After a long wait of two decades, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has finally submitted Pentagon’s report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs, aka UFOs) to Congress on Friday. But instead of answering most of the questions, this report keeps us in a dilemma. As only a nine-page long report is made available to the public.
This unclassified report shows that Pentagon examined 144 instances of the strange sighting by military aircraft which it calls “unidentified phenomena,” which mainly covers the incident reported from November 2004 to March 2021. ODNI in the report says “Some UFOs seemed to remain motionless in high winds, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible propulsion means.”
Office of the Director of National Intelligence tried to divide these 144 instances into five categories – natural occurring phenomena, airborne clutter, technology developed by the US government or by any secret technology developed by China/Russia, and a final catch-all “other” category. Of those 144 instances, 18 may have state-of-the-art technology which the United States cannot explain.
Agency also cleared that there seems to be no involvement of any mysterious technology developed by Russia or China or extraterrestrial life but didn’t rule any explanations to that. However, the agency is satisfied that most of the sightings involved “physical objects”.
When asked about potential alien explanations, one of the officials told CNN that, “It’s not the purpose of the task force, to evaluate any sort of search for extraterrestrial life. … That’s not what we were charged with doing.”
He added, “Of 144 reports in question here, we have on a clear indication that there is a non-terrestrial explanation for them, but we will go where the data will lead”.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence concludes the report by stating that understanding these incidents will require a consolidated and standardized approach across all government organizations. They also want to invest in technologies like machine learning algorithms to look at reports. After the report’s release, the Pentagon announced plans to “formalize” its UAP/UFO investigation mission currently handled by the task force.
You can read the full report here.
