Pentagon deadline nears for releasing report on unidentified aerial objects

On August 15 2020, the US Department of Defense formed the ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force’, which would investigate unexplained aerial incidents encountered by the US military.

Former Trump administration intelligence director John Ratcliffe says there are multiple unexplained sightings of these unidentified aerial phenomena. Answers are finally anticipated, as the release date for the results of an investigation into the objects draws nearer. The investigation was signed into law through former US President Donald Trump’s $2.3 trillion government funding package in 2020. 

The bill ordered the director of national intelligence and secretary of defense to provide unclassified reports to the congressional intelligence and armed services committees within 6 months. 

“When we’re talking about sightings, we’re talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots that have been picked up by satellite imagery that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain,” says former director Ratcliffe. 

“Movements that are hard to replicate, that we don’t have the technology for, or traveling at speeds that, you know, that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom,” he adds. 

This came after three declassified videos were released by the US Navy, which appeared to show three unidentified flying objects.The videos caused a public furore after being released in 2017, although they were initially recorded off the coast of San Diego in 2004. 

One of the pilots who was circling above the scene said the unidentified object was “behaving in ways that aren’t physically normal. That’s what caught my eye. Because aircraft, whether they’re manned or unmanned, still have to obey the laws of physics. They have to have some source of lift, some source of propulsion. The tic tac was not doing that,” says former pilot Chad Underwood. 

“It was going from like 50,000 feet to 100 feet in like seconds, which is not possible.”

The film was confirmed as authentic by the Pentagon in May 2019, two years after it was released. 

Alarmed, for five years a partially classified program investigation program ran within the US Department of Defense, at the request of former Senate majority-leader Harry Reid with $22 million in annual funding.

Up to today, no reasonable explanation has been provided explaining the events.

Commander David Fravor, the pilot leading the mission on that fateful day, is very hesitant to call the object an unidentified flying object. In an interview with the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, he carefully speculates that it could be a classified advanced prototype, whether from the US or an adversary. 

If it is man-made, however, he worries at the capability it reveals.

Flying 160 kilometres into the Pacific, a sortie of pilots were flying a training mission with no weapons in November 2004, when they were informed by a radio operator on the U.S.S. Princeton, a cruiser, that there was an incoming object. 

The cruiser had been in the Pacific for two weeks tracking mysterious radio signatures. 

The object was first seen by the pilots at 24,300 meters, after which it rapidly dropped towards the ocean until it came to a sudden stop 6 kilometres above sea level. The fighter pilots surrounded the object from multiple angles, and lost visual as they arrived at the same coordinates, before Commander Fravor reported a large disturbance in the water. 

On radio, he reports there was a hovering oval-shaped object 15 metres above the water, nearly 12 meters long. As Commander Fravor circled lower towards the unidentified object, it began rising towards him. Commander Fravor then flew directly to the unidentified object, before it accelerated away at an incredible speed. 

Ordered to rendezvous nearly 100 kilometres away, the pilots were surprised when the U.S.S. Princeton’s radio operator reported that the unidentified object had just appeared at the rendezvous point less than a minute after it disappeared. 

Commander Fravor would go on to serve in multiple theatres, with an unaffected career. 

“I have no idea what I saw,” he said. But, “I want to fly one,” he adds.

The report on unidentified aerial phenomena is set to be released in June, but it remains to be seen if that deadline will be met on time.