Sightings of UFOs up to 400: Pentagon

The Pentagon’s task force investigating UFO sightings has received hundreds more reports since last year, a top naval intelligence official told lawmakers Tuesday — adding that officials are still baffled about “what is out there.”

Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray made the disclosure during the first open congressional hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years. After a 90-minute public House Intelligence subcommittee session, lawmakers and witnesses retreated for a classified briefing.

During the hearing, Bray shared two declassified videos of strange encounters. One, of flashing triangle-shaped objects, was determined to be visual artifacts of light passing through night-vision goggles, he said.

The second video, of a shiny, spherical object zipping past the cockpit window of a military aircraft, “I do not have an explanation for what this specific object is,” Bray said.

A task force report released last year found that 144 UFO sightings had been reported by government sources since 2004. However, since then, Bray said, “the UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena] Task Force database has now grown to contain approximately 400 reports.”

That number includes “at least 11 near-misses” involving US assets, according to Bray, who added that sightings are “frequent and continuing.”

Bray said reports were partly due to “the stigma has been reduced” and American service members no longer fear being labeled conspiracy theorists or mentally unstable.

Most of the reported sightings can likely be attributed to “airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, US government or US industry developmental programs or foreign-adversary systems,” said Bray.

However, he added, “there are a number of other events in which we do not have an explanation … Those are obviously the ones that are of most interest to us.”