This week, the Director of National Intelligence shared a classified version of the Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs, f.k.a. UFOs) with Congress, complete with the inclusions of hundreds of new sightings not previously disclosed to the public.
In the unclassified version of the report, available here, it’s revealed that 247 new reports “and another 119 that were either since discovered or reported after the preliminary assessment’s time period” are in the document. Combined with the 144 reported UAP (now also referred to as unidentified anomalous phenomena) sightings from the prior 17-year period focused on in the preliminary assessment, that brings the total to 510 as of Aug. 30 of last year.
“UAP events continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting possible concerns for safety of flight or adversary collection activity,” the report states. It also proposes that “collection bias” may play a role in what’s been observed as an increase in reported UAP sightings as of late.
In a statement shared on Thursday, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder thanked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) for taking the lead in what’s billed as a “collaborative effort” in the recently destigmatized UAP space.
For an in-depth look at the new report and its biggest takeaways, this piece from the Debrief does an excellent job.
Amid coverage of the report, a number of voices in the larger UAP research and disclosure advocacy space—To the Stars and blink-182 co-founder Tom DeLonge among them—were quick to point to defense legislation inked by President Biden last month, specifically its inclusion of requirements regarding UAP issues that some have argued could prove integral to boosting continued transparency on the topic.
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