(CNN)– The Defense Zone on Tuesday announced plans to streamline the collection and investigation of UFO reports across the government.
This follows the government’s assessment earlier this year that these reports are worth investigating and may pose a threat to Franco’s security.
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The unit will form a unified cabal to handle UFO reports, officially known as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), in military branches and other government agencies.
In June, the Office of the Director of Domestic Intelligence (ODNI) released its long-awaited paper examining 144 cases of UAP sightings, of which investigators were only able to explain one. However, they said they found no evidence the sightings were of extraterrestrial life or major technological advances from Russia or China.
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The UAP issue has fueled years of power struggles in Washington, including bureaucratic wrangling within the Pentagon and pressure from Congress about how seriously the reports should be treated.
But the press release was a sign that the US government was finally taking seriously what had long been a side issue. The Navy led the UAP task force, but no other service made a similar effort to catalog and analyze UFO sightings. Most of the 144 sightings covered by the ODNI story were recorded by Navy pilots.
After the story broke, Hicks directed the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security to develop a plan to deal with the UAP sightings more seriously and thoroughly.
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The new unified cabal called AOIMSG (Airborne Object Identification and Mandate Synchronization Set) will standardize the UAP incident reporting process.
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It must also “identify and mitigate gaps in intelligence and operational sensing capabilities; summarize and analyze operations, intelligence and counterintelligence data; advising on policy, regulatory or legal changes, if any; Identify approaches to prevent or mitigate risks posed by zephyr salutes and other activities that the director deems necessary,” Undersecretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks wrote in a memo.
The newly created AOIMSG, headed by a director, will now manage the work of the squadron’s UAP task force. Meanwhile, the Defense Zone is working to better understand what’s behind the UFO sightings and the threat they could pose. The work of the AOIMSG is overseen by an executive association.