UFO sightings: US opening up the real life X Files

Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich is, by her own admission, a highly rational person.

A US Navy fighter pilot who served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has also had one of the most famous close encounters with a UFO.

On November 14, 2004, Dietrich was stationed off the coast of southern California on the USS Nimitz carrier, when numerous unidentified flying objects were picked up by ship radar. In separate planes, Dietrich and Commander David Fravor were dispatched to investigate. What they saw that day has never been adequately explained — until now.

“Enter stage left, the Tic Tac — that’s what we affectionately refer to it as,” says Dietrich, speaking publicly for the first time this week in an interview with 60 Minutes. “It jumped from spot to spot, and tumbled around in a way that was unpredictable. The whole time we’re on the radio with each other just losing our minds.”

Dietrich decided to go public with her story now — three years after Fravor — to reduce the “stigma” associated with UFO reports.

Her testimony coincides with a growing acceptance among defence officials around the world that there may indeed be something “out there” — and that it might pose a genuine global security threat.

After decades of doing everything possible to keep reported sightings secret, there has been a sea change in how the Pentagon regards UFOs.

For starters, it no longer refers to UFOs — with their connotations of little green men — but to UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena).

Next month, Congress is to be given an unclassified report on evidence collected by the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force, the Office of Naval Intelligence and the FBI.

Ufologists across the globe are hailing it as an unprecedented watershed moment in their long quest to uncover what the US government really knows — and they have former president Donald Trump to thank. In December, when Trump signed his mammoth $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief bill into law, it contained a clause requiring a full report on UFOs within 180 days — by June 25.

“We’re absolutely in new territory here,” says Nick Pope, who, as a British civil servant, investigated UFO sightings for the Ministry of Defence in the 1990s. “What’s really elevated this is the sheer number, and position, of people now speaking out, saying we’re dealing with something that must be taken seriously . . . and we’ll get to see some of it.”

John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence under President Trump, raised anticipation when he hinted recently that there was “a lot” more information than the public currently knows.

The long history of UFO sightings in the US began in earnest on June 24, 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, an amateur pilot, reported seeing nine objects flying near Mount Rainier in Washington state. Newspapers at the time coined the term “flying saucers”.

By the 1950s, the US Air Force was being inundated with UFO reports from the public. It was the Cold War, and the CIA, fearing mass hysteria could play into the hands of the Soviet Union, worked to debunk sightings and infiltrate UFO-hunting groups.

Today, thanks to lockdown — which provided a dramatic reduction in light pollution, coupled with an army of people with empty evenings on their hands — supposed UFO sightings have proliferated.

Many of these incidents are expected to be further detailed in next month’s report. But, despite its being “unclassified”, exactly how much will come out is unclear.

“I expect a very drone-heavy narrative,” says Pope. “I don’t expect it’ll plunge into extraterrestrial visitation. Governments are just nervous and reluctant to say ‘We don’t know . . .’ because it makes them look ineffective. But that may be the position we’re in.”