No answers in report on UFOs
The US government has been unable to determine whether more than 140 unidentified flying objects, many of them reported by US Navy aviators, were atmospheric events playing tricks on sensors or machines piloted by foreign adversaries, or whether the objects were extraterrestrial in origin, according to a longawaited report by the nation’s top intelligence official.
The report, released yesterday, finds no evidence that the objects, characterised as unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, were the handiwork of alien beings. But in almost all of the 144 cases that a team of government experts examined, a lack of data stymied their efforts to say definitively what they were.
The largely inconclusive results of the report, which was required by Congress, are sure to fuel Americans’ long-running interest in unexplained sightings.
‘‘Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, manoeuvre abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion,’’ the report found. ‘‘In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.’’
Observers reported these unusual movements and ‘‘flight characteristics’’ in 18 separate incidents. The task force analysing the UAP incidents would now focus additional analysis on those cases, the report said.
At only nine pages in length, the unclassified report is also likely to prompt public speculation about what information the government chose not to reveal.
The report does find that not all the UAPs behaved in the same way, which led the experts to offer different hypotheses about what they might be.
It offers five categories of potential explanations for the objects, which were observed between 2004 and this year. They are: man-made objects, such as balloons or even plastic bags; ice crystals, moisture or heat fluctuations that could register as a flying object to cameras and sensors on aircraft or aboard ships at sea; some kind of craft designed by the US government or an American corporation; something designed by a foreign adversary; and a final category sure to entice ufologists and amateur sleuths – ‘‘other’’.