The report: UFO Report.pdf (wsj.net)
UFO Report Cites ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’ That Defy Worldly Explanation, U.S. Official Says
Propulsion, technology in some cases exceed present-day scientific knowledge, U.S. officials say
By Brett Forrest
Wall Street Journal
June 25, 2021 4:45 pm ET
The Department of Defense has authorized the release of three unclassified Navy videos which have been circulating in the public domain after unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017. PHOTO: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
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WASHINGTON—U.S. intelligence officials have examined more than a dozen sightings of unexplained aerial objects that displayed no visible propulsion or that used technology beyond the known capabilities of the U.S. or its adversaries, according to a senior U.S. official describing a new report.\
The instances were among 144 studied by intelligence officials for the long-awaited report, but weren’t offered as evidence of possible alien activity—though that prospect wasn’t definitively ruled out. Instead, officials said greater technological understanding may be required to determine what was behind many of the unexplained cases.
READ THE UFO REPORT: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
“Some of those could require some scientific advances on our part to allow us to better understand what it is that we’re observing,” said one of the officials. “It’s clear that we need to improve our capacity to further analyze remaining observations.”
Eighteen of the cases involved objects that displayed patterns of flight not well explained by current knowledge of propulsion and technology, the officials said.
The intelligence report, prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, didn’t resolve the issue of possible alien flight in U.S. airspace, but steered the debate over what the Pentagon calls unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, out of the fringes of conspiracy theory and into official discourse.
The unexplained sightings have been occurring for nearly two decades Some video footage of pilots’ encounters with the unknown aircraft, as well as the pilots’ reactions, has leaked into the public domain.
The Pentagon last summer revived a small, secretive unit called the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force to study the encounters.
U.S. military pilots have observed objects moving at hypersonic velocity, more than five times the speed of sound, and conducting maneuvers impossible using publicly known technology, stoking fears of industrial leaps made by adversarial nations.
Both China and Russia are believed to have experimented with hypersonic technology, but Friday’s report doesn’t support a conclusion that those countries were involved in the unexplained flights.
“There’s no evidence that foreign government systems account for any of the events described,” one of the officials said.
The report also provides no confirmation of otherworldly aircraft and technologies, settling discussion of unidentified aerial phenomena in the gray area where theories thrive.
“We have no clear indications that there is any non-terrestrial explanation,” one of the officials said.
Friday’s report encompasses 144 reports of UAP activity from 2004 until this year and offers almost no conclusive interpretation for the sightings.
“They very clearly demonstrate an array of aerial behaviors, which makes it very clear to us that there are multiple types of unidentified aerial phenomena that require different explanations,” one of the officials said.
In the report, ODNI establishes five categories for UAP sightings: airborne clutter such as birds and balloons; natural atmospheric phenomenon like thermal fluctuations; governmental or industrial developmental programs; foreign-adversary systems; and brief encounters for which there is too little information for more exact categorization.
Of the 144 UAP sighting reports, ODNI placed only one of the cases into any of categories—saying it resulted from airborne clutter—with the remainder lacking sufficient data for any classification, including as either foreign government or U.S. technology.
“The potential of this report was actually significant,” said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. “It could have come up with something that was incontrovertible evidence for extraterrestrial flight. That was the implicit promise here. But in the end, it didn’t go any farther than reports made in the 1950s. We can explain some of these things, but we can’t explain them all.”
The report was spurred in part by the public release of three Navy videos showing the flight of UAP aircraft. One of the officials said that the government has studied these videos and the readings given by U.S. onboard sensors, but that the government has settled on no explanation for the phenomenon observed in the clips.
“We don’t have any clear indications that any of these unidentified aerial phenomena are part of a foreign collection program,” one of the officials said. “And we don’t have any clear data that is indicative of a major technological advancement by a potential adversary.”
Write to Brett Forrest at brett.forrest@wsj.com
UFO Report Cites ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’ That Defy Worldly Explanation, U.S. Official Says - WSJ |
