Most UFOs are 'Chinese surveillance' drones and 'airborne clutter,' Pentagon officials reveal
Intelligence agencies in the U.S. have spent the last few years analyzing footage of hundreds of recent UFO encounters, and they want the American people to know: It's still not aliens.
Government officials are beginning to explain several recent UFO encounters
Bettmann/Getty Images
According to several U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) officials who spoke anonymously to The New York Times last week, many recent sightings of UFOs — or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), as the government prefers to call them — are likely just observations of foreign surveillance operations or airborne clutter, such as weather balloons.
Several UAP incidents have been officially identified as "relatively ordinary" Chinese surveillance drones, the anonymous officials said. China has previously stolen plans for advanced U.S. fighter planes, and is interested in how the U.S. trains its pilots, the DoD officials added.
Other UAP sightings recorded by military aircraft, which appear to show airborne objects moving in seemingly physics-defying ways, are likely the results of optical illusions. This includes the infamous video known as "GOFAST," which was recorded by a U.S. Navy aircraft and leaked to the media in 2018. (The video, along with two other leaked films of military encounters with UAPs, was eventually declassified by the government.)
While the object in the GOFAST video appears to be zooming over the water at incomprehensible speeds, this is just an optical illusion created by the angle of the recording relative to the water, the DoD officials told The Times. In reality, the object is moving at no more than 30 mph (48 km/h), the officials added.
A classified UAP report delivered to Congress this week by the DoD's intelligence agencies likely includes the findings reported by The Times. The new report adds new details to cases described in a document that officials publicly released in June 2021, describing 144 alleged UAP incidents reported by U.S. government personnel between 2004 and 2021.
The 2021 report acknowledged that, due to a lack of high-quality data, most alleged UAP encounters could not be conclusively explained. However, the report offered several blanket explanations for UAP in general, including "technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or a non-governmental entity," as well as "airborne clutter" such as birds and weather balloons.
Nowhere in the report were aliens or extraterrestrials mentioned — however, that did not stop alien conspiracy theories from arising, due in part to the government's general lack of transparency about UAP incidents.
Sue Gough, a DoD spokesperson, told The Times that the government was committed to sharing whatever UAP information it could without putting national security at risk. Government officials also tend to refrain from discussing UAP incidents publicly because there is simply not enough data to conclusively explain them, Gough added.
"In many cases, observed phenomena are classified as 'unidentified' simply because sensors were not able to collect enough information to make a positive attribution," Gough told The Times. "We are working to mitigate these shortfalls for the future and to ensure we have sufficient data for our analysis."
As the DoD continues its investigation into UAP sightings, NASA has also launched an independent UAP study team, which will operate from October 2022 to mid-2023. According to NASA, the team will focus on collecting and analyzing as much UAP data as possible, in order to develop new methods for identifying the unidentifiable objects in America's skies.
According to several U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) officials who spoke anonymously to The New York Times last week, many recent sightings of UFOs — or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), as the government prefers to call them — are likely just observations of foreign surveillance operations or airborne clutter, such as weather balloons.
Several UAP incidents have been officially identified as "relatively ordinary" Chinese surveillance drones, the anonymous officials said. China has previously stolen plans for advanced U.S. fighter planes, and is interested in how the U.S. trains its pilots, the DoD officials added.
Other UAP sightings recorded by military aircraft, which appear to show airborne objects moving in seemingly physics-defying ways, are likely the results of optical illusions. This includes the infamous video known as "GOFAST," which was recorded by a U.S. Navy aircraft and leaked to the media in 2018. (The video, along with two other leaked films of military encounters with UAPs, was eventually declassified by the government.)
While the object in the GOFAST video appears to be zooming over the water at incomprehensible speeds, this is just an optical illusion created by the angle of the recording relative to the water, the DoD officials told The Times. In reality, the object is moving at no more than 30 mph (48 km/h), the officials added.
A classified UAP report delivered to Congress this week by the DoD's intelligence agencies likely includes the findings reported by The Times. The new report adds new details to cases described in a document that officials publicly released in June 2021, describing 144 alleged UAP incidents reported by U.S. government personnel between 2004 and 2021.
The 2021 report acknowledged that, due to a lack of high-quality data, most alleged UAP encounters could not be conclusively explained. However, the report offered several blanket explanations for UAP in general, including "technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or a non-governmental entity," as well as "airborne clutter" such as birds and weather balloons.
Nowhere in the report were aliens or extraterrestrials mentioned — however, that did not stop alien conspiracy theories from arising, due in part to the government's general lack of transparency about UAP incidents.
