U.S. Finds No Evidence of Alien Technology in Flying Objects, but Can't Rule It Out, Either (archive)
American intelligence officials have found no evidence that aerial phenomena witnessed by Navy pilots in recent years are alien spacecraft, but they still cannot explain the unusual movements that have mystified scientists and the military, according to senior administration officials briefed on the findings of a highly anticipated government report.
The report determines that a vast majority of more than 120 incidents over the past two decades did not originate from any American military or other advanced U.S. government technology, the officials said. That determination would appear to eliminate the possibility that Navy pilots who reported seeing unexplained aircraft might have encountered programs the government meant to keep secret.
But that is about the only conclusive finding in the classified intelligence report, the officials said. And while a forthcoming unclassified version, expected to be released to Congress by June 25, will present few other firm conclusions, senior officials briefed on the intelligence conceded that the very ambiguity of the findings meant the government could not definitively rule out theories that the phenomena observed by military pilots might be alien spacecraft.
[...] The report concedes that much about the observed phenomena remains difficult to explain, including their acceleration, as well as ability to change direction and submerge. One possible explanation — that the phenomena could be weather balloons or other research balloons — does not hold up in all cases, the officials said, because of changes in wind speed at the times of some of the interactions.
[...] Many of the more than 120 incidents examined in the report are from Navy personnel, officials said. The report also examined incidents involving foreign militaries over the last two decades. Intelligence officials believe at least some of the aerial phenomena could have been experimental technology from a rival power, most likely Russia or China.
Previously: Ex-Official Who Revealed UFO Project Accuses Pentagon of "Disinformation" Campaign
Related Stories
Ex-official who revealed UFO project accuses Pentagon of 'disinformation' campaign
The former Pentagon official who went public about reports of UFOs has filed a complaint with the agency's inspector general claiming a coordinated campaign to discredit him for speaking out — including accusing a top official of threatening to tell people he was "crazy," according to documents reviewed by POLITICO.
Lue Elizondo, a career counterintelligence specialist who was assigned in 2008 to work for a Pentagon program that investigated reports of "unmanned aerial phenomena," filed the 64-page complaint to the independent watchdog on May 3 and has met several times with investigators, according to his legal team.
The claim that the government is trying to discredit him comes weeks before the director of national intelligence and the Pentagon are expected to deliver an unclassified report to Congress about UFOs and the government's strategy for investigating such encounters. The report is expected to include a detailed accounting of the agencies, personnel and surveillance systems that gather and analyze the data.
"What he is saying is there are certain individuals in the Defense Department who in fact were attacking him and lying about him publicly, using the color of authority of their offices to disparage him and discredit him and were interfering in his ability to seek and obtain gainful employment out in the world," said Daniel Sheehan, Elizondo's attorney. "And also threatening his security clearance."
Previously:
Pentagon's UFO Investigation Program Revealed
UFO Existence 'Proven Beyond Reasonable Doubt': Former Head Of Pentagon Program
Newly-Released Video Shows 2015 U.S. Navy Sighting of UFO
The US Navy is Drafting New Rules to Report UFO Sightings
US Navy Spokesman Acknowledges UFO Videos
The Pentagon Releases Official Footage of UFOs. No, Seriously!
The Pentagon Has Continued to Investigate UFOs Under Renamed Program
You Can Now Easily Download All CIA UFO Documents to Date
Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
This preliminary report is provided by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in response to the provision in Senate Report 116-233, accompanying the Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA) for Fiscal Year 2021, that the DNI, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF), is to submit an intelligence assessment of the threat posed by unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and the progress the Department of Defense Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) has made in understanding this threat.
This report provides an overview for policymakers of the challenges associated with characterizing the potential threat posed by UAP while also providing a means to develop relevant processes, policies, technologies, and training for the U.S. military and other U.S. Government (USG) personnel if and when they encounter UAP, so as to enhance the Intelligence Community's (IC) ability to understand the threat. The Director, UAPTF, is the accountable official for ensuring the timely collection and consolidation of data on UAP. The dataset described in this report is currently limited primarily to U.S. Government reporting of incidents occurring from November 2004 to March 2021. Data continues to be collected and analyzed.
