Pentagon's UFO Report: Currently no proof of alien activity on Earth

Washington: Senior military authorities claimed on Friday that despite the Pentagon's renewed efforts to look into UFO reports, there is still no proof that aliens had visited Earth or crashed-landed here.

However, they claim that the Pentagon's efforts to look into anomalous, unidentified objects, whether they were in space, the air, or even underwater, generated hundreds of fresh reports that are currently being looked into.

However, they have not yet observed anything that suggests intelligent alien life.

"I have not seen anything in those holdings to date that would suggest that there has been an alien visitation, an alien crash or anything like that," said Ronald Moultrie, undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security.

Sean Kirkpatrick, the newly appointed director of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), said he was approaching the investigation scientifically and did not completely rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

"I would just say that we are structuring our analysis to be very thorough and rigorous. We will go through it all," Kirkpatrick said, speaking at the first news conference since AARO was established in July, Reuters reported.

"And as a physicist, I have to adhere to the scientific method, and I will follow that data and science wherever it goes."

The goal of AARO is to assist in identifying potential threats to the safety of U.S. military operations and national security. The organization's mission is to focus on unexplained activity around military installations, restricted airspace, and "other areas of interest."

More than 140 instances of what the U.S. military officially refers to as "unidentified aerial phenomena," or UAPs, were documented in a government report from last year.

All but one of the listed sightings, which was believed to be a big balloon that was deflating, remain unexplained and need more investigation, according to the report.

The investigation discovered that there is insufficient information regarding the remaining 143 cases to determine whether they use some innovative aerial technology created by the United States government, a private company, or a foreign power like China or Russia.

The Pentagon previously published a video of some enigmatic, unidentified flying objects (UAPs), which demonstrate speed and manoeuvrability beyond that of known aircraft technology while being devoid of any discernible flight-control surfaces or propulsion mechanisms, which was included in the 2021 report.

Since then, several hundred more cases have been reported, according to Kirkpatrick. The precise number will be made public soon, but a senior Navy official claimed in May that there had already been 400 documented cases overall.

Congress passed its yearly defence policy bill this week with an emphasis on the latest Pentagon initiative. The legislation, which President Joe Biden has not yet signed, directs the Pentagon to compile a report examining the U.S. government's historical record regarding UFOs, or unexplained flying objects, dating back to 1945.

"That is going to be quite a research project," Kirkpatrick said, recognizing that Congress aimed to ensure that AARO conducts study on all records, including those that are so highly classified that few individuals are aware of them.

Project Blue Book, a previous Air Force study that was shut down in 1969, collected a list of 12,618 sightings, 701 of which were objects that were officially classified as "unidentified."

The Air Force claimed in 1994 to have finished its investigation into the "Roswell incident" of 1947 in New Mexico. It claimed that elements found close to Roswell were compatible with a crashed balloon, which has long been the military's interpretation, and that there was no evidence of the discovery of alien bodies or extraterrestrial materials.