It was issued jointly by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the UAP Task Force led by the U.S. Navy.

“Flight Safety Issues”

“UAP clearly constitutes a flight safety issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security,” the report said, adding that this phenomenon “may lack a single explanation.”

“It has been reported that in a few incidents, UAP appeared to exhibit abnormal flight characteristics. These observations may be the result of sensor errors, deception, or misunderstanding by observers and require additional rigorous analysis,” it said.

The report includes some UAP cases previously exposed in videos of U.S. Navy pilots released by the Pentagon. These videos show mysterious aircraft off the east and west coasts, whose speed and maneuverability exceed known aviation technology, and lack any visible propulsion or Flight control means. surface.

When asked about the possibility of extraterrestrial interpretation of these observations, a senior U.S. official said, “This is not the purpose of the working group to evaluate any form of alien search… this is not our responsibility. Things to do.”

“In the 144 reports we are processing here, we have no clear indication that there are any non-ground explanations for them-but we will go wherever the data takes us,” the official said.

The report established five potential explanation categories: air clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, the US government or the US industrial development program, foreign adversary systems, and an all-encompassing category of “other”.

Watch |’Watch it fly! The U.S. Navy pilot tracked the UFO and said:

Most events are still unexplainable

In a briefing describing the findings of the report, the US official, who asked not to be named, told reporters that with the exception of one incident, all incidents could not be explained, and further analysis is needed.

Officials said that for the remaining 143 cases, the government has not yet made a ruling on whether the sightings may have come from an alien.

“In the data we have, we don’t have any clear indication that any of these unidentified flights are part of a foreign (intelligence) collection plan, nor do we have any clear data that indicates that it was a potential adversary,” the senior official said. .

In recent years, the government has adopted UAP as its preferred term, called “unidentified flying object” or UFO, which has long been associated with the concept of alien spacecraft.

Another senior official stated that 21 of the reports showed that drones “appear to have some advanced propulsion or advanced technology”, appeared to lack any means of propulsion or acceleration, and demonstrated speeds beyond what the United States believed to be owned by foreign adversaries. speed.

‘Important first step’

The report was ordered by Congress as part of broader intelligence legislation signed by former US President Donald Trump in December. US Senator Marco Rubio played an important role in the commissioning process.

Rubio said: “For many years, the men and women we trust to defend our country have reported encountering unidentified aircraft with outstanding capabilities. Over the years, their concerns have often been ignored and ridiculed.” “This report is about these incidents. An important first step in classification, but this is only the first step.”

This report marked a turning point for the US government, after the military spent decades shifting, debunking, and discrediting observations of UFOs and “flying saucers” dating back to the 1940s.

The first senior official said: “Anytime there is a flight safety or counterintelligence issue, we will take these things very seriously, and we will continue to take them seriously.”

Look at security risks without prejudice

Adam Schiff, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, urged a systematic analysis of UAP’s potential national security and flight safety risks, “without preconceptions,” to determine whether they are the result of foreign adversaries, the atmosphere, or other factors. Aerial phenomena, space debris “or other completely different things”.

This is not the first official report of the US government on this subject.

For example, the U.S. Air Force previously conducted a UFO survey called the “Blue Book Project,” which compiled a list of 12,618 sightings, of which 701 involved officially “unidentified” at the end of the project in 1969. Objects.

In 1994, the Air Force announced that it had completed a study to find records related to the 1947 “Roswell Incident” in New Mexico.

It said that the materials recovered near Roswell were consistent with the military’s long-standing interpretation that the crashed balloons, and there was no record that any alien bodies or alien materials had been recovered.