ODNI prepared this report for the Congressional Intelligence and Armed Services Committees. UAPTF and the ODNI National Intelligence Manager for Aviation drafted this report, with input from USD(I&S), DIA, FBI, NRO, NGA, NSA, Air Force, Army, Navy, Navy/ONI, DARPA, FAA, NOAA, NGA, ODNI/NIM-Emerging and Disruptive Technology, ODNI/National Counterintelligence and Security Center, and ODNI/National Intelligence Council.
Assumptions
Various forms of sensors that register UAP generally operate correctly and capture enough real data to allow initial assessments, but some UAP may be attributable to sensor anomalies.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @03:53PM (1 child)
but it is aliens.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday June 05 2021, @03:33PM
Considering that "alien" means "foreign" and we don't know what they are...
Have you ever seen ball lightning? I WTFed for years after I saw one until I read about them. From six inches to yards wide, the one I saw was outside the passenger side window as I was driving down highway 157 in Cahokia in the late 1970s. It was about a foot in diameter, stayed right next to the car for a mile or two and zigged to the right as fast as, well, lightning.
Every one of the UFO videos I've seen look exactly like it. Except one video where it was a triangle (might have been an imaging crosshair).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @03:57PM (1 child)
If aliens ain't behind it, cops are. It's always one or the other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @06:10AM
So who's behind taxes?
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Friday June 04 2021, @03:58PM (1 child)
It's a plot to distract the public from this report.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @03:59PM
Noooooo, the horror of it all!!!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @04:06PM
Has posted some convincing breakdowns of what is really going on, showing all the calculations, models and diagrams
tldr NOT aliens
https://www.youtube.com/user/mickword [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @04:07PM (12 children)
At first, I just thought it was sad, that enough bureaucrats were incompetent enough for these videos to be labeled as "unidentified flying objects", when it's quite clear they are simply "unidentified imaging artifacts". See https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/navy-videos-showing-ufos-not-aliens [syfy.com] and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7jcBGLIpus [youtube.com] .
But I now seriously doubt that they lack the capacity to come up with these simple explanations themselves.
So I started thinking: maybe there's additional data, that is unreleased, that confirms the ridiculous claims of 600g accelerations.
But it's looking more and more like a simple matter of idiots in charge, who don't believe the bureaucrats. Exactly the type of flashy absurd demand that Trump would make of his subordinates, and then the subordinates are forced to talk about these idiotic statements. While at the same time trying to keep their secrets (aircraft/sensor capabilities and alike).
So what can they say? "yes, these are authentic videos" (and I hope the idiotic pilots are out of a job because they can't distinguish overexposed IR camera effects from physical objects). "we'll prepare a report for you then, but we can't release everything to the public".
And now the idiots will have more reasons to scream that there's a coverup.
Yes. They want to keep their technical capabilities a secret (although I doubt it actually matters at this point). Because if they do reveal anything that's marked as "secret" they go to jail.
Maybe it wasn't Trump. But it was Trump-like people.
Idiots put in charge by a popularity contest, wasting valuable resources to research nonsense.
I can understand the people who write books and make movies about this.
They get more money if they convince more people.
But what are the reasons that these pilots are talking about tic-tacs following them around?
It's obvious that didn't happen.
Do they need the money?
Don't they care that they will never be trusted by sane people again?
Or are they under orders, because for some reason there is a conspiracy within the US government to polute the public discourse with nonsense?
This whole thing doesn't make sense to me.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 04 2021, @04:24PM (6 children)
"Unidentified Flying Object" is the layman's term. "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" is the actual term of art used by the airforce and as you note is more accurate because we don't know if it's an object or not.
Some of the reports are direct observations, though, so they aren't all imaging artifacts either.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 04 2021, @04:28PM
Correction: Navy, not Airforce
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @04:34PM
but the direct observations are not objective measures of reality.
