The United States government examines 510 reported sightings of UFOs, unidentified flying objects, according to a report released this Thursday (12) by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI, for its acronym in English). The number is more than triple the number registered last year.
The document reports that 247 reports of “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP) have been submitted since June 2021, when 144 suspicious sightings had already been recorded. Most of the new reports were made by US Navy and Air Force pilots.
Another 119 sightings that had been archived over the past 17 years were re-examined, bringing the total number of cases under review to 510.
Many of the UFOs are later identified as balloons, drones, or so-called aerial mayhem, which includes birds, weather phenomena, and plastic bags in the air. But there are cases that remain unexplained, highlights the DNI.
These are —the still unresolved phenomena— the objects of analysis by the Pentagon, intelligence agencies and NASA. The biggest concern of security agents is not that UFOs are extraterrestrial ships, but rather spying technologies sent by foreign countries.
“UAPs continue to pose a risk to flight safety and pose a potential threat of collection [de inteligência] by adversaries”, states the document. “Some of these UAP […] appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis.”
The document makes the caveat that several of the sightings that remain unexplained may be due to meteorological phenomena, faulty sensors or mistaken analysis. “Many reports lack sufficient data to assign them with certainty [a categoria] of the UAP”.
The DNI report came after years of lobbying by Congress to get the military and intelligence community to take UFOs seriously.
In 2020, the Pentagon published a video recorded by Navy pilots of objects moving at high speed, spinning and mysteriously disappearing – the case remains unexplained.
“We take reports of incursions into our designated land, sea or air space seriously, and we review each one,” Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said in a statement.
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