Congress held a public hearing on UFOs on Tuesday to discuss the various sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). Unfortunately, those hoping for details will be disappointed: it ended with few answers on the unexplained events.
The hearing focused on U.S. Navy pilots as well as other personnel that captured high-definition video and radar data from UAP objects.
However, because of the stigma attached to reporting incidents and the potential to damage pilots careers, the people involved were reluctant to report them.
This week’s much-hyped congressional hearing on recent incidents offered several video examples of incidents involving UAP violating military training areas, causing a threat to the safety of personnel who traditionally “train like they fight.”
During the hearing at the House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee, a top Pentagon official said that through “rigorous” analysis, most — but not all — UAPs can be identified.
Video footage of encounters with Navy F18 pilots was leaked by Luiz Elizondo, the former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a now defunct Pentagon agency tasked with identifying and investigating the alien phenomenon. The program was disbanded in 2012,, but some elements were kept alive under the auspices the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group.
These videos caused quite a stir after they were revealed by The New York Times. They also appeared on several cable TV specials. This prompted the Director of National Intelligence to conduct a thorough review of UFO/UAP incidents and then issue a report. It was finally declassified in 2013.
In the nine-page report, the DNI was able to identify 144 UAP incidents but was only able to explain one. The conclusion reached was that although the UAP phenomenon is real, there was not much evidence to support its existence or intentions.
Based on the data, though, The Pentagon authorized the creation of a new task force to continue studying the UAP phenomenon, and this new department became known as the UAP Task Force.
Announcing that the task force is now defunct and is being replaced by a third task force, simply known as the UAP Task Force. To date, the UAPTF has investigated over 400 incidents, and Bray stated that they are becoming “frequent” and “increasing,” but stopped short of offering any firm conclusions. However, he did show two video clips which seemed to suggest that the technology limitations could explain some incidents that were recorded.
Bray showed a video of a triangular UAP. It was viewed with night vision goggles, and it was recorded using a digital SLR. The combination of light passing through both devices, Bray said, caused the triangular shape to appear while the camera was recording.
But Bray also showed another brief, daylight clip taken from a US Navy aircraft, that showed a UAP but only for a brief moment of a few frames. To that, Bray stated that there wasn’t enough high-definition data but that he was reasonably confident that the UAP may have been a drone flying illegally within the military area of operations.
Bray also warned that not all information collected by the task force would be released to the public, since the manner in which the information was collected involved confidential means or technologies that the U.S. military has developed that are still classified.
” We don’t want any potential enemies to find out what we can see, understand, or how we arrive at a conclusion. Bray says, “Our goal it to strike that delicate balance that enables us maintain public trust and preserve those capabilities that support our service personnel .”
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