Any hope among conspiracy-minded Americans that military and intelligence officials are going to share everything they know about UFOs in the near future was dashed Tuesday during the first congressional hearing on the topic in 50 years.Enthusiasts wishiing to see sensational new video of blurry orbs performing physics-defying aerial maneuvers during the highly anticipated hearing before a House intelligence subcommittee were also disappointed.What they got instead was a logical explanation for some green triangles captured through night-vision goggles at two separate locations and a millisecond’s worth of video of a balloon-shaped object rushing past a F-18 cockpit at an alarming speed.The officials — the deputy director of naval intelligence, Scott Bray, and the under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, Ronald Moultrie — admitted that the latter video had them stumped.While many reports of what the Pentagon prefers to call “unidentified aerial phenomena” can be attributed to airborne clutter such as mylar balloons, natural atmospheric occurrences, or commercial quadcopters, the department groups a handful into an “other” bin that allows for “the possibility of surprise and potential scientific discovery.”The newly declassified video shown during Tuesday’s hearing belongs in that “other” bin, Mr. Bray said.“There are a number of events in which we do not have an explanation,” he said. “There are a small handful in which there are flight characteristics, there is signature management, that we can’t explain with the data that we have.”“Signature management” is military-speak for an object’s attempt to avoid detection through camouflage or the like.Tuesday’s hearing comes five months after Congress passed a law requiring the Pentagon to set up an office to study UAPs and report back to various oversight committees. In response, the Pentagon established the Airborne Object and Identification and Management Synchronization Group to work across all branches of the military, including the newly established U.S. Space Force.That group, however, reportedly has only three employees and is in the middle of a tug-of-war between various defense and intelligence officials over what and how much to share, according to a Politico report Monday. Mr. Moultrie said during the hearing that the group has a director as of this week. Mr. Bray said the number of reports of UAPs during military training has been increasing steadily since the early 2000s, but attributed that increase to the department’s efforts to destigmatize reporting of such incidents. Previously, military aviators or other service men and women who reported such anomalies might have been written off as cranks or nuts.That is no longer the case, Mr. Bray said.“The message is now clear,” he said. “If you see something, you need to report it. And the message has been received.”In response to several questions from Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat of Illinois, Mr. Bray said the task force is not in possession of any wreckage that could be considered of extraterrestrial origin nor has it documented any sort of signals emanating from the unidentified objects. In none of the cases were the objects shot at, he said, and there were 11 “near misses” between U.S. military aircraft and the objects.The exchange ended as many others during the session did, with the Pentagon officials saying that they preferred to answer many questions in a subsequent closed session of the subcommittee, out of public earshot.Both officials stated repeatedly that withholding certain information from the public is meant to protect the “sources and methods” they use to gather the information and not out of a desire to keep Americans in the dark.“We do not want potential adversaries to know exactly what we are able to see or understand or how we come to the conclusions we make,” Mr. Bray said.“Our goal is not to potentially cover up something if we were to find something,” Mr. Moultrie said. “It’s to understand what may be out there, examine what it may mean for us from a defense perspective and whether there are any national security implications.“The department is fully committed to the principle of openness and accountability to the American people,” he added. “However, we are also mindful of our obligation to protect sensitive sources and methods. Our goal is to strike that delicate balance.”
