What We Learned From The UFO Report | Unveiled

What We Learned From the UFO Report

Are we alone in the universe? Do aliens exist? And if they do exist, have they already visited Earth? These are billion-dollar questions in the twenty-first century, and the watching world is demanding answers. Now, after months of anticipation, the US government has opened up its files… edging us just a little closer to the promised land of full disclosure.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re exploring the extraordinary content of the US Government’s long-awaited UFO report.

Fifty years from now, June 25th 2021 may well be remembered as a pivotal day in the search for alien life. On this day, US intelligence forces released a much-publicised report into UFO activity. It came after months of build-up, during which the US government even took the somewhat unusual step of establishing an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force… seemingly in response to mounting UFO sightings. For alien hunters and UFO enthusiasts, this was already a breakthrough moment, as rarely before had the authorities even acknowledged the existence of UFOs quite so officially.

When it finally dropped, the report was issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It represented a mass of information garnered from all across the US government, military and security. And, while the report didn’t go so far as to confirm alien life, what it did reveal was plenty interesting enough. It related to 144 UFO cases, from between the years 2004 and 2021. Notably, though, the acronym “UFO” doesn’t appear once throughout, with the official term “UAP” being favoured, instead - Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

The document begins by saying that “most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects”, explaining that they’ve been picked up via “multiple sensors [including] radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation”. These 144 UFO cases didn’t all come about under specific conditions, then, but have instead been collected via a number of techniques. And from a number of sources. Each case, it would seem, is a unique one.

The report continues by revealing that some of the UAP “appeared to exhibit unusual flight characteristics”, before splitting all UAP cases covered into five broad groups; airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, US government or US industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and other. Airborne clutter includes a wide range of usually identifiable objects, from birds to plastic bags. Natural atmospheric phenomena refers to anything that may have particularly registered on infrared or radar systems, with the report noting ice crystals and thermal fluctuations. Government or industry developmental programs is a somewhat uncertain ground, because it refers to anything that may have been seen that shouldn’t have been seen because it’s supposed to be classified information, known only to the US authorities. Foreign adversary systems includes advanced, unrecognisable technologies in use by other nations, with the report specifically mentioning China and Russia. Finally, the other category is… everything else. There’s not one mention of aliens or extra-terrestrials in the report, but here is where they would reside.

Importantly, however, these are only referred to as potential explanatory categories because, as the report goes on to reveal, it’s rare that any featured UAP instance can be conclusively explained. In fact, it concedes that all except one of the 144 cases covered remain unexplained. That’s 143 UAP instances, then, between the years 2004 and 2021, that the government’s much anticipated UFO report is unable to provide an answer for.

In many ways, this news will represent an incredible disappointment for anyone who had hoped for proof of alien life. There’s no doubt that this report doesn’t give us that. But, still, it does give us more context than ever before about how the US government is approaching UFOs in the modern world. For example, it outlines again that there now exists a “standardized reporting mechanism” regarding UFOs for the Navy and the Air Force - something that didn’t exist until March 2019. And that there has been a notable spike in UFO sightings and recordings since then, with most of the 144 cases covered coming via that reporting mechanism. America, it would seem, is increasingly keen to get a grip on UFOS, whatever they may be.

As such, the chief focus for this report isn’t alien activity but is instead national security. The penultimate page of the document (minus appendices) is split partway down by a bold, capitalized subheading that best sums it up. It reads, “UAP Threaten Flight Safety and, Possibly, National Security”. There follows a summary of how UAP could, ultimately, serve as evidence of America’s rivals and enemies gaining an upper hand. In some cases, the report won’t rule out that UFO sightings could actually be foreign technologies controlled by “potential adversaries” targeting America. So, now, those grainy recordings of unusual shapes in the sky - the clips that so many have now seen on the internet and across the mainstream media - are pitched in a new light. They may still be alien in nature, but the US is really just as concerned that they could originate from Earth. That they could be the covert work of another nation, bidding to spy on what’s happening in America.

As a result, the report concludes with a rallying call for the future of UAP study. It’s noted partway through the document how UAP reports in the past may have been hindered by “sociocultural stigmas”. Sightings, whether they were made by military personnel or everyday citizens, may have been ignored or underappreciated thanks to a general feeling that they shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Now, the United States, and in particular its Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, wants to take them extremely seriously. It wants to increase the data that’s available to it, which means expanding the processes in place for reporting and analysing UAP. It wants UAP to be an interagency concern in the future, so that all parts of the government and the military are trained and accustomed to spotting when something’s amiss. And it wants greater funding to achieve its goals, as well.

This could be arguably the biggest and most high-profile push to officially examine UFOs since the 1950s and 1960s, when the UFO story first truly took hold. But, today, America and the rest of the world has so much more technology at its disposal. There are now so many more ways to collect, sort and filter UFO sightings, and the hope is that we’ll be able to understand them better than ever before.

And so, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the initial response to this particular report has been somewhat divided. There’s some disappointment, or perhaps even disbelief, because there’s comfortably more than one hundred UFO cases covered here and still no official revelations of aliens on Earth. Or even anything close to it. Many news agencies, however, have chosen to focus most on the fact that 143 out of 144 sightings do remain unexplained. The one that was explained was found to be a “large, deflating balloon”, according to the report… but what about the rest of them? They could fall into any one of the five proposed categories, and still have some really interesting implications. If, for example, most are natural atmospheric phenomena, then it would show that there’s a lot about the nature of Earth that we (or America) don’t yet fully understand. If they’re US developmental programs, then we’ve been given a rare glimpse into the extent of US classified work. If they’re foreign adversary systems, then perhaps there’s cause for concern. And, again, this is the line of thinking that the report most draws attention to.

For now, the international interest in UFOs is rapidly increasing, and the entire planet will watch this space for further developments. In a recent video, we showed how UFOs aren’t only an American phenomenon, and there are compelling cases all over the world map. We also know from recent studies that scientists are increasingly confident that there must be other life out there that’s not of this world. If it isn’t within the solar system, then perhaps it’s within the Milky Way, or almost certainly within the universe as a whole. But, still from an Earthly perspective, the United States remains something of an epicentre for UFOs, UAP, and strange things appearing in the sky. It’s just that now, rather than existing purely as science fiction fodder, UFOs have breached the top tables of American politics and diplomacy. Talk of aliens is now the talk of Washington… and this relatively short, seven-page document, issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, on June 25th 2021, is certainly proof of that. And that’s what we learned from the UFO report.