Jake Barber

Jake Barber is a former U.S. Air Force helicopter pilot and aerial-crane operator who emerged in January 2025 as the first self-described crash-retrieval participant to make his claims on camera under his own name. He co-founded Skywatcher, a private venture claiming to detect and even summon UAP with instrumented teams.

Barber's verified background is in military aviation and, afterward, specialized helicopter sling-load operations, precisely the skill a covert recovery of an awkward object would need, which is the hook of his story.

In a NewsNation special with Ross Coulthart on January 24-25, 2025, Barber described being tasked, years earlier, with slinging away a white, egg-shaped object from a western U.S. site, saying he was told nothing of its origin. The broadcast showed a video purporting to depict such an egg-shaped object being carried. He also described psionic phenomena, claiming certain individuals can mentally interact with the objects, and introduced Skywatcher's team, which included former UAP Task Force chief Jay Stratton. Through 2025 Skywatcher promised imminent data releases, summoning demonstrations, and scientific papers; by 2026 the group had gone largely quiet, with promised material undelivered, a silence covered extensively in the community. MWN's search traffic shows sustained public interest in his claims.

The retrieval account, the egg video, and the summoning program are all claims; none has been independently verified, and the video's provenance remains unestablished. His contribution is precedent: a named, checkable-background operator telling a retrieval story in the first person, which moved the whistleblower genre past anonymity.

Skeptics note the egg video shows an object with no scale reference and no chain of custody, that psionics claims move the story into unfalsifiable territory, and that the undelivered promises fit a familiar pattern. Supporters, including Coulthart, say Barber's identity and flight records check out and that verification takes time. AARO has not publicly addressed his claims.

Barber's public activity has been minimal since mid-2025; Skywatcher's status is unclear as of September 2026.