Where did the alien craft go?
The UFOs that looked suspiciously like pie plates? The photos of spaceships that may need been props from a foul Fifties sci-fi movie, just like the infamous Plan 9 from Outer Space?
There appears to be a brand new breed of UFOs on the market. They appear different. Even their name has modified; as an alternative of UFO, the U.S. government now uses the term UAP, short for unidentified anomalous phenomena or unidentified aerial phenomena. Indeed, the U.S. government is worried enough that the Pentagon created a special organization in 2022—the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO—to research these mysterious objects.
In April 2023, AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick presented the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities with an evaluation of the information on military UAP reports to this point. What emerged was a bewildering array of UFO characteristics.
Of the 650 cases being reviewed by AARO, 52 percent involved objects that were round or spherical, Kirkpatrick testified. The rest were “all types of various, other shapes.”
Essentially the most typical profile was of a round object of 1 to 4 meters (3.3 to 13.1 feet) wide, that appeared white, silver, translucent, or metallic. Their speed varied from zero to Mach 2. Most were observed flying at altitudes of 15,000 to 25,000 feet, though this might only be because terrestrial aircraft, which report lots of the UFO sightings, fly in that altitude band, Kirkpatrick said.
As well as, these objects could only be detected intermittently by radar. They sometimes had no thermal exhaust plumes, like the type emitted by jet aircraft.
Kirkpatrick first showed two videos, identified only as somewhere over South Asia, that were taken by MQ-9 Reaper attack and surveillance drones in January 2023. The primary video was taken by an MQ-9 Reaper drone whose camera was observing one other Reaper flying nearby. An object appears to fly past the second Reaper at high speed. The second video, which lasts greater than two minutes, appears to indicate an object flying zigzags. The federal government concluded that the UFOs were actually just video glitches.
But more puzzling was one other video (featured above) taken in July 2022 by an MQ-9—the Pentagon only identified the placement because the Middle East, though Iraq or Syria could be the most definitely areas for U.S. drone activity. A small, silver sphere appears to streak over the landscape because it is tracked by the drone’s camera. The incident is listed as unresolved. “It’s going to be virtually unimaginable to totally discover it, just based off of that video,” Kirkpatrick said.
Images of strange flying objects are hardly latest. Through the UFO hysteria of the Fifties and Sixties, there have been many such photos and reports, often coming from rural farmers and business pilots.
The outcry—and concerns that Earth might even have been visited by technologically superior aliens—prompted the U.S. Air Force to launch Project Blue Book. Of the 12,618 UFO reports from 1947 to 1969 that were investigated, most turned out to be balloons, aircraft, natural phenomena, or hoaxes. Only 701 were listed as unidentified. None of those unidentified objects were found to display “technological developments or principles beyond the range of contemporary scientific knowledge,” nor was there evidence of extraterrestrial origin.
But what’s troubling about today’s UFO sightings is that the observers can’t be dismissed calmly. “The vast majority of latest UAP reporting originates from U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force aviators and operators who witnessed UAP in the course of the course of their operational duties,” noted the 2022 annual UAP report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
For instance, U.S. Navy fighter pilots in 2014 and 2015 reported seeing objects flying at hypersonic speeds—faster than Mach 5—and at altitudes as high as 30,000 feet, but without emitting any engine or heat plumes that will be characteristic of jet aircraft. Videos taken by cameras aboard the fighters show what look like saucer-like craft, whilst the pilots express surprise and awe at what they were seeing.
Equally significant is the brand new technology recording UFOs. A military pilot of the Fifties or Eighties might only have made an eyeball commentary, or perhaps snapped a photograph with a pocket camera. Today’s fighter jets are equipped with sophisticated sensors, including regular and infrared cameras designed to detect, track, and record fast aerial objects. These videos don’t just capture imagery and the voices of the pilots: additionally they show location, time, and other precise data.
It’s one thing to dismiss a graphic account of aliens abducting a hitchhiker. It’s one other to dismiss reports from trained fighter pilots or robot aircraft, backed by images recorded by military-grade sensors.
Yet as is so often the case with UFOs, military technology only results in one more dead end. The sensors on a Navy F/A-18 fighter could also be advanced, but they’re designed for air combat, not establishing the identity of a flying object.
“All of those sensors don’t necessarily respond the best way you think that they do, especially out on this planet and in the sector,” Kirkpatrick noted.
The video above was taken by a U.S. Navy pilot in 2021. It was presented to the House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee on May 17, 2022, by deputy director of naval intelligence Scott Bray in an open hearing on UAPs.
So in the long run, what can we deduce from this evidence? Is Earth being besieged by a wave of spherical extraterrestrial craft? Are we getting glimpses of secret technologies being tested by the Pentagon, or Russia, or China?
The recent furor over high-altitude Chinese spy balloons—a few of which were shot down by U.S. jet fighters—was a reminder that the skies are all the time full of flying objects. Along with 1000’s of research balloons, there could be 10,000 business planes airborne at any moment, and as much as 100,000 flights per day globally.
Under the circumstances, it’s easy to make mistakes. “Observers often only see a fraction of some phenomenon from a selected angle, and this is usually what results in misinterpretation,” Iain Boyd, a professor of aerospace engineering and director of the Center for National Security Initiatives on the University of Colorado, told Popular Mechanics. “These same issues apply to military sensors, which are likely to see only a chunk of the general picture.”
Even so, modern technology only reinforces the conclusion that almost all UFO sightings have innocent explanations. “Given the numerous proliferation of cameras and sensors comparable to cell phones, it is probably telling that unexplainable images are still extremely rare,” Boyd said.
Higher answers could also be forthcoming. For instance, AARO is working on standardized procedures for military pilots to report UFOs. Boyd argues that civil aviation also needs to enhance reporting procedures, and that AI may also help process the information.
But perhaps we’re asking the flawed query. If we are able to’t say what these UFOs are, can we are saying with some confidence what they’re not?
In that case, we are able to all the time go by the science. “Inside our understanding of the laws of physics, there are particular phenomena that should not possible,” Boyd said. “Comparable to traveling at very high speeds through the atmosphere without heating the thing, accelerating with out a propulsion system, and so forth.”
“When an event is witnessed that appears to defy these laws,” Boyd added, “my immediate interpretation is that there’s something either incorrect or not fully understood concerning the commentary.”
