Pentagon received hundreds of new UAP reports, but says no evidence of extraterrestrial activity

The Pentagon has released its annual report on UFO sightings, or what it officially calls Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) — and found 21 particularly curious occurrences.

A total of 757 new reports of UAPs were received between May 2023 and June 2024 and investigated by the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), according to the report by the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Of these, 485 UAP reports occurred within that reporting period and a further 272 occurred between 2021 and 2022 but were not included in previous annual UAP reports. Overall, AARO has received a total of 1,652 UAP reports per 24 October 2024.

49 cases during the reporting period were resolved during the reporting period as objects such as balloons, birds and unmanned aerial systems. A further 243 were recommended for closure from June, also decided to be prosaic objects. A further 444 cases lacked sufficient data for analysis and were placed in the active archive where they may be reprocessed if additional data become available.

However, there were 21 cases that the report said “merit further analysis” because of “abnormal characteristics and/or behavior.”

Still, the report said there is no evidence so far that life from another planet is involved in these sightings.

“It is important to emphasize that to date AARO has not discovered evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology,” the report said. Further, none of the resolved cases substantiated “advanced foreign resistance capabilities or cutting-edge aerospace technologies.”

Jon Kosloski, the director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, said in a media briefing Thursday: “There are interesting cases that, with my physics and engineering background and time in the IC (intelligence community), I do not understand. And I don’t know anyone else who understands them either.”

He said these curious cases were spread over the last year and a half and there is some video footage for a few of them, but not all.

“But in each of the cases I’m particularly interested in, there were multiple eyewitnesses. And there’s additional data to go with them,” Kosloski added. “It remains to be seen whether that additional data will be sufficient to, that we can either solve the case, understand whether it is a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), bird or balloon or say something significant about the nature of the unknown. phenomenon.”

The report was released a day after the second major hearing on UAPs was held in Congress, where leaders called for greater transparency from the Pentagon about UAP knowledge, as well as whether tax dollars are being spent on UAP retrieval, research or other programs .

Four witnesses testified at the House Oversight Committee’s joint subcommittee hearing titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Revealing the Truth.”

Luis Elizondo, a former Defense Department official and author, testified that the government has conducted covert UAP crash retrieval programs aimed at identifying and reverse engineering alien craft.

“Let me be clear, UAP is real. Advanced technologies not made by our government or any other government are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe,” Elizondo said. “Furthermore, the United States possesses UAP technologies, as do some of our opponents are. I believe we are in the midst of a multi-decade secretive arms race, one funded by misallocated taxpayer dollars and hidden from our elected representatives and oversight bodies.”

“While much of my government’s work on the UAP subject remains classified, excessive secrecy has led to serious misdeeds 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-Calif., asked all four witnesses: “Do you think, just for the record, that the federal government, any part of the federal government, is deliberately hiding evidence of UAPs from the public?” All four answered in the affirmative.

When Garcia asked the witnesses what they thought UAPs could be, Tim Gallaudet, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral and CEO of Ocean STL Consulting LLC, said: “Strong evidence that they are non-human, higher intelligence.”

The report and hearing add to what has been an influx of interest in bringing attention to UAPs in recent years that has coincided with increased government transparency on the subject, thanks in part to active duty military members coming forward to discuss their experiences .

This in turn has triggered government hearings, where various former officials have made a wide range of allegations about the origins of UAPs and about an alleged government effort to keep information about them from the public.

Despite this testimony, no hard evidence has emerged regarding UAPs, aliens, or a government cover-up.

The Pentagon report noted a consistent pattern in reports describing the UAPs: unidentified lights and round/spherical/spherical objects made up the majority of cases in reports that had distinct visual characteristics.

Of the UAP reports, 81 originated from US military areas of operation. Three reports from US military aircrews described “pilots being followed or shadowed by UAP.”

Of the new reports, 392 were from the Federal Aviation Administration and make up all of the FAA’s UAP reports since 2021.

AARO noted that it was able to resolve a report made by a commercial pilot who reported seeing white flashing lights in the night sky that turned out to be a Starlink satellite launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, that same night.

If AARO finds cases indicating cutting-edge foreign resilient air and space capabilities, it will immediately report it to Congress.

“AARO is investigating whether other unresolved cases can be attributed to the expansion of Starlink and other low-Earth orbit megaconstellations,” the report said.