Pentagon is accused of a cover-up after its highly anticipated UFO report leaves out the 'top-secret' section and DOD whistleblower claims 'there's a lot more than 144 incidents'
The Pentagon's newly released public report on UFOs has left many enthusiasts unsatisfied, excluding top-secret information and prompting claims the government is shielding information.
The nine-page public report released on Friday afternoon, separate from classified information that was also provided to Congress, described 144 military UFO sightings mostly since 2019, only one of which could be explained.
Luis Elizondo, the former director of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program program to study UFOs, said the report was only the tip of the iceberg, but nevertheless called it 'historic'.
'This is a historic moment for us, in our country and our military,' Elizondo told Fox News after the report's release.
'The government has formally and officially come out and informed Congress that these things are -- A, they’re real -- and two, that they’re not ours and that they seem to be performing, at least some of them … in remarkable ways,' he said.
Luis Elizondo, the former director of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program program to study UFOs, said the report was only the tip of the iceberg
The USS Omaha filmed a round object making a controlled flight above the water for an extended period of time before it finally entered the ocean
Elizondo said he he believes the majority of UFO sightings go unreported in the military, and that the new report only captures a fraction of sightings.
'A large majority of reporting goes unreported. Why? The stigma and taboo... involving this topic, so one can surmise there's actually a lot more than just 144 incidents involving the Navy and just last year and a half.'
The report said defense and intelligence analysts lack sufficient data to determine the nature of mysterious flying objects, and did not rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial origin.
It noted that there are likely a variety explanations for different encounters, and said that some of the incidents could have been sightings of advanced technologies deployed by Russia, China or another foreign nation.
The report said that in 18 of the incidents, described in 21 reports, the UFOs displayed advanced maneuvering or flight capabilities indicative of 'advanced technology' beyond current known human capabilities.
Elizondo said that it was important to consider all possibilities, including extraterrestrial or trans-dimensional origin.
Elizondo said he he believes the majority of UFO sightings go unreported in the military, and that the new report only captures a fraction of sightings
The Pentagon's report was released to Congress on Friday, but offered no information on what the UFOs might be
'This is something that could involve outer space, interspace, or the space in between, and that's why we've always said keep all options on the table,' he said.
'The more we learn about this remarkable universe we live in, the more we realize our current understanding of the construct of the cosmos is constantly changing and evolving with new information and new knowledge that we get,' added Elizondo.
'People jump to speculation that it's from the Pleiades or something like that, when in fact one of the hypothesis when I was in AATIP was this could be as natural to Earth as we are, but we are just at a point where technologically we aren't advanced enough we can collect information on it and begin to try to figure out what it is,' he said.
'There's been another hypothesis that these things are possibly from underwater and as outlandish as it may seem, there is some anecdotal evidence that supports all of these observations, so what we want to do is try to get as much data on the table as we can before we start eliminating,' said Elizondo.
Friday's report encompasses 144 observations of what the government officially refers to as 'unidentified aerial phenomenon,' or UAP, dating back to 2004. The report was issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in conjunction with a U.S. Navy-led UAP task force.
The report includes some UFO cases that previously came to light in the Pentagon's release of video from U.S. Naval aviators.
They showed mysterious aircraft off the U.S. East and West Coasts exhibiting speed and maneuverability exceeding known aviation technologies and lacking any visible means of propulsion or flight-control surfaces.
Previously released video reportedly taken in July 2019 by naval officers using a night vision device showed pyramid shaped objects hovering 700 feet above a Navy destroyer
The video was taken in July 2019 by naval officers using a night vision device
A senior U.S. official, asked about the possibility of extraterrestrial explanations for the observations, said: '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.
'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,' the official added.
All but four of the sightings, which were attributed to 'airborne clutter,' remain unexplained, subject to further analysis, U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters during a briefing describing the report's findings.
For the remaining 140 cases, the government has yet to rule in or out whether the sightings might be of extraterrestrial origin, the officials said.
Likewise, the task force lacks enough evidence to conclude whether any of those incidents represented some exotic aerial system developed either by a U.S. government or commercial entity, or by a foreign power, according to the officials.
'Of data we have, we don't have any clear indications that any of these unidentified aerial phenomena are part of a foreign collection program, and we don't have any clear data that is indicative of a major technological advancement by a potential adversary,' the senior official said.
'We continue to put a lot of effort and energy into tracking those types of developments, and we watch that very carefully. Nothing in this data set clearly points us into that direction,' the official added.
The government in recent years has adopted UAP as its preferred term for what are otherwise known as 'unidentified flying objects,' or UFOs, long associated with the notion of alien spacecraft.
A second senior official said that 21 of the reports show UAPs 'that appear to have some sort of advanced propulsion or advanced technology,' and appear to lack any means of propulsion or acceleration and exhibit speeds beyond what the United States believes foreign adversaries possess.
The report was ordered by Congress as part of broader intelligence legislation signed by former President Donald Trump in December. Senator Marco Rubio was instrumental in commissioning it.
Friday's report marks a turning point for the U.S. government after the military spent decades deflecting, debunking and discrediting observations of unidentified flying objects and 'flying saucers' backing back to the 1940s.
Many of those sightings are actually believed to have been experimental, top-secret US government aircraft, with officials gladly going along with UFO stories to keep attention off their cutting-edge projects.
But the Pentagon has taken a far more sober approach to the latest spate of sightings - perhaps because so many were caught on camera by respected military personnel.
'Anytime there is a safety-of-flight or counterintelligence concern we take those things very seriously and we will continue to take those things seriously,' the first senior official said.
The second senior official added, 'Our approach has been driven by science and data.'
A number of naval aviators have come forward in recent years to discuss their observations of UAPs with documentary filmmakers and news organizations including Reuters.
'A lot of the work that the task force has done to date has been on the de-stigmatization issue, ensuring that those who observe unidentified things are comfortable reporting that and that it's clear how they should report that,' the first official said.
He was referring to the fears of servicemen and women who were reluctant to report what they'd seen over fears they'd be laughed off as crackpots.
'I think DoD (the Department of Defense) has made very significant strides in recent months in getting the message out on that,' the official continued.
It is not the first official U.S. government report on the subject. For example, the U.S. Air Force carried out a previous UFO investigation called Project Blue Book , ended in 1969, that compiled a list of 12,618 sightings, 701 of which involved objects that officially remained 'unidentified.'
In 1994, the Air Force announced that it had completed a study to locate records relating to the 1947 'Roswell incident' in New Mexico.
That saw a silvery object smash into the desert near the remote town. It was initially reported as a downed flying saucer, but officials have since insisted that the Roswell object was actually a downed weather balloon.
