Last June, the world received a snapshot of what the current attitudes within the United States Government are when it comes to unidentified aerial phenomena, or what are historically known as unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
In a report entitled “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: Preliminary Assessment”, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) presented a brief summary of the findings of the Navy’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force (UAPTF). At just six pages, the report left much to the imagination, although it did provide at least some details about the government’s current UAP investigative efforts. These included 144 incidents involving the apparent detection of objects that could not be identified, most of which were observed by members of the U.S. military in controlled airspace.
In many ways, the report amounted to an inkblot test for those who read it; the scant information provided was vague enough to leave open to question what, precisely, the UAP observed by U.S. military personnel are, and what their origins might be.
That ambiguity wasn’t enough to prevent many from drawing premature conclusions about the phenomenon witnessed. Since the report’s delivery, there have been ongoing assertions that while we still aren’t sure about what UAP are, we do supposedly know what they are not.
Now. Powered by Northrop Grumman is a blog presented by the famous American multinational defense and aerospace company, known for being one of the world’s largest manufacturers of military weapons. According to one online source, the blog is described as a site that “covers relevant, topical subjects in cutting-edge science, from deep space to the deep sea and everything in between,” whose mission is “to help this audience understand that their issues and interests are our issues and interests.”
In a recent posting at the blog by Nancy Huang, titled “UFO Sightings Are Real, but Aliens Are Not Responsible”, the author paradoxically asserts—despite the post’s title—that in 18 of the 144 incidents the report references, “UAP exhibited unusual movement patterns” which “could be due to sensor errors or observer misperception, but they could also be due to breakthrough technologies (from Earth) or aliens.”
That’s right, she said aliens. Indeed, reading the excerpt above, it seems hard to imagine that the author has really concluded that “aliens are not responsible,” and that extraterrestrial technologies can be entirely ruled out as a possible source behind some UAP observations logged in the June assessment.
The article goes on to describe how the ODNI report from last June presents five categories into which, according to the author, “All UAP incidents are expected to eventually be included”. Those categories, as detailed in the ODNI report, are “airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, USG or industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall ‘other’ bin.”
A cursory glance at these might lead one to the mistaken conclusion that if all UAP observed by the military fall into one of these categories, then there must be little more to the issue than surveillance drones or other technologies in use by adversaries of the United States (actually a rather concerning prospect). On the lesser extreme, UAP sightings might consist only of natural phenomena or other things with mundane explanations.
However, those who have read the ODNI report may recall that on Page 6 of the assessment, the authors present the following interesting additional information about the otherwise unremarkable sounding “Other” category:
“Although most of the UAP described in our dataset probably remain unidentified due to limited data or challenges to collection processing or analysis, we may require additional scientific knowledge to successfully collect on, analyze and characterize some of them. We would group such objects in this category pending scientific advances that allowed us to better understand them. The UAPTF intends to focus additional analysis on the small number of cases where a UAP appeared to display unusual flight characteristics or signature management.”
One would likely find it hard to imagine that anything relatively mundane could also display “unusual flight characteristics or signature management,” the latter meaning that some of these objects appear to possess the ability to reduce their visibility or instrumental detection by technological means.
From this, several conclusions may be drawn about some of the “Other” category phenomena in question, which includes 1) that some UAP are technological devices, 2) that some of these devices appear to operate in ways that our military doesn’t fully understand, and 3) that whatever these objects are, they are purposely trying to avoid detection.
Add to this the fact that, as we have seen in recent days, Russia’s military may well have bitten off more than it could chew with its attempted invasion of Ukraine. What many feared (and Russia no doubt believed) would be a swift military takeover has resulted in almost a month of battle, and the unnecessary loss of countless innocent Ukrainian lives, as well as the deaths of Russian soldiers by the thousands.
The point here, with relevance to the UAP argument, is this: are we really supposed to believe Russia, with the obvious limitations its military has been shown to have throughout this conflict, are the ones producing UAP being observed by the U.S. military in its own airspace? The likelihood of this possibility in light of recent events, or even their belonging to a nation like China, grows increasingly slim.
In summary, although many continue to proclaim in headlines that UAP/UFO sightings do occur, but that they aren’t aliens (while seemingly contradicting themselves just a few sentences into their own articles that make such proclamations), the truth is that we simply don’t know what these objects are, or where some of them might come from.
Yes, the extraterrestrial hypothesis remains a possibility. This, along with a few other potential alternatives, should remain on the table until enough data is collected that conclusive determinations about the nature and origin of UAP can be made.
