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New UFO Report Shows Hundreds More Incidents than Previously Thought (go.com) 62

The U.S. intelligence community says that the number of UFO reports involving U.S. military personnel is increasing, "enabling a greater awareness of the airspace and increased opportunity to resolve" what is actually being reported. From a report: Roughly half of the new incidents reported in the report had terrestrial explanations, the report said. The increase in reporting is being partially attributed to the continuing effort to destigmatize the reporting of such incidents and focusing on the potential safety risks they could pose to U.S. personnel. The report released Thursday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that since its first June 2021 unclassified report on what are now called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), it is now aware of 510 such reports.

That is significantly more than the 144 incidents reviewed in the initial report, only one of which could be explained. The new report said the Pentagon's new office looking at UAP reports has looked at 366 new reported incidents and initially determined that about half of them have "unremarkable characteristics." Twenty-six are being attributed to drones, 163 characterized as balloon or balloon-like entities, and six are attributed to clutter. The report says these initial assessments do "not mean positively resolved or unidentified" but will aid investigators in trying to determine how to explain "the remaining 171 uncharacterized and unattributed UAP reports" some of which "appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis."

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New UFO Report Shows Hundreds More Incidents than Previously Thought

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  • The recent Defense Department spending bill directs them to look at UFO sightings as far back as 1945 [nytimes.com]. Even better, two years later in 1947 there was Roswell [youtube.com]!

    We many finally get a hashed around answer to what really happened in Roswell as well as the avocado-shaped object which reportedly plowed into a communication tower at what is now the Trinity Site in 1945.

    • Re:1947! (Score:4, Informative)

      by jhoegl ( 638955 ) on Friday January 13, 2023 @12:50PM (#63206144)
      We already have the answer, it was an experimental balloon that was top secret.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Defense Department spending bill

      That's what this is really about.

      For many, I think the most likely explanation are drones (or missiles) from other agencies.

      Remember, the US alone has 17 independent Intelligence Agencies - only half of whom are under DoD

      Most (if not all) have their own well funded classified drone programs with their own subcontractors. And they don't --- and legally can't --- talk to each other about them.

      If a classified drone belongs to any of:

      • CIA
      • CGI (coast guard intel under DHS)
      • OICI (a DoE agenc
      • That's less security clearances, and more how classification levels work. If you don't "need to know", even if your clearance level is higher than the information, you don't get access.

        That said, "need to know" can be wider than you think, even if it is only "that was a US craft under a different agency" just to avoid wasted effort.

        Also, given the timeframe of the UFOs being examined, most aren't going to be drones.

  • Call out the National Guard!

  • I'm sure the readily available cheap consumer grade remote controlled flying machines have nothing to do with it... Or the fact that China is heavily engaged in various forms of corporate espionage.

    I'm not saying it was aliens but it's aliens
    • by jhoegl ( 638955 )
      I remember hearing that the Government let the UFO stuff go because it kept people busy and it didnt really harm anything. It also allowed cover for their secret experimental ships.
    • by bettodavis ( 1782302 ) on Friday January 13, 2023 @12:53PM (#63206154)
      While a good bit of recent folklore and hearsay is certainly due to regular people mistaking drones and natural phenomena for UFOs, military sightings are much harder to put into the same basket.

      When they assert they recorded things that nobody can replicate in terms of capabilities, we better pay attention.
      • While a good bit of recent folklore and hearsay is certainly due to regular people mistaking drones and natural phenomena for UFOs, military sightings are much harder to put into the same basket.

        Joining the military does not cause a person's IQ to go up, nor does it give them +2 Wisdom.

        OTOH, military pilots are often issued amphetamines. They also frequently do not get enough sleep, for both operational and non-operational reasons. And for obvious reasons, they're unlikely to give honest self-assessments about their lack of sleep when reporting anomalous observations.

        • So lack of sleep (or amphetamines); triggers UAP sightings? Where can I get some? How many nights do I have to stay up for? This is gonna be great!
          • 1. Your friendly local military doctor. Will require being in the military in a position where they need you stay up excessively. See your local recruiter for that. A college degree will help.
            2. Around 3.

        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          True, but those pilots are in the majority of cases only one of the multiple independent instruments 'sighting' the objects. Additionally the military has experts just the same as the civilian population (in fact, most civilian scientists actually work for them because most federal grant money is funneled through the military) and those are resources they are using to screen these sightings. This is reporting the hundreds which remain AFTER failing to find mundane explanations.

