The latest reports of military pilot sightings of UFOs sound less crazy, particularly so amid a flurry of well-conceived and carefully planned space missions by NASA and JPL to the Moon and Mars (and elsewhere) and repeated launches by SpaceX. The Chinese have even put a rover on Mars in recent days.
Both the Washington Post and New York Times on Thursday quoted unnamed Biden administration officials who described a government report going to Congress sometime in June from the director of national intelligence. It will offer “no firm conclusions about what the objects – repeatedly detected by military pilots and others in recent years – might be,” the Post report said, citing unnamed sources.
In mid-May, CBS “60 Minutes” reported on regular sightings by pilots of unifidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) including video of objects flying in the Earth’s atmosphere at incredible speeds with unusual, fast maneuverability. Some experts have described the UAPs as demonstrating movements that defy gravity and laws of flight.
One account comes from two highly qualified Navy pilots describing what they both saw from separate planes in 2004 off Southern California. Lt. Commander Alex Detrich said, “If I saw this solo, I don’t know that I would have come back and said anything because it sounds so crazy when I say it.”
Their account was documented by radar and camera. Other video of other encounters has relied on modern sensor technologies that were not available in the 1960s when UFO reports began to emerge. That includes infrared sensors and updated jet radar added to Navy fighter jets in 2014 that make it possible to zero in with infrared targeting cameras. Photos have been taken of UAP from southeast of Virginia Beach as late as 2019 that the Pentagon has said it cannot identify.
Were it not for modern sensors and related technology, it might be easier to dismiss accounts by pilots and others, but the preponderance of information from eyewitnesses and sensor readings has led to a call for more thorough investigation. Former CIA director R. James Woolsey, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, and even former President Obama have called for further inquiry.
Some have speculated the UAPs could be advanced technology from China or Russia such as hypersonic and directed energy that would allow an aircraft to fly faster than the sound barrier without a sonic boom. John Ratcliffe, director of national intelligence under former President Trump, told Fox News that there are many more UAP sightings than have been publicly known.
The report going to Congress is expected to include unclassified and classified material and should be made public, retired military intelligence officials have said. “We urgently need our best scientific and intelligence collection tools applied to understand what our pilots are witnessing,” said Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence official, said.
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