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You’re not just seeing things.
U.S. spy agencies and the Pentagon said in a report this past week that UFO (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) sightings have surged over the past two years. And authorities have no easy explanation as to why, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A study conducted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) found over 510 claims of UAP sightings, many of them reported by Navy and Air Force pilots. And 366 of those reports date March 2021.
A new Pentagon unit dedicated to UFO investigations said about half the sightings were likely explainable as either unmanned aircraft, balloons, or airborne debris.
But that still leaves more than 170 sightings as “uncharacterized and unattributed,” the WSJ noted, concerning the report.
The U.S. government has made efforts to be more forthcoming regarding at least some of what it compiles in terms of UFOs, which have long been the subject of fascination, speculation and popular lore and entertainment.
An NPR story on the Pentagon report said that while transparency has increased, the government only goes so far in attributing the possible origins and nature of UFOs.
In other words, they’re not exactly admitting to being on the Extra Terrestrial bandwagon.
Rather, the government reporting is part of a focus on destigmatizing the topic of UAP, and assessing potential risks of aviation hazards and “potential adversarial activity,” according to NPR.
The public-funded news outlet cited testimony by Alex Dietrich, retired U.S. Navy fighter pilot, as offering a compelling sample of some of the stranger sightings.
“It was this sort of roundish, oblong shape, and it didn’t have any apparent flight control surfaces,” Dietrich described, regarding a UFO he saw off the Southern California coast in 2004.
Noting that he first saw the object “roiling water below us,” he said “It seemed to be bouncing around and changing course very quickly and in a way that we would not have been able to maneuver our own aircraft or certainly to keep up.”