The U.S. Air Force Pilot Who Had A Dogfight With A UFO

Summary

Lt. Colonel Ryan Bodenheimer shares his extraordinary encounters with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) during his extensive flying career. With four separate incidents to recount, including a close call, he discusses the nature of these objects and their unusual aerodynamic designs. His testimony, along with his popular YouTube channel 'Max Afterburner', represents a shift in the conversation around UAP within the military community.

Key takeaways

• 1Ryan Bodenheimer: Lt. Colonel and pilot who has flown over 70 combat missions.
• 2Experienced four separate UAP incidents during his flying career, including one close call.
• 3Advocates that the stigma around UFO sightings by military aviators has lessened.
• 4His YouTube channel 'Max Afterburner' has half a million subscribers.
• 5Claims that the design of UAP does not align with known aerodynamics.

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

You've been asked to run the company's social channels, but company content plays by its own set of rules. It needs a logo in the first three seconds, but it can't feel like an ad. It needs subtitles, except when it doesn't. It needs to run at two times speed and deliver a complex message. Simply, of course, within 9x16. Thankfully, your company has Canva, so you can easily edit your video and every version of it. What will you Canva today? Fighter squadrons, it's high-pressure, high-stakes jobs where you've got to be dialed in. The people around you don't want to think that you're seeing things while you're flying, right? I essentially got into a mini-dogfight with a UAP, and I'll never forget it. Normalized people talking about it. You know, these things happen. You're an expert, trained witness, and this is what you saw. Like this. It's moving like this. So there's nothing aerodynamic about this thing. It reminded me of, like, Mario Brothers. Like, hey, go through here to go to the next level. Like, that's what it seemed like to me. Do you allow yourself to speculate what all these things are, where they're from? This is Weaponized. This is Weaponized. I'm George Knapp here in Las Vegas, joined by my friend and colleague, Jeremy Corbell. How you doing, Jeremy? We had a good one today. Oh, yeah. I'm excited, man. We're going to be speaking with somebody who, you know, has seen things for themselves and has a really pretty incredible background. You know, one of the cool things, the many cool things about living in Las Vegas is it's the home to the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. ...

Excerpt from Weaponized, Jan 20, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.