. This (Trends Wide) – The Defense Department announced its plans to streamline the collection and analysis of UFO reports across the government on Tuesday.
This is after the government’s recognition earlier this year that these reports are worth studying and that they may pose a threat to national security.
The department will create a unified group to handle UFO reports, formally known as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), in the military branches and other government agencies.
In June, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released its long-awaited report, which examined 144 cases of UAP sightings, only one of which investigators were able to explain. However, they said they found no evidence that the sightings were alien life or major technological advances from Russia or China.
UFOs and Washington
The UAP issue has fueled years of infighting in Washington, including bureaucratic battles within the Pentagon and pressure from Congress, over how seriously the reports should be treated.
But the report’s release was an indication that the US government was finally taking seriously what was for so long considered a fringe issue. The Navy led the UAP Task Force, but no other service made a similar effort to catalog and analyze UFO sightings. Most of the 144 sightings covered in the ODNI report were recorded by Navy pilots.
After the report was released, Hicks instructed the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security to develop a plan to deal more seriously and thoroughly with the UAP sightings.
The new unified group, called the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG), will standardize the process for reporting UAP incidents.
It shall also “identify and reduce gaps in intelligence and operational detection capabilities; collect and analyze operations, intelligence, and counterintelligence data; recommend policy, regulatory, or statutory changes as appropriate; identify approaches to prevent or mitigate any risks posed by airborne memorabilia, and other activities the Director deems necessary, “wrote Under Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks in a memo.
The newly created AOIMSG, headed by a director, will now take over the work of the Navy’s UAP Task Force. This is as the Department of Defense works to better understand what is behind the UFO sightings and how much of a threat they could pose. The work of the AOIMSG will be supervised by an executive council.
