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This digitally created image shows what one artist thinks a UFO might look like (Image by Christian Plass from Pixabay)
There have been several incidents recently that have caused those interested in the mysterious subject of UFOs (recently renamed UAP) to sit up and take note.
Shortly after the balloon that floated over the country (and was subsequently shot down by the U.S. Air Force on February 4th), it was widely reported in both U.S. and international media that three other unidentified objects were found to be floating high above Alaska, Canada, and Michigan.
These three objects were soon shot down by military aircraft as well but some of their descriptions seemed much curiouser than that of a balloon.
The Wall Street Journal reported that one of the objects was shaped like an octagon and hovered.
An article on Insider.com stated that some of the F-22 pilots who shot down the object over Alaska stated that the craft interfered with their jet’s sensors and that they couldn’t see any propulsion systems on the craft. To further confuse the matter, some of pilots didn’t report the same observances.
C-Span released a video of Senator Marco Rubio on February 14th commenting on the three objects after a closed door debriefing on the subject.
While responding to reporters, Rubio appeared to indicate the crafts matched descriptions that have been used in the past to describe other UAPs.
“The other three instances, as they are described both publicly and in there, are not knew. We have heard the same descriptions in hundreds of cases,” Rubio said.
Rubio went on to say that it might be better if the crafts did have alien origins than if they were from China or Russia because then it would be a bigger problem that we don't know more about these types of objects.
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Part of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act contained a requirement that the U.S. intelligence community continue to release yearly reports about UAP. The reports are meant to detail knowledge gained about UAP and suggestions from the intelligence community about what needs to be done to protect U.S. interests from any potential threats.
There was supposed to be such a report released by October 31st of last year but the deadline came and went without a report or an official statement about why there was no report.
There wasn’t much fanfare when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) report, titled 2022 Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, was finally released on January 12th of this year.
Many things were discussed in that report (including the large number of balloons or “balloon-like entities” and drones that were observed) but there were also some more interesting findings.
For example, it was found that the number of sightings between March 2021 and August 2022 had increased signfifcantly.
The last report that had been released covered the period from 2004 to 2021 and there were 144 UAP sightings that were reported and studied.
From early 2021 to late 2022 alone there were 247 new sightings of UAP reported.
Of course some of this is likely due to more technologically advanced sensors being used now and less stigma involved with reporting a sighting. After all, the U.S. government is now actively seeking to gather more data on UAP sightings and develop systems to identify objects in our airspace more quickly and accurately.
But there were 171 sightings of UAP discussed in the report released this year that the U.S. intelligence community could find no explanation for.
At least some of those 171 objects also “demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities” according to the ODNI report.
There are some who will declare that UAP are all just objects that are mistaken for something unknown because of one reason or other (including effects of swamp gas, misidentified planets, or just simple optical illusions).
There are others who will argue that UAP are clearly evidence of aliens visiting our planet (and there are many, many theories about why there has been no evidence found that would convince a majority of people that this is the case).
Until we have a definitive answer, we will certainly not lack for theories about what unidentified objects flying through Earth's skies are.
The U.S. government is actively working on getting a definitive answer about UAP.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby recently discussed a new interagency team to “study the broader policy implications for detection, analysis, and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risks.”
The bottom line is that we just don’t know for sure what most UAP are all about but there are more resources than ever before being used to try to get to the bottom of this mysterious subject.
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