Pentagon officials testify at UFO hearing

WASHINGTON — Congress held a rare public hearing Tuesday into the existence of what the government calls unidentified aerial phenomena, more commonly known as UFOs, a subject of scrutiny by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies following an increase in sightings by military personnel and pilots in recent years.

By taking testimony from senior government officials, lawmakers intended to bring “out of the shadows” a Defense Department organization that has been tracking the sightings, said Rep. André Carson, D-Ind., chairman of the House Intelligence’s Committee’s panel on counterterrorism, counterintelligence and counterproliferation.

That effort, revealed in 2017, has collected eyewitness accounts, including from naval aviators who said they saw flying objects that seemed to lack any visible means of propulsion and defied human understanding of aerodynamics and physics.

The hearing was the first time in more than 50 years that U.S. officials have provided testimony for public consumption about their investigation of UFOs. The Air Force closed its inquiry into the subject, Project Blue Book, in 1970.

“We know that our service members have encountered unidentified aerial phenomena,” Ronald S. Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security, told the bipartisan panel of lawmakers. “We are committed to an effort to determine their origins.”

While the hearing marked a significant moment in the government’s efforts to reveal more of what it knows about unexplained objects in the sky, it was short on revelations. Scott W. Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence, played a brief video of what he described as “a spherical object” with a reflective surface as it zoomed past the cockpit of a U.S. F-18 fighter jet.

“I do not have an explanation for what this specific object is,” Mr. Bray said.

Lawmakers asked Mr. Bray to replay the video and pause on the fast-moving object, which was difficult given its speed. The video was newly declassified and aired for the first time at the hearing. Earlier footage from naval aircraft and ships has shown other unexplained phenomena observed for longer periods.

One of the most famous of those sightings, taken by jets from the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier in 2004, shows an object that appears to dart through the air in many directions at tremendous speed. UFO researchers have dubbed it the Tic Tac because of its capsule-like shape.