After a 90-minute congressional hearing about UFOs on Tuesday, they retain their air of mystery.

A House Intelligence subcommittee held the first congressional hearing in over half a century on military reports of unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP). UAP rebrands what most people refer to as UFOs, to avoid the stigma attached to a phenomenon that is the subject of lurid conspiracy theories.

Pentagon officials who testified were Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray.

Little new light was shed on UFOs, but the two officials tried to clarify the situation by ruling things out.

There’s no evidence to suggest UAPs are extraterrestrial.

There have been no collisions with Navy aircraft, but 11 near misses.

They’ve found no unexplained wreckage.

They’ve received no communications from the UAPs.

The military have never fired shots at them.

They believe no foreign adversary could create such technologies.

These unequivocal statements mask a large degree of uncertainty. The hearing was a follow-up to the release of a report in June last year from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Among 144 sightings in the report, only one could be explained. It was a large, deflating weather balloon. In November, the Pentagon formed a new group to coordinate efforts to detect and identify objects in restricted airspace, with the unwieldy title of the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group. The title does not convey confidence that the group will be nimble and sharply focused.

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