In April, three videos of UFOs were officially declassified by the US Department of Defense after previously being leaked in 2007 and 2017. The releases marked a milestone for the public, who have always been frustrated by the secrecy surrounding alleged UFO sightings in the US. Now, alien enthusiasts will be thrilled to learn that the Pentagon is set to make even more of its findings public, disclosing new discoveries every six months.
The New York Times reports that the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force’s updated plans were referenced last month in a Senate committee report, which was outlining spending on intelligence agencies for the coming year. The report said the program was “to standardise collection and reporting” on sightings of UFOs and was to share some of its findings with the public twice a year. As well as looking for life from other worlds, officials’ main aim is to discover if another nation is using aviation technology that could threaten the US.
It appears government officials are primarily concerned about reports of unidentified aircrafts over military bases, which Senator Marco Rubio said could be sent from China or Russia and represented a “technological leap” by the countries, which is yet undiscovered by the US. Though, he added: “Maybe there is a completely boring explanation for it, but we need to find out.”
Speaking to Dazed in April, David Clarke, curator of The National Archives UFO project and lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, said of the Pentagon’s long-standing secrecy: “From the military point of view, they don’t want to reveal things about technological capabilities that enemy countries might use to their advantage. But the trouble is, by covering that stuff up, it makes people suspect that they’re hiding something more spectacular than it actually is.”
Nick Pope, who investigated UFOs for the UK government’s Ministry of Defence in the early 90s, added that he believes UFO phenomena is typically denied by governments “because of the embarrassment that comes from the implication that despite our sophisticated air defence network, there are things in our skies that we can’t identify”.
Whether alien enthusiasts will get the footage they’re craving is TBC – it’s likely findings released will have a fairly mundane explanation, but the news does mark a breakthrough when it comes to the Pentagon’s stronghold on UFO information.
