The Pentagon has released its annual report on UFO sightings, or what it officially calls unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) – and has found 21 particularly curious incidents.
A total of 757 new reports of UAPs were received and investigated by the Department of Defense’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) between May 2023 and June 2024, according to the report from the Department of Defense and Office of the Director of Defense national intelligence service.
Of those, 485 UAP reports occurred within that reporting period, and another 272 occurred between 2021 and 2022 but were not included in previous annual UAP reports. In total, as of October 24, 2024, AARO has received a total of 1,652 UAP reports.
Forty-nine cases during the reporting period were resolved as objects such as balloons, birds and unmanned aerial systems. Another 243 were recommended for closure from June, also as prosaic objects. Another 444 cases lacked sufficient data for analysis and were placed in the active archive, where they can be reexamined if additional data becomes available.
However, there were 21 cases that the report said “deserved further analysis” due to “anomalous characteristics and/or behaviors.”
Still, the report says there is no evidence yet that life from another planet is involved in these observations.
“It is important to underline that AARO has thus far found no evidence of aliens, activity or technology,” the report said. Furthermore, none of the resolved cases substantiated “advanced foreign hostile capabilities or breakthrough aerospace technologies.”
Jon Kosloski, the director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, said in a media briefing Thursday: “There are interesting cases where, with my physics and engineering background and time in the ICU [intelligence community]I don’t understand. And I don’t know anyone else who understands them either.”
He said these strange cases had spread over the past year and a half, and that video exists of some of them, but not all of them.
“But in each of the cases I’m particularly interested in, there were multiple eyewitnesses. And there is additional data involved,” Kosloski added. “It remains to be seen whether that additional data will be enough to solve the case and understand whether it is a UAV. [unmanned aerial vehicle]bird or balloon, or say something substantive about the nature of the unknown phenomenon.”
The report was released a day after the second major hearing on UAPs in Congress, where leaders called for greater transparency from the Pentagon on UAP knowledge, as well as whether taxpayer dollars are being spent on UAP recovery, research or other programs.
Four witnesses testified at the House Oversight Committee’s joint subcommittee hearing entitled, “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon: Exposing the Truth.”
Luis Elizondo, a former Defense Department official and author, testified that the government conducted secret UAP crash recovery programs with the aim of identifying and reverse-engineering alien craft.
“Let me be clear: UAP is real. Advanced technologies not created by our government or any other government monitor sensitive military installations around the world,” Elizondo said. “Additionally, the US possesses UAP technologies, as do some of our adversaries. I believe we are in the midst of a decades-long secret arms race, a race funded by misallocated taxpayer dollars and hidden from our elected representatives and oversight bodies.”
“While much of my government work on the UAP topic remains classified, excessive secrecy has led to serious atrocities against loyal officials, military personnel and the public, all to hide the fact that we are not alone in the cosmos,” he added . .
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-California, asked all four witnesses: “Do you believe, just for the record, that the federal government, any part of the federal government, is knowingly concealing evidence about UAPs from the public ?” All four answered affirmatively.
When Garcia asked the witnesses what they think UAPs might be, Tim Gallaudet, a retired US Navy vice admiral and CEO of Ocean STL Consulting LLC, said: “Strong evidence that they are non-human, higher intelligence.”
The report and hearing add to the growing interest in UAPs in recent years, which has coincided with greater government transparency on the topic, thanks in part to active-duty military members coming forward to discuss their experiences.
That, in turn, has prompted government hearings in which several former officials have made a wide range of allegations about the origins of UAPs and an alleged government attempt to withhold information about them from the public.
Despite these testimonies, no hard evidence has emerged regarding UAPs, aliens, or a government cover-up.
Jon T. Kosloski, director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
The Pentagon report found a consistent pattern in the reports describing the UAPs: unidentified lights and round/spherical/spherical objects made up the majority of cases in reports with obvious visual features.
Of the UAP reports, 81 were from U.S. military operating areas. Three reports from U.S. military aircrews described “pilots being followed or shadowed by UAP.”
Of the new reports, 392 were from the Federal Aviation Administration and constitute all of the FAA’s UAP reports as of 2021.
The AARO noted that it was able to resolve a report filed by a commercial pilot who reported seeing white flashing lights in the night sky that ultimately turned out to be a Starlink satellite launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, that same night.
If AARO finds cases that indicate a breach in foreign aviation capacity, it will immediately report it to Congress.
“AARO is investigating whether other unresolved cases can be attributed to the expansion of Starlink and other mega-constellations in low Earth orbit,” the report said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
