US military discloses 11 UFO ‘close encounters’

No evidence of alien life has been found but officials have several unexplained sightings, hearing told

The US military has had 11 close encounters with UFOS, a Pentagon intelligence official has told Congress. In the first public hearing of its kind for half a century, intelligence chiefs revealed they have recorded about 400 UFO sightings in total. Sightings have more than doubled in the past year as reduced stigma led to a flood of reports about historical events. Senior Pentagon officials said that no evidence of extraterrestrial origins had been discovered so far.

THE US military has had 11 close encounters with UFOS, a top Pentagon intelligence official has told Congress.

In the first public hearing of its kind for over half a century, intelligence chiefs revealed they have recorded about 400 UFO sightings in total.

Sightings have more than doubled in the past year as reduced stigma led to a flood of reports from military personnel about historical events.

Senior Pentagon officials said no evidence of extraterrestrial origins had been discovered so far, but they vowed to “go wherever the data take us” in an “all hands on deck” approach.

Scott Bray, the deputy director of naval intelligence, told the hearing there were sightings he “can’t explain” due to the “flight characteristics” or radar readings from the objects.

He showed a video of one such incident, in which a fleeting, shiny, spherical object zipped past the cockpit window of an F-18 jet.

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

Asked if there had been any collisions between “US assets” and UFOS, he said: “We have not had a collision, we’ve had at least 11 near misses though.”

He said Pentagon investigators had managed to explain one of the most famous UFO sightings ever.

In July 2019, green pyramid-shaped objects were spotted above the USS Russell warship near California and 18 seconds of footage was leaked, becoming a fascination for UFO hunters.

Mr Bray said: “We are reasonably confident these relate to unmanned aerial systems [drones] in the area.”

He said the triangle shapes resulted from “light passing through night vision goggles and then being recorded by a single-lens reflex camera. [It was] some type of drone.”

Studies had shown that drones recorded on video in that way would appear as green triangles, he said.

He added: “Reports of sightings are frequent and continuing. Recently, I received a call from a senior [naval] aviator with over 2,000 flight hours.

“He called me personally from the flight line to talk about what he had just experienced.”

Last year, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, who oversees the US president’s daily intelligence briefing, released a highly anticipated report into UFOS. It examined 144 events since 2004, some reported by US military pilots, but could only explain one.

The Pentagon has since established a UFO squad called the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronisation Group. It has authority to check with secret US military test programmes as it investigates UFO sightings, the hearing was told.

The unit is also working with Nasa, and experts have been drafted in from the Space Force, along with physicists,

‘We have not had a collision with a UFO yet... we’ve had at least 11 near misses though’

meteorologists and even metallurgists (those who study metal).

Mr Bray said they have detected “no material, no emanations, that would suggest anything extraterrestrial”.

UFOS are officially called unidentified aerial phenomena by the Pentagon. Mr Bray said there had been no communication with such objects, and no extraterrestrial wreckage had been recovered.

Ronald Moultrie, Joe Biden’s undersecretary of defence for intelligence and security, said: “I enjoy the challenge of what may be out there. Yes, I have followed science fiction. I have gone to conventions, I have done that, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t necessarily dress up.

“We have our inquisitiveness, we have our questions. We want to know what’s out there as much as you want to know what’s out there.”