For Defence, UFOs exist only in a distant galaxy

Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson. Picture: AAP

If the truth is out there, the Australian Defence Force certainly isn’t looking for it.

Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson probed air force chief Mel Hupfeld about an unclassified congress report into unidentified aerial phenomena – colloquially known as unidentified flying ­objects.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne watched on with glee, saying it was the first time the subject has come up during her two decades of observing Senate estimates.

Our key subs ally America, Whish-Wilson noted on Wednesday, was taking the issue “very seriously”. And so should we. (As late senator John Madigan once mused, “submarines are the spaceships of the ocean”.)

The Pentagon papers claim advanced aberrations have been detected flying erratically in the US atmosphere, which can’t be explained. It didn’t rule out extraterrestrial life. Or the Russians.

“What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exact­ly what they are,” Barack Obama told a US talk show in May. “We can’t explain how they move, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern.”

When Obama’s comments were put to Joe Biden, the 78-year-old smiled and said: “I would ask him again.”

So, does the Australian military monitor UFO activity? Nope. Hupfeld has not seen any reports regarding UAPs in Australian airspace and there’s no taskforce that “looks into this phenomenon.”

He was not aware of any reports from Aussie pilots or aircrew about alien sightings and Defence has no plans to start collecting data.

“The only experience that I have in this was over 40 years ago when some reports were made, and we launched Mirage aircraft,” the chief confessed.

“The phenomena turned out to be errors on the radar screens in our normal civil air traffic control system but no physical objects were detected.”

Which takes us back to question time in 1959 when Earl Cash, the Liberal member for Stirling, quizzed the minister for air about UFOs: “Do the Australian and overseas air forces exchange information about the frequent sightings throughout the world of unidentified flying objects, usually known as UFOs?

“Further, have Royal Australian Air Force intelligence officers investigated reports of recent sightings of mysterious objects in the skies over Papua and New Guinea?”

Menzies government minister Frederick Osborne rose to the dispatch box to respond to a question that will undoubtedly go down as one of the top five Dorothy Dixers in Hansard history.

Osborne informed the house the Air Department exchanged information with the British Royal Air Force and “particularly with the US Air Force”.

The last full-scale investi­gation Osborne could recall was west of the Blue Mountains. The object in question turned out to be the planet Venus setting.

“All well-reported sightings in Australia and its territories are investigated by the Department of Air. The objects generally turn out to be weather balloons, high flying aircraft, stars, comets and things of that sort.

“The statistics on this subject show that only a very small ­percentage — something like 3 per cent — of reported sightings of flying objects cannot be ­explained.”

Back in 2021, Hupfeld remains sceptical. The leaked photos and videos of flying saucers from the US Navy were “interesting but not compelling”. Could they be faked? There were “too many variables” to form a view.

The out-of-this-world estimates exchange ended with Liberal senator Eric Abetz, who suggested that if the taxpayer had been charged for UFO spotting, “I dare say we should cut their ­budget by 50 per cent.”