© Sergei Malgavko/TASS
WASHINGTON, June 26. /TASS/. The US intelligence has no clear answers about the nature of 143 out of 144 mysterious flying objects, spotted in 2004-2021, according to an unclassified section of a US intelligence report released on Friday.
The document, headlined ‘Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,’ was prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It contains information about incidents reported between November 2004 and March 2021. The process of gathering and analyzing information continues.
"The limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of UAP," the report says.
"Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation," it says.
Although UAP reportedly appeared to exhibit unusual flight characteristics "in a limited number of incidents," these observations could be the result of sensor errors, spoofing, or observer misperception, and require additional rigorous analysis.
The authors of the report suggest several categories of UAPs: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, USG or industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall "other" bin.
No evidence of extraterrestrial objects
Overall, the US government registered 144 reports of UAPs, including 80 reports involving observation with multiple sensors. With the exception of the one instance, in which the US intelligence determined with high confidence that the reported UAP was a deflating balloon, the authors of the report lack specific explanations to the remaining 143 incidents.
A senior US official told Reuters on the condition of anonymity that the US authorities have no information indicating the extraterrestrial origin of those objects.
"That's not the purpose of the task force, to evaluate any sort of search for extraterrestrial life. <…> That's not what we were charged with doing," he said, when asked about possible alien explanations. "Of the 144 reports we are dealing with here, we have no clear indications that there is any non-terrestrial explanation for them - but we will go wherever the data takes us."
According to the report, explaining the phenomenon will require analytic, collection and resource investment.
National security threat
The report says that aerial phenomena of unclear nature "pose a hazard to safety of flight" and "possibly, national security" if they are "foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology."
"Some UAP may be technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or a non-governmental entity," the report says.
However, the document’s authors say they currently lack data indicating that any of those unexplained phenomena "are part of a foreign collection program or indicative of a major technological advancement by a potential adversary."
