In what would be the first public congressional hearing on the subject of unidentified flying objects (UFO) in more than half a century, two of the highest-ranking officials in the United States Department of Defense’s Intelligence Community were scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill on Tuesday about what the government knows about unidentified flying objects.
The hearing in front of a House Intelligence panel in the United States comes eleven months after a study documented more than 140 occurrences of what the government officially refers to as “unidentified aerial phenomenon,” or UAPs, that US military pilots have reported sighting since 2004.
The more common name for an unexplained flying object, UFO, has for a long time been generally connected with the concept of extraterrestrial spaceships. However, this idea was completely absent from the presentation that the UAP gave in June of last year.
Instead, attention was focused on the possible ramifications for aviation security and national security in the United States.
However, the report includes some unidentified flying objects (UAPs) that were seen in video footage of mysterious airborne objects that had been previously released by the Pentagon. These objects lacked any visible means of propulsion or flight-control surfaces, but they demonstrated greater speed and manoeuvrability than previous known aviation technology.
The results of the study, a nine-page “preliminary assessment” issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and a Navy-led task force by the Pentagon in 2020, were scheduled to be re-examined during the hearing that took place on Tuesday.
Adam Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, issued a statement last week announcing the meeting. In the statement, he added, “The American people deserve complete openness.”
The defence and intelligence specialists who created the assessment came to no conclusions concerning the origin of any of the 144 sightings that were investigated, with the exception of the sightings that were ascribed to a big balloon that was deflating.
In November, a new entity inside the Department of Defense known as the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group took the role of the Navy task force that had been responsible for writing the report.
One of the two officials who were asked to appear at Tuesday’s session was Ronald Moultrie, who now serves in the role of US Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. He is in charge of supervising the newly formed group. The second one is Scott Bray, who is now serving as the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence.
After the public portion of the hearing, the two were scheduled to testify in private.
The study from the previous year suggested that there may be more than one reason for the occurrence of UAP sightings, but it did not draw any conclusions.
According to the study, further data and analysis were required in order to ascertain whether or not they represent a clandestine US government or commercial business, some foreign air system built by a foreign power such as China or Russia, or some other unknown foreign air system.
Senior US officials warned reporters before the study’s publication last year that defense and intelligence experts had not yet ruled out a supernatural origin for any UAP instance. However, the newspaper avoided making any specific mention of such possibilities in its coverage of the report.
In spite of this, the report was a watershed moment for the United States government in the 1940s. Prior to this, the government had spent decades eliminating, refuting, and dismissing claims of unexplained flying objects and “flying saucers.”
Since the United States, Air Force terminated an inconclusive UFO program code-named Project Blue Book in 1969, this session will be the first open congressional hearing on the issue.
In the 17 years that it was in operation, the Blue Book recorded a total of 12,618 encounters with unidentified flying objects, of which 701 were classified as “unknown.” After further investigation, the Air Force said that it had not identified any proof of a danger to the nation’s security or of extraterrestrial vehicles.
In 1966, nearly a decade before he became president, Gerald Ford of Michigan, who was then serving as the U.S. Representative from Michigan and the then-Republican leader in the House of Representatives, held a hearing in response to witness accounts of strange flashing lights and large football-sized buildings at low altitudes. Approximately in the vicinity of Dexter, Michigan, where it was infamously described as “swamp gas” by an Air Force officer.
