It’s safe to say that UFOs, now branded UAPs, are back. In recent years, concerns have grown that supposed physics-defying craft are penetrating US airspace. This could represent a technological breakthrough by foreign competitors or something else entirely. But many people will no doubt have found the recent release of the Pentagon’s highly anticipated UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) report to be underwhelming.
Its results are inconclusive, despite the fact that it is the alleged weight of the data that led Congress to request the report in the first place. This raises serious questions as to how the intelligence process became so muddied, and why UFOs have rocketed up Washington’s agenda.
While it puts many hypotheses forward, the report concedes that analysts cannot explain at least 143 out of 144 reported sightings. The problem, as they acknowledge, is that they lack the data to draw firm conclusions. The issue is not simply about whether the extraordinary things that have been reported belong to Russia, China or the Klingons, but more about whether anything extraordinary is even happening at all.
To an extent, this is unsurprising. In practically every UAP incident reported, nobody can agree whether something extraordinary – a physics-bending craft, for example – was actually witnessed. Sceptics argue that factors such as misreporting, technical and human error, or optical illusions, can explain much of what is happening in the skies.
To read more, click here.