A long-awaited Pentagon report on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), also known as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) in the US security establishment, was unveiled on Saturday. The report, reviewing 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories, was vague in the conclusions that it drew—there were no positive links to extraterrestrial phenomena, but it did not rule out the possibility either.
"Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation," the report stated.
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There were 18 cases in which witnesses saw unusual patterns of movement or flight characteristics, the report said, adding that more analysis was needed to determine if those sightings represented breakthrough technology. The report highlighted the national security threat posed by the phenomena—it could possibly be adversaries like Russia or China flaunting technologies far beyond what the United States possessed.
In essence, UFOs are real, but the big question remains: Where do they come from?
A breakdown of the report, step-by-step:
How did the UFO report come into being?
Long the domain of science fiction and so-called ufologists, the subject of UFOs has in recent years drawn serious study from the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. The first prominent sighting was made in 1947, when a pilot named Kenneth Arnold in the United States discovered what he described as "nine flying discs in the sky". UFOs have been reported across the world, including in India (in 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's security detail had even claimed that one such object was found hovering the skies above Lok Kalyan Marg).
The sightings reached a tipping point during the Cold War, with incidents like Roswell frenzy in the United States, when the wreckage of an unidentified craft and "strange, child-like corpses" near New Mexico sparked mass hysteria. The US feared a Soviet hand in the incident, reaching a conclusion that the USSR was trying to overwhelm their air defence systems by sparking unrest among the US public. Some even claimed Joseph Stalin’s direct involvement in the incident. Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, in her book Area 51, hinted from sources that the child-sized deformed bodies could be the products of gruesome eugenics experiments by USSR and Stalin, in association with Nazi scientist Josef Mengele; this was psychological warfare by the Soviets, planning to spread panic and overwhelm the US civilians with UFO and alien fears, she claimed.
The US then introduced Project Blue Book in 1952, through which they aggressively debunked all questions on UFOs and completely stigmatised the topic out of public conversation. Most of the sightings were explained away as cosmic phenomena or even "radar waves bouncing off temperature inversions".
However, the UFO sightings kept piling up. One of the most significant was the 2004 Nimitz encounter, when a 40-feet long oblong-shaped tic tac craft confronted fighter pilot US navy commander David Fravor. The craft moved in ways that Fravor described as "out of this world".
By 2007, the US had started to take the threat seriously. Helmed by then senate majority leader Harry Reid, the US passed $22 million in funding for the Pentagon to start a super secret ‘black money’ programme named Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). In 2020, the US Defence Department established the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) to detect UFOs that could pose national security threats.
In 2020, in a $2.3 trillion relief package signed by then US president Donald Trump, a key provision ordered the Pentagon to publicly file a report declassifying everything the government knows about UAPs. This was the same report released on Saturday.
What are the key points from the Pentagon report?
The Pentagon stated in its report: "Our analysis of the data supports the construct that if and when individual UAP incidents are resolved, they will fall into one of five potential explanatory categories: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, USG or US industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall “other” bin."
Airborne clutter includes birds, balloons, recreational unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), or airborne debris like plastic bags. Natural atmospheric phenomena includes ice crystals, moisture, and thermal fluctuations that may register on some infrared and radar systems. USG or Industry Developmental Programs could be attributable to developments and classified programs by US entities (none of these systems accounted for any of the UAP reports collected). Foreign adversary systems may include technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or a non-governmental entity.
A lot of sightings were reported in the "other category", the "phenomenon probably lacking a single explanation", according to the report.
Are the UFOs a security concern?
The extraordinary, and often times bizarre, movement of the UFOs reported is the single biggest concern from a national security perspective. They seem capable of operating equally efficiently in land, water and space, moving, as one fighter pilot put it, “like a ping-pong ball in a cup that is shaken back and forth”. It could move close to 5,000 miles an hour, and instantly take a sharp right-angle turn, seemingly completely unaffected by inertia and inertial effects. They operate at gravities that could tear into shreds a terrestrial craft or a human pilot.
The Pentagon report shared the same concerns. "Some UAPs appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings. The UAPTF holds a small amount of data that appear to show UAP demonstrating acceleration or a degree of signature management," the report said.
Could these crafts be of a human design?
Could these UFOs be the secret designs of countries like Russia or China? That is a question the US lawmakers contended with. That would seem highly unlikely, given that the sightings extend back to the early 1900s, a time when countries across the world were still coping with famines and issues of basic human necessity.
Marik Von Rennenkampff, who served at the Pentagon and as an analyst in the state department’s bureau of international security and nonproliferation, told the Guardian if a foreign power was behind the aircraft seen by US pilots and radar, they would have performed a breathtaking technological leap, and US intelligence would have had to have suffered an immense failure. "China has well-documented issues with basic jet engines, they rely on espionage to develop their most advanced weapons systems. So, I struggle with China having developed this. Russia has a defense budget that is a fraction of the United States, and much of its military infrastructure is crumbling so I struggle with that too," he said, according to the publication.
