Washington - The US government intends to publish a report next month on "unidentified atmospheric phenomena" that have always raised questions about the possibility of aliens observing the Earth, but the authorities in Washington believe that the mysterious flying vehicles that were spotted by military pilots in Recent years have nothing to do with the green creatures of science fiction movies, but with very real adversaries for the United States.
Last year, the US Congress ordered the executive branch to inform the public about the activities of the Pentagon unit responsible for studying these phenomena, which was entrusted to the US Navy, after it had been kept secret for decades.
However, the report, which was supervised by the Department of Intelligence Services, may disappoint those who are convinced of the existence of aliens and whose enthusiasm was renewed after the presentation of the serious “60 Minutes” television program, a video investigation on the subject.
Last year, the Pentagon published video clips filmed by US Navy pilots showing that they had detected what appeared to be foreign objects during flight.
What added to the suspense was that former President Barack Obama recounted on a comedy program this week that when he arrived at the White House, he asked if there was a secret laboratory “in which samples of organisms and spacecraft are kept.” "They did some research and the answer was no," he added, smiling.
What is true - and I'm serious about that - is that there are videos and some pictures of objects in the sky that we don't know exactly what they are," Obama said.
Last year, the Pentagon published video clips filmed by US Navy pilots showing their observation during flight of what appeared to be strange objects. One of these clips - all in black and white - is from November 2004, while the other two are from January 2015.
In one of these clips, a fast-moving rectangular object can be seen, which soon increases its speed suddenly and then disappears to the left a few seconds after it was detected by one of the sensors on the US Navy plane. In another video, an object appears above the clouds and the pilot wonders if it is a drone.
The Pentagon takes these photos very seriously. To avoid associating them with beings from another planet, and to encourage pilots to report such sightings without fear of ridicule, the military no longer classifies them as "mysterious flying objects" but rather as "unidentified flying phenomena".
The goal is for military and intelligence experts to analyze videos taken by pilots and identify as many of these flying objects as possible.
A Pentagon official, who asked not to be named, said that global airspace is crowded. In addition to commercial passenger planes, it is crossed by military drones that may be American or coming from abroad, and quadcopters, which are small drones with four arms and equipped with cameras and sold commercially. Also, there are sounding balloons in the airspace used especially for weather forecasts, and there are thousands of different models of them, not to mention the US military prototypes that are tested with the utmost secrecy.
It may be difficult for pilots to determine the nature of the object they are observing, as several factors interfere in that, including the speed of military aircraft, the reflection of the sun, the clock, and the weather, but this determination is possible through mathematical analyzes, checking pictures taken from different angles, and so on.
The world's airspace is crowded
The Pentagon does not release any of these findings to avoid providing information to potential adversaries. But what appears on a video moving quickly may turn out to be in fact flying slowly, after analyzing the movements of the ocean, the movements of the aircraft that spotted it and its movements.
"The more data we collect, the greater our ability to narrow the gap between what is and what is not, and we can avoid strategic surprises with regard to adversary technologies," said Susan Gaff, a spokeswoman for the US Department of Defense.What worries the military is that these phenomena, which are monitored frequently “more than once or twice a week,” according to the Pentagon official, are technologies that the United States does not possess.
In fact, we don't know what it is" the object we are monitoring, said Luis Elizondo, a former military who was involved in the Pentagon's work on this issue, in a statement he made on Sunday. "What we do know is that these objects, whatever their nature, are showing capabilities that go beyond the next generation," he added. "This is what raises the national security concern: These objects technically exceed everything we have so far," he said on ABC.
For the Pentagon, all this is very similar to spying on US military training centers. "Our pilots train the same way they fight," the Pentagon official said. And if someone is trying to determine the way we train ... it provides them with “important information.”