The US Department of Defense claimed in a report to Congress on Tuesday (Oct 17) that more than 270 reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena, also known as UAPs or UFOs, were reported to the government in a recent eight-month period. According to the unclassified assessment, there was no evidence that any of the UAPs discovered between August 30 of last year and April 30 of this year originated in space. While no UAP reports have been confirmed as being of foreign origin, the possibility is being investigated.
According to US-based reports, many of the reports by military witnesses “present potential safety of flight concerns, and there are some cases where reported UAP have potentially exhibited one or more concerning performance characteristics such as high-speed travel or unusual manoeuvrability.”
In September, the organization stated that it had uncovered no indication that UAPs are “extraterrestrial.”
None of these reports indicate that the UAP approached civil or military aircraft in a dangerous manner. However, the research stated that the sheer existence of UAP in the airspace poses a risk to aircraft safety. Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, who is the Pentagon press secretary, said on Wednesday: “The safety of our service personnel, our bases and installations, and the protection of US operations security on land, in the skies, seas, and space are paramount.” “We take reports of incursions into our designated space, land, sea, or airspaces seriously and examine each one,” Ryder added.
The agency is also looking into 17 sightings that occurred between 2019 and 2022 that were not previously reported. The United States has taken the UFO and UAP phenomena seriously, with NASA convening a panel of specialists in 2022 to study how data on UAPs is collected. In September, the organization stated that it had uncovered no indication that UAPs are “extraterrestrial.”
NASA officially began the search for UFOs in September of this year, but reflecting the stigma linked to the field, the US space agency kept the identity of the person in charge of a new program tracking mysterious flying objects hidden for hours. The official’s appointment is the result of a year-long NASA fact-finding report into UAP. “At NASA, it’s in our DNA to explore – and to ask why things are the way they are,” agency chief Bill Nelson said.