). NDAA FY2023 UAP definition. Liberation Times Atlantic boundary investigation (March 2026). NUWC Newport/AUTEC official documentation. Soviet Navy USO files (partially declassified).