Sue Gough, a DoD spokesperson, told The Times that the government was committed to sharing whatever UAP information it could without putting national security at risk. Government officials also tend to refrain from discussing UAP incidents publicly because there is simply not enough data to conclusively explain them, Gough added.
"In many cases, observed phenomena are classified as 'unidentified' simply because sensors were not able to collect enough information to make a positive attribution," Gough told The Times. "We are working to mitigate these shortfalls for the future and to ensure we have sufficient data for our analysis."
As the DoD continues its investigation into UAP sightings, NASA has also launched an independent UAP study team, which will operate from October 2022 to mid-2023. According to NASA, the team will focus on collecting and analyzing as much UAP data as possible, in order to develop new methods for identifying the unidentifiable objects in America's skies.
Prepare for alien encounter now before it's too late, warn scientists
Sarah Knapton - Yesterday - The Telegraph
Aliens could get in touch tomorrow and we must know what to say to them, scientists have warned, as they launched a new research hub to prepare humanity for first contact.
The University of St Andrews has joined forces with the UK SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Network to establish protocols and procedures if aliens are found.
The team warn that although there are measures in place for dealing with threats posed by asteroid impacts, there is no agreed response if a radio signal were picked up from another intelligent lifeform.
The Seti Post-Detection Hub will bring together experts from around the world to decide how to decipher methods, enact space law and anticipate societal impacts.
Dr John Elliott, honorary research fellow in the School of Computer Science at St Andrews and coordinator of the Hub, said: “Will we ever get a message from ET? We don’t know. We also don’t know when this is going to happen.
“But we do know that we cannot afford to be ill prepared – scientifically, socially, and politically rudderless – for an event that could turn into reality as early as tomorrow and which we cannot afford to mismanage.
“We need to coordinate our expert knowledge not only for assessing the evidence but also for considering the human social response, as our understanding progresses and what we know and what we don’t know is communicated. And the time to do this is now.”
Truth is out there
The potential for problems in communicating with alien life was explored in the fourth instalment of the Star Trek film franchise, The Voyage Home.
In depicts an alien probe sending out a message that inadvertently plays havoc with human technology with the crisis only resolved when Kirk and his crew realise it is trying to communicate with the planet's whales.
Many scientists now think that intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is a real possibility, and Nasa recently launched an eight-month inquiry to investigate hundreds of unexplained UFO sightings.
The investigation into "unidentified aerial phenomena" is being led by Dr Thomas Zurbuchen, of Nasa’s Science Mission Directorate, and is due to report back next summer.
Last year, the Pentagon's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force released a report into 144 UFO incidents between 2004 and 2021, many of which were spotted by military pilots.
Although investigators concluded that there was no evidence the objects had come from outer space, or a foreign adversary, they said that most could not be explained.
Protocols need updating
Currently, the only existing agreed "contact" protocols for encountering alien life were drawn up by the SETI community itself in 1989, and have not been revised since 2010. But they focus entirely on scientific conduct.
The Royal Society held a Scientific Discussion Meeting on "The detection of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society" in 2010 but there has been no global agreement on how to handle contact.
Learning how to decipher an alien language or method of communication is likely to be one of the major hurdles that experts will need to consider.
In a recent BBC documentary First Contact: An Alien Encounter, scientists admitted it may never be possible to understand what aliens are trying to tell us.
Dr Alexander Rehding, professor of music at Harvard University, said humans had still not learned how to translate animal communication.
“Whales are a really good study, and they are in some ways the closest thing that we have to aliens here on Earth,” he said.
“Whales are highly intelligent, and their environment is entirely different from ours. The patterns that we hear are purely patterns that we recognise as music, repeated patterns.
“It is a form of vocalising but we don't really know what it's for. Is it music, is it a language? What does it mean? It can give us a sense of how difficult the task at hand is.”
Mr Spock and whale
Dr Elliott admitted that deciphering an alien language would be tricky without some kind of extraterrestrial Rosetta Stone.
“Nevertheless, much can be gleaned, without this. Language for intelligent species has a structured system that is multi-layered and has internal structure," he said.
“By identifying any patterns within the signal and calculating how these patterns interact, we will then be able to know if it passes this initial surface structure test for displaying evidence of being language-like.
“If so, we will then be able to move on to identifying internal structures displayed by all known intelligent species. Once this is done, we can then move onto deeper levels of ‘syntax’ to ultimately where it ‘meets’ semantics.”
