A new congressional report says the Pentagon’s UFO task force, now known as Unidentified Air Events (UAP), has processed more reports in the past few years than in the previous 17 years. But that doesn’t mean we’re in the middle of an alien invasion. The non-confidential report was released this week by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in collaboration with the US Department of Defense’s Office of Anomaly Resolution (AARO). The office was created under congressional mandate, and this week’s report is an update of the Pentagon’s preliminary review of UAP reports released in 2021.

By estimate, military personnel noticed 144 reports of weather anomalies between 2004 and 2021. “There were 247 new reports and 119 more that have since been discovered or reported after the previous evaluation period,” the recently released report said. This brings the total number of UAP reports to 510 as of August 30 last year.

The report’s authors say the increase in reports is partly due to a better understanding of the potential threats UAPs can pose, both flight hazards and potential enemy assembly platforms, and in part to a reduced stigma surrounding UAPs. reporting”.

Either way, US intelligence and military officials say they see it as a good thing. “This enhanced reporting provides more opportunities to implement rigorous incident analysis and resolution,” the report said.

Air Force Brig. General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s press secretary, described the problem of weather anomalies as a national security issue. “The security of our service personnel, bases and facilities, and the safeguarding of US operations on land, in the air, at sea and in space, is paramount,” Ryder said in a statement. We take reports of occupation of designated area, land, sea or airspace seriously and are investigating each one.”

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle praised the report but called for more transparency. “More needs to be done to use existing sensors to collect and analyze more data on UAPs,” said Senator Marco Rubio of R-Fla., and Senator Mark Warner of R-Virginia said he hopes the collaboration continues. “As we work to focus our resources on uncharacterized and uncorrelated UAP reports.”

The unclassified version of the report does not include details of either case. Such details are only found in a confidential congressional report. However, the unclassified version provides a breakdown of 366 newly discovered observations. More than half of the reports were predetermined to show “extraordinary features”:

• 26 were described as being caused by drones or drone-like devices.
• 163 described as being caused by balloons or similar objects.
• Six were related to clutter such as birds, weather, plastic bags or other airborne debris.

This left 171 reports “unqualified and unreported”. The situation report noted that some of the phenomena described in these still mysterious reports “involve unusual flight characteristics or performance and require further analysis.” But at least some anomalies could be related to sensor malfunctions or other not so mysterious reasons.

“Many reports lack sufficient detail to allow a high probability attribution of UAP,” the report said. Having a larger database of observations could perhaps help researchers unravel long-standing mysteries.

The report noted that none of the reported UAP collisions resulted in collisions or adverse health effects. There’s nothing in the report to address the possibility that aliens may have played a role in any of the UAP events, but Pentagon officials said at a congressional hearing last year that they didn’t see anything that seemed “extraterrestrial” in origin.

This week’s update received mixed reviews from people who are close to the UAP/UFO topic. Christopher Mellon, a former Pentagon official, welcomed “the issue of UAP gaining attention and recognition within government”, especially when it comes to security concerns posed by drones, including surveillance drones believed to be used by China.

But Mellon said the language in the report demonstrates the US government’s “unique and enigmatic ability to turn an inherently fascinating subject into tedious bureaucratic jargon.”

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who chairs the Breakthrough Starshot advisory committee and has written a controversial book on the possibility of intelligent alien life, said the most interesting information about UAP observations would likely be kept secret and hidden from the public. Source