A U.S. House panel held the first public congressional hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) in more than half a century on Tuesday, with top Pentagon officials detailing the U.S. military’s efforts to identify hundreds of objects reported by pilots and service members.
Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray testified before a House subcommittee about how the Defense Department is organizing reports of unidentified aerial phenomena — the military’s term for UFOs — after a congressionally mandated report released last year found most of the incidents analyzed remain unidentified.
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Investigators were able to identify one of the 144 reports analyzed in their study of unidentified objects “as a large, deflating balloon.” But the other 143 reports of UAP from 2004 to 2021 remain a mystery.
Bray showed lawmakers a video of one UAP observed by a Navy pilot in 2021, a “spherical object” that “quickly passes by the cockpit of the aircraft.”
“I do not have an explanation for what this specific object is,” Bray said. He told lawmakers that reports of UAPs are “frequent and continuing,” and often occur in military training areas and other designated airspace.
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