When it comes to the existence of alien life, the truth is out there, but if the Pentagon knows, they’re not saying so in a long-awaited UFO report released Thursday.
First off, let’s specify that the acronym for unidentified flying objects has been retired by government officials who now prefer the more comfortably ambiguous UAP for unidentified aerial phenomena.
Back in June 2021, the street cred for UFOs/UAPs was dramatically elevated after NASA announced it was gearing up to convene a panel of experts to dig into exactly what might be behind the mysterious and unidentified flying objects witnessed by numerous airline pilots, military personnel and average citizens over recent years and captured on video, radar and other sensing devices.
A hair-raising report from the office of the Pentagon’s U.S. Director of National Intelligence, released just weeks after NASA announced its investigative effort, references 144 documented UAP “incidents” from 2004 to 2021. No mention of aliens or extraterrestrial life is made anywhere in the report, and all but one of the happenings, mostly captured by advanced equipment on jets flown by military pilots, are described by government officials as still unexplained.
The report states that most of the UAP encounters included in the analysis “probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers and visual observation.”
U.S. intelligence officials say the activities, overall, are so variable that no single explanation of the phenomena is likely. But analysts also believe there is a trend among some of the recorded incidents in which flight movements may be evidence of advanced systems and say they are “conducting further analysis to determine if breakthrough technologies were demonstrated.”
“In 18 incidents, described in 21 reports, observers reported unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics,” the report reads. “Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion.
“In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency energy associated with UAP sightings.”
On Thursday, the Pentagon released an unclassified version of its 2022 Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena which includes reviews of a significantly higher number of catalogued UAP incidents since ‘21’s preliminary report.
According to the new release, there have been 247 new reports and another 119 that were either since discovered or reported after the preliminary assessment’s time period. This totals 510 UAP reports as of August 30, 2022.
Of these 366 new documented incidents, the Defense Department’s recently created All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office judged more than half as having “unremarkable characteristics”:
- 26 characterized as Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) or UAS-like entities.
- 163 characterized as balloon or balloon-like entities.
- Six attributed to clutter.
The remaining 171 newly documented sightings/incidents were catalogued as “uncharacterized and unattributed UAP reports.” The report noted “some of these uncharacterized UAP appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis.”
According to the Pentagon assessment, the majority of the new reports came from U.S. Navy and Air Force pilots and operators “who witnessed UAP during the course of their operational duties and reported the events.”
While there are no definite Earth-shattering conclusions about the origins of the UAP seen in the incidents analyzed in the Pentagon’s unclassified report, reporting by Space.com notes the document highlights a growing emphasis on airspace safety, prompted in part by the recent proliferation of drones — some of which might represent intelligence-gathering efforts by the United States’ adversaries.
“UAP events continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting possible concerns for safety of flight or adversary collection activity,” Pentagon analysts write in the new report, adding that the agency continues “to assess that this may result from a collection bias due to the number of active aircraft and sensors, combined with focused attention and guidance to report anomalies.”
The Pentagon and the intelligence community “will continue to investigate any evidence of possible foreign government involvement in UAP events,” the report said.
California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the former House Intelligence Committee chair, welcomed the release of the report, according to CNN.
“I appreciate the effort undertaken by the (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) to study and characterize unidentified aerial phenomena reports, and their commitment to ensuring transparency by releasing an unclassified summary to the American public,” Schiff said, per CNN. “Unidentified aerial phenomena remain a national security matter, and I will continue to support thorough investigations of all UAP reports and oversight by the Congress.”