William Borucki, a former Nasa space scientist, added: “When I look at how Hollywood portrays contact, one of the things that I think is unreal, is that people that can readily communicate and have similar ambitions, similar responses.
“But when I think about intelligent life, and the variety of it on Earth, we've got dogs, we've got apes, we've got octopi that have their intelligence in their arms, not in their head.
“We can't talk to most of the creatures on Earth in an intelligent way. How are we going to talk to intelligent civilisations? I'm not sure we'll ever understand.”
Sarah Knapton - Yesterday - The Telegraph
Aliens could get in touch tomorrow and we must know what to say to them, scientists have warned, as they launched a new research hub to prepare humanity for first contact.
The University of St Andrews has joined forces with the UK SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Network to establish protocols and procedures if aliens are found.
The team warn that although there are measures in place for dealing with threats posed by asteroid impacts, there is no agreed response if a radio signal were picked up from another intelligent lifeform.
The Seti Post-Detection Hub will bring together experts from around the world to decide how to decipher methods, enact space law and anticipate societal impacts.
Dr John Elliott, honorary research fellow in the School of Computer Science at St Andrews and coordinator of the Hub, said: “Will we ever get a message from ET? We don’t know. We also don’t know when this is going to happen.
“But we do know that we cannot afford to be ill prepared – scientifically, socially, and politically rudderless – for an event that could turn into reality as early as tomorrow and which we cannot afford to mismanage.
“We need to coordinate our expert knowledge not only for assessing the evidence but also for considering the human social response, as our understanding progresses and what we know and what we don’t know is communicated. And the time to do this is now.”
Truth is out there
The potential for problems in communicating with alien life was explored in the fourth instalment of the Star Trek film franchise, The Voyage Home.
In depicts an alien probe sending out a message that inadvertently plays havoc with human technology with the crisis only resolved when Kirk and his crew realise it is trying to communicate with the planet's whales.
Many scientists now think that intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is a real possibility, and Nasa recently launched an eight-month inquiry to investigate hundreds of unexplained UFO sightings.
The investigation into "unidentified aerial phenomena" is being led by Dr Thomas Zurbuchen, of Nasa’s Science Mission Directorate, and is due to report back next summer.
Last year, the Pentagon's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force released a report into 144 UFO incidents between 2004 and 2021, many of which were spotted by military pilots.
Although investigators concluded that there was no evidence the objects had come from outer space, or a foreign adversary, they said that most could not be explained.
Protocols need updating
Currently, the only existing agreed "contact" protocols for encountering alien life were drawn up by the SETI community itself in 1989, and have not been revised since 2010. But they focus entirely on scientific conduct.
The Royal Society held a Scientific Discussion Meeting on "The detection of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society" in 2010 but there has been no global agreement on how to handle contact.
Learning how to decipher an alien language or method of communication is likely to be one of the major hurdles that experts will need to consider.
In a recent BBC documentary First Contact: An Alien Encounter, scientists admitted it may never be possible to understand what aliens are trying to tell us.
Dr Alexander Rehding, professor of music at Harvard University, said humans had still not learned how to translate animal communication.
“Whales are a really good study, and they are in some ways the closest thing that we have to aliens here on Earth,” he said.
“Whales are highly intelligent, and their environment is entirely different from ours. The patterns that we hear are purely patterns that we recognise as music, repeated patterns.
“It is a form of vocalising but we don't really know what it's for. Is it music, is it a language? What does it mean? It can give us a sense of how difficult the task at hand is.”
Mr Spock and whale
Dr Elliott admitted that deciphering an alien language would be tricky without some kind of extraterrestrial Rosetta Stone.
“Nevertheless, much can be gleaned, without this. Language for intelligent species has a structured system that is multi-layered and has internal structure," he said.
“By identifying any patterns within the signal and calculating how these patterns interact, we will then be able to know if it passes this initial surface structure test for displaying evidence of being language-like.
“If so, we will then be able to move on to identifying internal structures displayed by all known intelligent species. Once this is done, we can then move onto deeper levels of ‘syntax’ to ultimately where it ‘meets’ semantics.”
William Borucki, a former Nasa space scientist, added: “When I look at how Hollywood portrays contact, one of the things that I think is unreal, is that people that can readily communicate and have similar ambitions, similar responses.
“But when I think about intelligent life, and the variety of it on Earth, we've got dogs, we've got apes, we've got octopi that have their intelligence in their arms, not in their head.
“We can't talk to most of the creatures on Earth in an intelligent way. How are we going to talk to intelligent civilisations? I'm not sure we'll ever understand.”
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