On December 16, 1957, a government employee photographed a UFO hovering for 15 minutes near the Holloman Air Development Center in New Mexico.
U.S. intelligence agencies have spent the last few years analyzing videos of hundreds of recent UFO sightings, and they want the American people to know: these are not aliens.
According to several U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) officials, many of the recent UFO sightings, or as the government calls them, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), are probably just observations of foreign operations carried out by, for example, weather probes.
According to anonymous officials, several UAP incidents have been officially identified as "relatively routine" Chinese surveillance drones. China has allegedly previously stolen plans for advanced U.S. fighter jets and is interested in how the U.S. trains its pilots, DOD officials added.
Other UAP observations recorded by military aircraft that appear to show aerial objects moving seemingly contrary to the laws of physics are probably the result of optical illusions.
A classified UAP report submitted to Congress this week by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency likely includes the findings reported by the Times. The new report adds new details to the cases described in a document that officials released in June 2021, describing 144 alleged UAP incidents reported by U.S. government officials between 2004 and 2021.
The 2021 report reports that due to a lack of high-quality data, most of the alleged UAP collisions cannot be definitively explained. However, the report offers several general explanations for UAP in general, including "technology used by China, Russia, another country, or an NGO," as well as "aerial interference," such as birds and weather probes.
Nowhere in the report was aliens mentioned, but this has not prevented conspiracy theories from arising, in part because of a general lack of transparency on the part of the government regarding UAP incidents.
As the Defense Department continues to investigate UAP sightings, NASA has also created an independent UAP study team that will operate from October 2022 through mid-2023. According to NASA, the team will focus on collecting and analyzing large amounts of UAP data to develop new methods for identifying unidentified objects in the skies over the United States.
