Footage of UFO shown by Pentagon officials

UFO sightings are “frequent and continuing,” Pentagon officials said

Pentagon officials speaking at the first public hearing on UFOs since the 1960s have shown previously classified footage of an unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP), a split-second video of a metallic sphere zooming across the flight path of a military jet at hypersonic speeds. 

The object, captured through the cockpit window of an FA-18 fighter jet in 2021, was also seen by the Navy pilot flying the jet and picked up by the plane’s sensors. But what exactly it could be remains a mystery. 

Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray presented the video to representatives during a public hearing held by a House Intelligence subcommittee that saw lawmakers grill him and one other intelligence and defense expert on multiple reports by military pilots of mysterious unidentified aerial phenomena. The focus of the hearing was a June 2021 Pentagon report that revealed U.S. Navy pilots had reported 144 sightings of UAPs since 2004, most of which the department concluded «probably do represent physical objects.» 

Responding to questions from representatives on the nature of the object, Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray said “I do not have an explanation for what this specific object is.” He remarked that, since the release of last year’s report, the number of reported UAP sightings has grown to more than 400 and that the incidents — many of which occurred in military training areas and designated airspaces and remain unidentified — were “frequent and continuing.”

Of the 144 UAP sightings included in the June 2021 report, 18 displayed extremely unusual flight behaviors, with the mysterious objects appearing to “remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion,” according to the report. Released video clips also showed some of these ostensibly propulsionless craft moving at hypersonic speeds, Live Science previously reported, and one piece of footage (captured by the U.S. Navy) appears to show a spherical UFO hovering in midair while bouncing from side to side, before plunging into the ocean.

“This hearing and our oversight work has a simple idea at its core: Unidentified aerial phenomena are a potential national security threat, and they need to be treated that way,” meeting Chair and Indiana Rep. André Carson said in his opening remarks.

Also giving testimony at the hearing was Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie, an advisor to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and the organizer of the new Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG) that was set up to track UAPs. Moultrie said that the Pentagon could not rule out the possibility that the sightings could be connected to extraterrestrial life.

“There are elements of our government engaged in looking for extraterrestrial life,” Moultrie said, referring to NASA. “Our goal is not to potentially cover up something, it’s to understand what’s maybe out there.”

Bray, however, dismissed the notion that UAPs were extraterrestrial in origin. “We have detected no ‘emanations’ within the UAP task force that would suggest it’s anything non-terrestrial in origin,” he said, referring to ‘emanations’ as any form of debris or signals from the UAPs. Bray also highlighted that no material or unexplainable wreckage had been found, and that Navy pilots had never made any attempt to communicate with the objects.

Bray and Moultrie told representatives that most of the sightings were unexplained and could possibly even be dangerous, with Bray highlighting that UAPs had been involved in 11 near-collisions with U.S. military aircraft. Some encounters have even been said to have occurred over sensitive nuclear facilities, such as an alleged incident at Malmstrom Air Base in Montana that saw 10 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) rendered inoperable while a glowing red orb was seen overhead.

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