WATCH THE SKIES
US SPY chiefs were grilled by lawmakers in a historic hearing on UFOs as dramatic videos of two sightings were shown.
Security officials were forced to admit there have been 400 unexplained sightings reported by the US military .
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And that is more than double the 144 mentioned in the first Pentagon report released in 2021.
They also confessed there have been 11 near misses with unidentified objects and US military aircraft, and they are probing incidents where craft may have attempted "jam" US planes.
However, many questions remain unanswered as the hearing concluded after two hours of testimony - going behind closed doors for a classified session.
Videos of two incidents were shown to Congressmen as part of the landmark committee in Washington DC - the first of its kind 50 years.
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In a tense hearing, intelligence chiefs played the clips in an attempt to highlight the difficulty in reporting and identifying the phenomena - saying sightings are "frequent and continuing".
Ronald S Moultrie, under secretary of defence for intelligence and security, and Scott W. Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence, answered questions from lawmakers on the highly controversial topic.
Bray presented the panel with two videos of UFO - once of which has since believed to have been unidentified as a type of drone.
The footage of the UFOs - now more commonly referred to in Washington as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) - was taken from a US Navy warship and a fighter plane.
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One showed flashing triangle-shaped objects in the night sky later determined to be visual artefacts of light passing through night-vision goggles.
The other showed a shiny, spherical object zipping past the cockpit window of a military aircraft.
"I do not have an explanation for what this specific object is," Bray said of the second object.
The clip's file name is seen as Video 1 2021 Flyby.mov - confirming it appears to be a recent and previously unreleased piece of footage.
UAPs are unexplained, it's true. But they are real. They need to be investigated and many threats they pose need to be mitigated
Rep. Andre Carson
US spy chiefs put the apparent increase in reporting down to the breaking down stigma - and noted many of these cases are newly reported but historic.
UFOs have taken centre stage in Washington DC in a turnaround which has seen a traditionally fringe topic treated as a national security concern.
It came as the Pentagon made the historic admission last year there are objects in US airspace and near US military assets which remain unknown.
The intelligence chiefs attempted to drive home how difficult it was to identify these objects, and explained efforts to improve reporting of UFOs.
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And while they did not confirm there are anything obviously alien about the craft, they did say they will chase down all possible origins.
Bray acknowledged that there have been some sightings that U.S. officials "can't explain".
"There are a small handful of cases in which we have more data that our analysis simply hasn't been able to fully pull together a picture of what happened," he said.
He said these incidents have involved unexpected "flight characteristics" or "signature management."
Mr Bray added the US hasn't attempted communication with or fired weapons at the objects - and he also said the task force currently doesn't have any "unexplained wreckage".
Mr Moultrie said: "We know that our service members have encountered unidentified aerial phenomena, and because UAP pose potential flight safety and general security risks, we are committed to a focused effort to determine their origins."
"We have very fleeting data on these objects," Mr Moultrie told the House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation Subcommittee.
And the 400 unexplained sightings are up from the 144 in last year's Pentagon report on the topic which was released in June.
"We know that our service members have encountered unidentified aerial phenomena, and because UAP pose potential flight safety and general security risks, we are committed to a focused effort to determine their origins," said Mr Moultire.
It is chaired by US Congressman Andre Carson and US Congressman Adam Schiff and is receiving
Rep. Carson said it was important for the Pentagon to take the issue of UAPs seriously.
"UAPs are unexplained, it's true. But they are real. They need to be investigated and many threats they pose need to be mitigated," he said.
The new programme to look into UFOs— the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG) — was created within Moultrie's office
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It comes as UFOs have returned to centre stage in Washington DC after a string of leaked videos from the US Navy.
The clips show fighter planes tracking UFOs which appeared to move in ways impossible for all known human technology.
US military servicemen and former defence officials have all also come out and gone on record regarding their own experiences.
The debate is still open as to what the phenomena caught on film were – but it made clear to everyone, something is in the skies.
Perhaps the most striking was a video known as the “Tic Tac” – which showed an unidentified object being pursued by fighter planes.
The US also confirmed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) – a Pentagon programme set up to study UFOs before being disbanded in 2017.
It was headed up by whistleblower Lue Elizondo, who has since become a leading voice in the discussion around UFOs.
However, it was replaced by the UAP Task Force in June 2020 after a vote by the US Senate Intelligence Committee.
Defence chiefs have since confirmed a number of leaked UFO videos and photos which were submitted to the Task Force for investigation.
Why this sudden rush for transparency?
No one outside the secretive wings of the US government currently knows for sure.
And as a tacked on addendum to a 5,500 page Covid relief bill passed in December, the the Director of National Intelligence’s office was ordered to compile a report on UFOs within 180 days.
The UAP report dropped as expected on June 25, and while not giving much away - it did not rule anything out either as much of it remains classified.
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The US appear to have acknowledged that UFOs - whatever they are - are real and are a potential threat to national security as they appear to be able to enter restricted airspace with total impunity.
Is it aliens? Officially the US position is simply, "we don't know yet" as further disclosure is expected in the coming months and years.