US report does not make firm UFO conclusions

CFP

Whatever or whoever they are, they're still out there. United States intelligence is after them, but its upcoming report won't deliver any full or final truth about UFOs.

The tantalizing prospect of top government intel finally weighing in – after decades of conspiracy theories, TV shows, movies and winking jokes by presidents – will instead yield a more mundane reality that's not likely to change many minds on any side of the issue.

Investigators have found no evidence the sightings are linked to aliens – but can't deny a link either. Two officials briefed on the report Congress due later this month say the US government cannot give a definitive explanation of aerial phenomena spotted by military pilots.

The report also doesn't rule out that what pilots have seen may be new technologies developed by other countries. One of the officials said there is no indication the unexplained phenomena are from secret US programs.

The officials were not authorized to discuss the information publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Findings of the report were first published by The New York Times.

The report examines multiple unexplained sightings from recent years that in some cases have been captured on video of pilots exclaiming about objects flying in front of them.

Congress in December required the Director of National Intelligence to summarize and report on the US government's knowledge of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs – better known to the public as unidentified flying objects or UFOs.

The effort has included a Defense Department UAP task force established last year.

The expected public release of an unclassified version of the report this month will amount to a status report, not the final word, according to one official.

A Pentagon spokesperson, Sue Gough, declined on Friday to comment on news stories about the intelligence report.

She said the Pentagon's UAP task force is "actively working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the report, and DNI will provide the findings to Congress."

 White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, when asked about the report, said of the question at first, "It's always a little wacky on Fridays."

But she added, "I will say that we take reports of incursions into our airspace by any aircraft – identified or unidentified – very seriously and investigate each one."

The Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency have for decades looked into reports of aircraft or other objects in the sky flying at inexplicable speeds or trajectories.

The US government takes unidentified aerial phenomena seriously given the potential national security risk of an adversary flying novel technology over a military base or another sensitive site.

This also is seen by the US military as a security and safety issue, given that in many cases the pilots who reported seeing unexplained aerial phenomena were conducting combat training flights.

The report's lack of firm conclusions will likely disappoint people anticipating the report, given many Americans' long-standing fascination with UFOs and the prospect of aliens having reached humankind.