          • If you're paying attention, the ones they can't explain are ones with the weakest data.

            If the pilot hallucinates something, that goes into the "unexplained" bin.

            • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

              I don't know, I don't have a list. But that wasn't the case with the previous set of unexplained cases. Generally there were multiple pilots and more importantly an assortment of instruments on their jets. In at least one case they had not only that but confirmation from multiple instruments on an aircraft carrier. When it is just the pilot and just their radar or one scanner... that is probably just an artifact.

              In some of these cases the pilots actually had systems actively jammed. That isn't a radar glitc

        • And for those who cite instruments that have picked things up, these are not perfect, even more so if there are actors deliberately testing stealth technology and technologies explicitly designed to confuse radar, etc. Indeed, the USA devotes a lot of funding with respect to such ECM and typically doesn't send every civil and military radar operator details of tests. Even then, WW3 nearly happened in the 1980s due to a flock of birds, and separately due to a synthetic sensor exercise that not everyone was i
      • While a good bit of recent folklore and hearsay is certainly due to regular people mistaking drones and natural phenomena for UFOs, military sightings are much harder to put into the same basket.

        When they assert they recorded things that nobody can replicate in terms of capabilities, we better pay attention.

        Our military activities are at the top of the list of things foreign intelligence is interested in. The most advanced ECW capabilities our adversaries have will be used for that. So the next time, for example, a naval aviator, because duh, detects something flying at an impossible speed and direction over the ocean, because of fucking course, it needs to be seriously investigated. It's not aliens people, for fuck's sake, get a clue.

    • It's a garbage pod.

  • by Shaitan ( 22585 ) on Friday January 13, 2023 @12:49PM (#63206142)

    I and my family are prepared to declare our allegiance to your cause. Fuck these other humans, I honestly never liked them much anyway and they are consuming valuable resources we could use from this planet.

    Aside from my family I'll screen the rest for a handful of optimal breeding mates, for your sake, so you don't have to feel bad because of exterminating an entire species. See how helpful I am? I for one welcome our new overlords!

  • These guys get confused about which way is up. I'm a bit skeptical about their ability to guage distance, and therefore have any idea what performance characteristics would be necessary to see what they see.

  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday January 13, 2023 @01:53PM (#63206372) Journal
    Given the explosion in number of drones sold the number of unidentified flying objects should sky rocket. If it is just 100 times more, it is not much.
  • by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Friday January 13, 2023 @02:13PM (#63206426)

    "Sometime in my life, 'Unidentified Flying Objects' became 'Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena'. I wasn't notified of this... nobody asked me if I approved..." - not George Carlin, extrapolated

    • 'Unidentified Flying Objects' became 'Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena

      This implies they're not necessarily flying.

      "Anomalous Phenomena" has a nice ring to it. Too bad they didn't go with "Anonymous Anomalous Phenomena."

    • UFOs comprise MS - military stuff, WBAS - weather balloons and stuff, MUS - made-up stuff and WAS - weather and stuff. Carlin might not have used the word stuff.
  • So excited that finally all of this is coming out.
  • Why the UFOs keep there presence hidden and yet keep on buzzing military installations.
  • The existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence is just a little less terrifying than an absolute certainty that there is no other intelligent life forms in the universe other than human beings. It is only the uncertainty that shields us from absolute terror either way. Alternatively, the information maybe be classified or any intelligence beings able to get past the immense separation of time and space would likely be able to conceal themselves and may not want us to know they exist.
    One thing is certai

    • My dogs seem fairly bright, so I'm not sure humans are the only intelligent life. And I might trust chimps to throw less doo doo at each other than some politicians.
      • by MrKaos ( 858439 )

        Well if there are planets out there with chimps and dogs I doubt we are going to have much interaction with them and I think we are the only great apes that can do math.

        • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

          Well if there are planets out there with chimps and dogs I doubt we are going to have much interaction with them and I think we are the only great apes that can do math.

          Chimps can do simple arithmetic, it seems, and there's some evidence for some birds and dogs being able to do so. There's probably no evidence for cats being able to do arithmetic as no one has managed to make a cat care enough. Space dogs will probably mostly want to come here to sniff our butts, though.

          • by MrKaos ( 858439 )

            Great - let's get them to calculate orbital mechanics. If they ever do perhaps they may ponder why there is no intelligent like themselves - as they sniff each others butts and pick lice from each other's fur.

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