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The US government has been inundated with hundreds of UFO encounter reports over the past year, and about half of them remain unexplained, according to an unclassified document released by the Pentagon (opens in a new tab) Thursday (January 12).
The 11-page report, filed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), reveals that the Pentagon has listed a total of 510 reports of alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) – or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), as the government prefers to call them – largely filed by US military personnel. Of those cases, 366 were newly identified in 2022, while the remaining 144 were identified in a previous ODNI report that reviewed UFO data compiled between 2004 and 2017.
Of the 366 newly opened cases, 195 were initially resolved with relatively mundane explanations; according to the report, 26 cases were identified as drones, 163 were classified as “balloons or balloon-like entities” and six were labeled as air clutter, such as birds or plastic bags. These findings are consistent with prior requests from Pentagon officials that the most recent UAP reports were likely the result of foreign surveillance drones and disorder.
The remaining 171 cases are still “uncharacterized and unattributed,” due to a lack of detailed data, according to the report. Some of these cases, which involved objects moving in unusual or inexplicable ways, are still under investigation.
The report refuses to mention the possibility of foreign involvement in any case.
However, it states that “no encounters with UAP have been confirmed to directly contribute to adverse health effects on the observer” – unlike a litany of dodgy UAP reports published in 2022 claiming that some civilians had suffered radiation burns, brain damage, or “unexplained pregnancy” from UFO encounters. (These reports date back to 1873 and were not part of recent Pentagon investigations.)
The US government has shown renewed interest in UFO investigations in recent years, since military footage of several unidentified people leaked. aircraft moving in seemingly impossible ways is making its way into the mainstream media.
In early 2022, the Pentagon founded a new office specifically to coordinate and investigate UFO reports from US military personnel. The office, called the Defect resolution office for all areashas taken on the 366 newly identified reports and expects to receive many more as the government works to de-stigmatize UAP reports in the interest of national security, agency officials said.