If they claim that there's an object moving along a certain "impossible trajectory", I want to see multiple sensors from multiple locations that proves that is the actual trajectory. and the multiple locations should be far enough apart to actually allow for a proper 3D reference system.
if the direct observations are trustworthy, then send multiple ships. same direct observations claim these things are showing up every day in the same location, so it's not like you have to start chasing them around the world...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @04:38PM
by the way, here's an object that won't show up on radar, but it will make for a wonderfully convinced eye witness: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719 [bbc.com]
they're usually much more distorted.
and they should appear to move quite strangely if you're in a plane, trying to rotate around them.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Friday June 04 2021, @04:56PM
Human eyes and visual cortexes are subject to artifacts also.
(Score: 1) by js290 on Saturday June 05 2021, @02:42AM
https://www.uaptheory.com/ [uaptheory.com]
(Score: 2) by srobert on Saturday June 05 2021, @02:55PM
"Unidentified imaging artifacts?".
I saw a UFO once that turned out to be a smudge on my contact lens. I can see that your term would be a better descriptor for that instance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @04:28PM
by the way: I would love for humanity to be confronted with warp-drive capable aliens visiting the Earth while treating us as minor nuisances to be ignored.
I would love it.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @06:04PM (1 child)
Oh, it was Trump. He was talking with Lou Dobbs, who Trump really liked because Dobbs probably had his lips most firmly planted on Trump's backside, and Dobbs fancied himself as a "UFO expert." Trump said he'd do whatever Dobbs asked on that topic, and the next day he instructed the DoD to set up a UFO commission and release this report. Just Google "Lou Dobbs UFOs" and you'll see plenty of hits about this.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @06:22PM
This report can be traced directly back to AATIP which was a personal project of then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2007. Robert Bigelow convinced him that the military needed to study UAPs, and his company got paid for it. The program and some of the videos were leaked to the press in 2017 and it all snowballed from there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @06:16PM (1 child)
Oh sure, it was swamp gas all along.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @08:09PM
Swamp gas out in the Pacific ocean
Ball lightning on a clear day/night
200 otherwise sane and sober people all fucking hallucinating at once
The US military can't calibrate their tracking systems
Multiple frequency submarine, shipbound, satellite and aircraft tracking systems all failed in their duty all at once, ASA and TCAS give fake warnings, all just magically whilst 20 pilots and navigators, all of whom are obviously retards, report visuals of the same thing and give fucking chase for a couple of hundred clicks
Claiming lens flares on non-visual-range camera equipment (Teh Bokeh effect! - on infrared cameras with round apertures! Solv-ed!)
Top-Gun military pilots don't know what they're are looking at (but I, basement dweller, know what things look like in the sky!)
Weather balloons maneuvering at 20,000 km per hour
Weather balloons making tactical avoidance maneuvers and even going underwater
Any kind of aircraft whatsoever that is magically not spotted piss-farting around in military airspace (go on, just try entering mil airspace, show us how easy it is)
Russian navy chasing/tracking underwater "cigars" moving at 300kmh - nah they must be mistaken, has to be the world's fastest whale, and the sonar must be malfunctioning between a dozen battle groups over a few decades with different operators and technologies all over the world
Drones outmaneuvering F18s or J20s, and then climbing to 10kms altitude in a second - buy them on Amazon, right?
What? Military top-brass, top pilots, air-traffic controllers, top navy personnel, astronauts, cosmonauts, ex heads of pentagon research units? pfft, give me someone credible!
Russia Russia Russia! China China China!
Give me more than an eyewitness account. Astronauts? see above - pfft - Ok, give me more than a blurry photo. Video? Alright, give me more than a blurry video. What? Aircraft defense systems taken using multiple frequencies? Hmmm, not until I see a 4k photo! What? Photos and videos in 4k from the space station? I said give me REAL evidence! Something from a smartphone, that everybody carries!
I honestly don't know where I stand, however if this were any other topic, the above excuses would be laughed out of the arena. The "skeptics" sound more and more like the Q-anon people.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday June 04 2021, @04:16PM (2 children)
Sure, like always, but I suspect New Guinea
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @05:32PM
You insensitive clod!
