UFOs ‘real, could pose national security threat’, congress hears

US pilots have almost collided with UFOs at least 11 times, top Pentagon officials tell a rare congressional public hearing that raises the possibility of alien life.

USDeputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray explains a video of an unidentified aerial phenomena, as he testifies before a House Intelligence Committee subcommittee hearing. Picture: Getty Images/AFP.

Hundreds of unidentified flying objects observed by military personnel over decades could pose a national security threat to the US and warrant further investigation, congress has heard, in a rare public hearing that raises the possibility of alien life.

For the first time in more than half a century, congress on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) heard from top Pentagon officials about their investigations into sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena, the official term for what are more widely known as UFOs, including 144 documented sightings ­between 2004 and 2021.

“We know that our service members have encountered ­unidentified aerial phenomena,” ­Ronald Moultrie, Undersecretary of Defence for Intelligence and ­Security, told the House of Representative’s intelligence committee. “We are committed to an effort to determine their origins.”

Two senior defence officials, who throughout stressed the ­potential national security threat of UAP, showed committee members a video of small triangular ­objects in the sky, and another of an unidentified objecting zooming past an F-18 fighter jet, as examples of the sorts of strange phenomena they couldn’t explain.

Committee chairman Andre Carson said the “stigma” associated with reporting UAP had hobbled reporting and analysis efforts.

A video of unidentified aerial phenomena is played to the House Intelligence Committee subcommittee hearing. Picture: Getty Images/AFP.

“Pilots avoided reporting or were laughed at when they did. Defence Department officials relegated the issue to the back room, or swept it under the rug entirely, fearful of a sceptical national ­security community,” he said.

“Today, we know better. UAPs are unexplained, it’s true. But they are real.

“They need to be investigated. And any threats they pose need to be mitigated.”

US pilots have almost collided with the UFOs at least 11 times, the officials said.

“It was a frustrating hearing as well as a reminder both of how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go,” said Christopher Mellon, a former senior intelligence official at the Pentagon in the Clinton and then Bush administrations, in a statement on social media afterwards.

“This phenomenon is real and perplexing, and it is past time that congress and the administration gives it the attention it deserves.”

The hearing, which included a session not open to the public, ­reflected efforts by some in the US defence and intelligence community to share more information with the public about UAP sightings, and follows release of a short report in June last year by the US intelligence services.

Navy pilots are opening up about UFOs.

“UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, manoeuvre ­abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion,” the report said, leaving open the possibility the objects could be “breakthrough aerospace technology” developed by Russia or China.

In November last year the ­Defence Department established the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronisation Group to “synchronise efforts” to “detect, identify and attribute objects of ­interest”. The US Navy established a standardised reporting for UAP in 2019.

UAP have been interfering with nuclear weapon systems for decades, not only in the US, but in Russia, China, France and the UK, which have long conducted their own investigations. A study conducted between 1997 and 2000 by the British government, known as the Condign report and obtained by Freedom of Information laws in 2006, said the existence of UAP was “indisputable”.

“Several aircraft have been destroyed and at least four pilots have been killed chasing UFOs,” the report said, referring to information the authors had obtained from Soviet, Russian and Chinese research programs.

The French government, which has been investigating UAP for decades, declassified its own research last year, concluding “their reality is indisputable even if hoaxes exist”, positing a possible relationship between the development and testing of nuclear weapons and sightings of UAP..