WASHINGTON – Pentagon officials testifying at a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday showed a pre-classified video of unidentified aerial phenomena, a fleeting color video of a reflective spherical object racing past a military fighter jet.
The fractional-second image taken through the window of an FA-18 fighter shows a spherical object in the distance. The pilot also said he was observing an object. The image that remains unexplained is an example of how difficult it is to determine what a short video can show.
Pentagon officials also released a video showing an image taken through night-vision lenses showing glowing green triangles moving in the air. The first video puzzled military personnel. But the small triangles in the second entry, made years later, were identified as drones.
“This time, other U.S. Navy assets also observed drones nearby, and we are now confident enough that these triangles correlate drones in the air,” said Scott W. Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence.
The declassified videos were released as lawmakers promised to bring transparency to the investigation of unexplained reports by military pilots and others who have long been shrouded in stigma, confusion and secrecy.
But Pentagon officials said they should be careful not to reveal the exact capabilities of military cameras and other sensors.
“We don’t want potential opponents to know exactly what we can see or understand or how we come to the conclusion,” Mr Bray said. “Disclosures must therefore be carefully considered on a case-by-case basis.”
Last year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published a report, largely by the military, cataloging an unexplained aerial phenomenon dating back to 2004.
The intelligence community criticized the document for failing to draw conclusions or offer explanations for most of the events. Of the 143 episodes reviewed by the Pentagon, only one can be identified and categorized as a “big, leaking bubble.”
Mr Bray’s remarks were intended to try to explain why it is so difficult to identify images in blurry videos. But lawmakers insisted on Tuesday that the Pentagon had been too contemptuous of the explanations.
“You need to show us, Congress and the American public whose imagination you have captured, that you are ready to follow the facts that lead to them,” said Andre Andre Carson, an Indiana Democrat and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee’s subcommittee. which is conducting the hearing.
“Sometimes we fear that the DOD focuses more on emphasizing what it can explain than on investigating what it can’t,” he said. “I am looking for you to assure us today that all the conclusions are on the table.
In particular, many senior US officials have rejected theories that suggest that unknown objects in the videos may be alien aliens, and insist there is no evidence that such explanations are plausible.
Mr. Bray tried to dispel some speculation that the phenomena were alien in origin.
“We did not find any eliminations within the UAP working group, which would suggest that it is something extraterrestrial in origin,” said Mr Bray, referring to unidentified aerial phenomena.
Arkansas Republican spokesman Rick Crawford said he was more interested in discussions about Russian or Chinese hypersonic programs than in unidentified phenomena. But he said it was important to identify the images.
The government’s inability to identify sites in sensitive operational areas is “tantamount to a intelligence failure that we certainly want to avoid,” Mr Crawford said. “It’s not about finding an alien spaceship.”
Officials are also skeptical that the phenomena could be some unknown Chinese or Russian technology, but acknowledge that it would be a serious concern if they were. This possibility, lawmakers and officials said, is why the phenomenon is being studied more closely.
“When we see something we don’t understand or can’t identify in our airspace, it’s the job of those we entrust to our national security to investigate and report back,” said Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat who leads intelligence. commission said on Tuesday.
Unidentified aerial phenomena is the term that the federal government prefers to an unidentified flying object or UFO
The last time Congress held a public hearing on the issue was decades ago, after the Blue Book project, the Air Force’s misguided efforts to investigate alien observation reports that inspired generations of television programs.
Following the report last year, intelligence officials promised to renew their efforts. Prompted by Congress, the Pentagon reviewed its Task Force to investigate unexplained events, calling it the On-Board Identification and Synchronization Group.
In his opening remarks, Mr Carson criticized the Pentagon for not nominating a director to lead the new task force and promised to pull the “organization out of the shadows”.
Military officers, who were too embarrassed to report unexplained events, hampered “good intelligence analysis,” Mr Carson said.
“Pilots avoided reporting or laughing at them when they did. DOD officials moved the problem to the back room or threw it completely under the carpet, fearing a skeptical national security community, “he said. “We know better today. UAPs are inexplicable, true. But they are real. They need to be investigated. And all the threats they pose must be mitigated. “
Not all experts are convinced. Mick West, a science writer who focuses on debunking conspiracy theories, said some of the objects seen in military videos have plausible – and dry – explanations that are far more likely than any extraterrestrial technology.
Some strange movement may be due to the movement of the sensor, said Mr. West. Other fast-moving videos can be optical illusions, and others can be caused by glare.
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