The United States has set the world abuzz with its unclassified nine-page UFO report, and senior officials telling the media that analysts have ruled out an extraterrestrial origin. A special task force, which prepared the report, focused on phenomena witnessed first-hand by military aviators, with 80 reports involving detection by multiple sensors.
The unclassified report released to Congress and the public, encompasses 144 observations, mostly from the US Navy personnel, of what has been described by government officials as “unidentified aerial phenomenon” (UAP) which dates back to 2004. It was compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in conjunction with a Navy-led task force by the Pentagon in 2020.
The report says that UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to the US national security as it lacks a single explanation. However, a senior US official said investigators found no evidence that the sightings represented extraterrestrial life. “Of the 144 reports we are dealing with here, we have no clear indications that there is any non-terrestrial explanation for them, but we will go wherever the data takes us,” he said.
The official said investigators were convinced that the majority of the sightings were indeed “physical objects”. “Most of the UAP reported 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. In 11 cases, pilots reported near-miss collisions with these strange objects.”
Intelligence and military personnel working on this have pointeds that a foreign adversary like Russia or China may have developed some kind of next-generation technology that the United States doesn’t know about. They believe it’s possible that some of the 143 unexplained cases might wind up being foreign technology.
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But the report highlights that limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena hampers their ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of UAP. Investigators had tried to sort the incidents into five categories – airborne clutter, like birds or weather balloons; natural atmospheric phenomena; US government or industry developmental programs; foreign adversary systems; and an alluring catchall (Other).
The report also brought to the fore that analysts lacked the technical information they needed to be able to come to firm conclusions. Furthermore, this report is considered as a turning point for the US government after the military spent decades deflecting and discrediting observations of unidentified flying objects and “flying saucers” dating back to the 1940s.
