Newsman: The U.S. government cannot give a definitive explanation of aerial phenomena spotted by military pilots but has found no evidence that they are linked to aliens, according to two officials briefed on an intelligence report examining the issue. But Scientists believe aliens are out there. Here’s how they’re searching for intelligent life. “There are all sorts of things we don’t understand,” said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute. He noted, for example, that some rules of physics have been called into question by new research without a public outcry. The public release of the government report is likely to keep the issue in the national conversation.
The report due to Congress later this month examines multiple unexplained sightings from recent years that in some cases have been captured on video of pilots exclaiming about objects flying in front of them. The two people briefed on the report said it found no proof of an extraterrestrial link and does not rule out that what pilots have seen may be new technologies developed by other countries. One of the officials said there is no indication that the unexplained phenomena are from secret U.S. programs. The two officials were not authorized to discuss the information publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Findings of the report were first published Thursday by the New York Times.
“What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there are – there’s footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are,” former President Barack Obama said last month upon news of the report’s commission.
Many who study UFOs argue the phenomena are just that: unidentified flying objects. While the phrase often draws connections to aliens, an increasing number of researchers, journalists and former government officials interested in these occurrences say they don’t necessitate the existence of extraterrestrial life but do warrant further, detailed investigations.
“There’s no question anymore that UFOs are real,” author and independent journalist Leslie Kean recently told USA TODAY.
The Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency have for decades looked into reports of aircraft or other objects in the sky flying at inexplicable speeds or trajectories.
The report, commissioned by Congress, has garnered considerable attention as lawmakers and the public speculate on what the report may reveal about unidentified flying objects.
“I want us to take it seriously and have a process to take it seriously,” Sen. Marco Rubio. R-Fla., told “60 Minutes” last month. “Maybe it has a very simple answer … Maybe it doesn’t.”
Congress in December required the director of national intelligence to summarize and report on the U.S. government’s knowledge of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs — better known to the public as unidentified flying objects or UFOs. The effort has included officials on a Defense Department UAP task force established last year. The expected public release of an unclassified version of the report this month will amount to a status report, not the final word, according to one official.
In 2019, the Times published a report featuring interviews from Navy pilots who had see the objects.
“These things would be out there all day,” Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot, told the Times. Graves had been with the Navy for 10 years at the time and had reported sightings to the Pentagon and Congress.
“Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect,” he said.
Last week, a filmmaker shared video depicting radar footage he claimed shows a swarm of unidentified flying objects near a Navy ship off the coast of San Diego almost two years ago.
According to the officials that the New York Times cited as having been briefed on the report, the objects’ acceleration and ability to change direction and submerge remains hard to explain.
The New York Times and CNN ,two news outlets cited multiple unnamed officials said to have been briefed on the contents of the government report but not authorized to speak publicly. The New York Times was first to publish details on the report expected to be publicly released in the coming weeks by the Pentagon and the US intelligence community. The report will include a classified annex, but officials told the Times that annex still does not include information linking the phenomena to aliens.
According to the Times, officials said the report could not tie most of the more than 120 incidents of such phenomena over the last two decades to the U.S. military or other advanced government technology.
CNN reported the findings leave open the possibility these flying objects were created by other countries, like China or Russia. China and Russia have both invested heavily in hypersonic technology, the Times reported.
In 2017, a New York Times report revealed multiple Navy pilots had seen UFOs while in flight. The Pentagon later declassified video of the incidents, which showed high-speed objects with no clear propulsion outpacing the officers’ jets.
Research into and fascination with UFOs has long been part of popular culture, though sightings or evidence pointing to extraterrestrial life have generally been dismissed as conspiracy theories.
But in recent years, an increasing number of U.S. government and intelligence officials have confirmed the government’s interest in these unexplainable aerial phenomena.
The U.S. government takes unidentified aerial phenomena seriously given the potential national security risk of an adversary flying novel technology over a military base or another sensitive site, or the prospect of Russian or Chinese development exceeding current U.S. capabilities. It also is seen by the U.S. military as a security and safety issue, given that in many cases the pilots who reported seeing unexplained aerial phenomena were conducting combat training flights.
Fueling the government’s investigation into these events has been the Pentagon UFO tracking program, which was spearheaded by former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid in 2007.
A recent story on CBS’ “60 Minutes” further bolstered interest in the government report.
Skeptics caution that the videos and reported sightings have plausible Earth-bound explanations. Mick West, an author, investigator and longtime skeptic of UFO sightings, said he supported the military looking into any possible incursion of U.S. airspace, especially by an adversary.
“People are conflating this issue with the idea that these UFOs demonstrate amazing physics and possibly even aliens,” West said. He added, “The idea that this is some kind of secret warp drive or it’s defying physics as we know it, there really isn’t any good evidence for that.”
