The number of reports from U.S. military personnel revolving around UFOs has increased substantially in the last year.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on Thursday revealing that 510 such reports have been filed, including the 144 incidents mentioned in its June 2021 unclassified report on “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.”
“Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) reporting is increasing, enabling a greater awareness of the airspace and increased opportunity to resolve UAP events,” the report stated. “In addition to the 144 UAP reports covered during the 17 years of UAP reporting included in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) preliminary assessment, there have been 247 new reports and another 119 that were either since discovered or reported after the preliminary assessment’s time period.”
The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), established by the deputy secretary of defense in July 2022, determined that of the 366 newly-identified reports, more than half exhibited unremarkable characteristics, writing that 26 were characterized as unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) or UAS-like entities; 163 were characterized as balloon or balloon-like entities; and six were attributed to clutter.
The majority of claims came from U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force aviators and operators, the report stated.
Some of the terms ARO intended to use to describe UAPs include “Range Fouler,” a “UAP interrupting pre-planned training or other military activity in military operating areas or restricted airspace,” and “Transmedium Objects or Devices,” defined as “objects or devices that are observed to transition between space and the atmosphere, or between the atmosphere and bodies of water, that are not immediately identifiable.”
The report was supposed to be released by the end of October. In December, Ron Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security, was asked if he had “affirmative evidence” that he had collected that showed any one of the anomalies was a space alien. Moultrie replied, “The answer’s no, we have nothing. … We have not seen anything that would lead us to believe that any of the objects that we have seen are of alien origin, if you will. If we find something like that, we will look at it and analyze it and take the appropriate actions.”
AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick cautioned, “I would just say we are structuring our analysis to be very thorough and rigorous. We will go through it all. And as a physicist, I have to adhere to the scientific method, and I will follow that data and science wherever it goes.”