NEWS YOU CAN USE: The truth about UFOs.
But various government agencies continued poking around, beginning (so far as we know) in 2007 with the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. This was followed by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, which was in turn succeeded last year by the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Possibly this was connected with the objects hovering and flying (and in one case rotating while flying) that could be seen on three cockpit videos taken in 2004 and 2015 and leaked in 2007 and 2017, videos that featured comments from naval fighter pilots that left no doubt that they thought they were looking at something very strange, flap fodder of the highest quality. And these occurrences were by no means unique. A preliminary report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in 2021 was inconclusive, but contained enough to fuel Ufologists’ dreams: 143 events still a mystery, talk of ‘unusual flight characteristics’ and more.
Then came the crushing follow-up: an ODNI report released in January. The number of unexplained sightings was up, no surprise, given the overall increase in the number of UAP reports. And where answers have been found, they have been avian rather than alien, and there have been plenty of balloons too. The chance that those incidents that remain unidentified will be of alien provenance must be remote. For now, those hoping that what’s been going on is extraterrestrial in nature will have to pin their hopes on Nasa, which has formed a study team to look into UAPs.
And beyond the true believers, those rooting for ET ought to include quite a few who reckon that alien callers would be rather less of a worry than the prospect of Beijing’s balloon fleet probing America’s defences.
The truth is out there.
UPDATE: UFO shot down by $400K US missile may have been a $12 hobby balloon: report.
The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade told Aviation Week on Thursday that it fears one of its diligently-tracked gasbags that recently went missing was mistaken as the mystery object taken out by the military over Canada on Saturday.
The Pico Balloon — a silver-coated, cylindrically shaped object — reported its last position at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska on Friday.
By Saturday, based on the balloon’s projected path, it would have been over the central part of the Yukon Territory around the same time a military Lockheed Martin F-22 shot down an unidentified object of a similar description and altitude in the same Canadian vicinity, the outlet reported.
Biden went from waiting a week to shoot down a CCP spy balloon to shooting down anything that flies. As Rich Lowry writes, “This is typical Washington — the under-reaction is always followed by the over-reaction.”
(Updated and bumped.)