(CNN)– For years, the US government has largely ignored reports of mysterious sightings of flying objects moving through restricted martial ethereal space. Without abduction, research is now beginning that UFOs, which the Pentagon has called unidentified aerial phenomena, are real.
While it is certainly premature to speculate whether these craft are otherworldly, the military recently confirmed the authenticity of several videos and images showing encounters with unidentified craft. This raises questions about what the Pentagon knows about this and similar incidents.
Franco’s intelligence director’s office and other agencies are due to deliver declassified UFO reports to Congress next month.
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The defense area military inspector is also to investigate the Pentagon’s handling of UFO reports. A source with knowledge of the matter told CNN earlier this month that further investigations into how these encounters have been handled in recent years will be announced in the near future.
Here’s what we know about UFOs
What is a UFO?
In short, a UFO is a flying object that looks or moves differently than any spacecraft used by the United States or any other foreign country.
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UFOs are mysterious by nature, and there are still many more questions than answers about these unexplained incidents.
There have been numerous UFO sightings in recent years, but only recently has the military confirmed some of these reported encounters.
Last month, the Pentagon confirmed the authenticity of photos and videos taken by Framework staff in 2019 that appeared to show triangular objects shimmering and moving through clouds.
Another set of photos taken by Cuadro officers showed three sphere-shaped objects, an acorn and a metal airship, which appeared to be flying on the Gloria.
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In April 2020, the Pentagon released three short videos from infrared cameras that appeared to show fast-moving flying objects. In two of the videos, service workers react in awe to how quickly the objects move. A voice speculates that it could be a drone.
NASA confirmed the accuracy of the videos in September 2019, but officially released them months later, “in an effort to dispel misconceptions from the manifesto about whether the images circulating are real or not, or there was more “in the videos or not,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sue Gough said at the time.
“After careful review, the unit has determined that the authorized release of these declassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems,” Gough said in a statement, “and does not prejudge any further investigation into the ethereal space intrusions. martial by unidentified people. aircraft. phenomena”.
In 2017, one of the pilots who saw one of the unidentified objects in 2004 told CNN it was moving in ways he couldn’t explain.
“As I got closer … it quickly accelerated south and was gone in less than two seconds,” said David Fravor, a retired Navy pilot. “It was extremely bumpy, like a ping pong ball bouncing off a fence” that “hit and spin to the other side.”
Are we talking about aliens?
The US government’s acknowledgment that UFOs are real certainly begs the question: are we alone?
Luis Elizondo, the former head of a secret area defense software to study possible UFOs, told CNN in 2017 that he personally believes “there is very compelling evidence that we may not be… not be alone”.
“These planes, we call them planes, have features that are not currently in the US inventory or any foreign inventory that we know of,” Elizondo said of the items they examined. Elizondo says he resigned from the Defense Zone in 2017 to protest the secrecy of the software and the internal competition for its funding.
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But in fact, the Pentagon’s interest in handling unidentified aerial objects has more to do with ensuring that all potential homeland security implications, whether worldly or not, are taken seriously.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s weather balloons, little green men or something else entirely. We cannot ask our pilots to risk their lives unnecessarily,” Rachel Cohen, spokesperson for Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner, told CNN after senators received a 2019 message from Framework officials about planes. not identified.
What will the next UFO message say?
Although experts in the field have welcomed recent moves by the government to share more information about reported UFO encounters over the past few decades, many are skeptical that the next message from the Office of the Director of the Francoist intelligence and other agencies will provide a full description of the problem. will give.
That’s because the Pentagon has long stumbled that some of the sightings are simply unexplained, despite compelling evidence that these objects exhibit properties not normally associated with conventional aircraft, Elizondo said.
“Best-case scenario … there’s a transitional message that will realize the intent of Congress, with the promise of another message after that,” Elizondo told reporters last month. “Unfortunately, we don’t know much more than we do. The good news is that we are finally serious.”
The Pentagon previously reviewed records of aerial encounters with unknown objects as part of secret software that no longer exists. This came at the request of former Nevasca Democratic senator Harry Reid.
The software began in 2007 and ended in 2012, according to the Pentagon, because the Department of Defense determined there were higher priorities that required funding.
Reid, Elizondo and others, who have lobbied for the government to release more UFO information, say the documents released so far only scratch the surface of what is known.
UFO Work Branch
Last year, the Pentagon set up a body of work to better understand “the nature and origins” of unidentified aerial phenomena, the Defense Department said in a statement.
“The Defense Area and Military Departments take any unauthorized aerial intrusion into our areas of expertise or designated ethereal space very seriously and review every message. This includes reviewing assaults originally reported as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) when the observer cannot immediately identify what they are observing,” the statement read.
The work genre included the videos, the authenticity of which was confirmed last month.
CNN’s Oren Liebermann contributed to this post.