Diego Garcia
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday June 04 2021, @06:14PM
As noted what if it was China or Russia, the thinkers and generals over at the Pentagon would shit themselves then (or it would make them see giant $$$). They might even prefer it if it was little green men and that they landed on the lawn of the White house.
(Score: 4, Informative) by oumuamua on Friday June 04 2021, @04:23PM (4 children)
The atmosphere is crammed with planes, birds, balloons and atmospheric phenomena. you're going to get a lot of false alarms.
You really need to look in space and the record is not good:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_sightings_in_outer_space [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @04:41PM (1 child)
The UFO watchers say that the ISS live feeds capture UFOs often, and NASA usually switches them off after they notice.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by js290 on Saturday June 05 2021, @02:40AM
NASA Captures Footage Of UFO On Space Station Live Feed, By Dave Basner, February 26, 2020 [iheart.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Friday June 04 2021, @04:48PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday June 04 2021, @05:14PM
And space is full of junk that'll hit ya [space.com]. I doubt they have time to tell the difference
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Interesting) by crafoo on Friday June 04 2021, @06:26PM (3 children)
It would be fun to be a Chinese tech manufacturer and embed an easter egg into cell phone video encoder processors. add UFO artifacts to any camera pointed in a few particular directions from a few well-populated areas. Make it periodic, over some designated list of times. Probably not possible as it would require access to GPS, time, other sensors for no real good reason. Maybe somewhere in hardware image recognition silicon.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @06:54PM (2 children)
If you are going to do hacks like that, how about when videoing a group of people the encoder occasionally picks out one person and deletes them. Replace them with stitched in background from other frames.
For bonus lols use face recognition to always make it the same person. woooooo, a vampire!
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday June 06 2021, @12:11PM (1 child)
I like this idea. Maybe just crank the white balance on one particular person, always.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06 2021, @02:08PM
There will probably still be some image artifacts, so even better, use the face recognition stuff but wait until someone looks directly at the camera, then have them shimmer into a 'Grey' as they are erased. People will start talking about alien stealth technology. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @08:44PM (2 children)
There are two different alternatives.
1. Another terrestial species, just before us.
2. Past humans that said "Screw you guys, f@ckin idgets." That
Advanced themselves.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday June 04 2021, @10:49PM
More like humans from the future dropping off hot tips to their previous era day trader proxies and trying to stay one step ahead of the SEC.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06 2021, @06:00PM
interesting that you've ignored the more likely explanation: people misinterpreting (visual) data.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by eravnrekaree on Saturday June 05 2021, @02:43AM (2 children)
I dont think its aliens. But it doesn't have to be to be big news, if it can be shown clearly that it displays types of movements you couldn't do with conventional technologies such as jets, copters, propellers, balloons, etc. If all of that can be ruled out you are left with some anti-gravity type thing that is impossible by current understandings of physics, and thus would have massive physics implications and as well as something which can also make a big difference in peoples lives, Some of the stuff like 600 Gs and 13,000 MPH kind of suggest that, perhaps a gravity bubble of some sort. Its kind of naive to think that because its very advanced it must be ET, or even that it must be military is shortsighted, it could be privately developed even.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @04:10AM (1 child)
Militaries and private companies have loose lips, and a Sputnik moment doesn't last for over a decade. China and Russia are being spied on just as much as the US is, and there are no Bond villains who could invent anti-gravity technology, deploy it in the field, and keep everything a secret. That's why ET is a viable explanation if a solid object is actually accelerating like that. Perhaps the best explanation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @11:18AM
China isn't keeping it a secret.
They have odd alien looking devices falling out of the sky every few months and crashing into passenger jets mid flight. They even rolled out a ufo-looking drone in a parade a few years back. The insular Reddit crowd and boomer crowd separately think that china man can't invent anything, so it has to be aliens.
If you read between the lines, the actual quotes from military officials and congress. They are treating it as a foreign threat. The whole "you can't even see the rivets on some of them, it has to be aliens" means that you can actually see the rivets on the rest of them. But poor reading comprehension and sensationalist headlines dominate the discussion.
Take out every paragraph that mentions aliens and UFOs, and re-read the articles. It's a completely different story. The UFO/ET angle is only there for the clicks.