‘They are real’: US holds rare public hearing on UFOs
- US defence officials speak at first public US congressional hearing on UFOs in half a century
- Pentagon task force has catalogued 400 cases of ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ since 2004
Two senior US defence intelligence officials said the Pentagon is committed to determining the origins of what it calls “unidentified aerial phenomena” – commonly termed UFOs – but acknowledged many remain beyond the government’s ability to explain.
The two officials, Ronald Moultrie and Scott Bray, appeared before a House of Representatives intelligence subcommittee on Tuesday for the first public US congressional hearing on the subject in a half-century.
It came 11 months after a government report documented more than 140 cases of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, that US military pilots had observed since 2004.
Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence, said the number of UAPs officially catalogued by a newly formed Pentagon task force has grown to 400 cases.
Both officials chose their words carefully in describing the task force’s work, including the question of possible extraterrestrial origins, which Bray said defence and intelligence analysts had not ruled out.
Bray did say that “we have no material, we have detected no emanations, within the UAP task force that would suggest it is anything non-terrestrial in origin”.
