Ufo Definition & Meaning

UFOs have been subject to investigations over the years that varied widely in scope and scientific rigor. Governments or independent academics in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Peru, France, Belgium, Sweden, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Spain, and the Soviet Union are known to have investigated UFO reports at various times. No official government investigation has ever publicly concluded that UFOs are indisputably real, physical objects, extraterrestrial in origin, or of concern to national defense. "Anomalous aerial vehicle" or "unidentified aerial system" are also sometimes used in a military aviation context to describe unidentified targets.

Russian submarines are as good or better at prowling U.S. coastlines now as they were during the Cold War, and it is conceivable that a submarine surfaced to deploy powered drones or balloons with radar reflectors. Perhaps the Viktor Leonov was on the scene to help collect data generated when the provocative objects were spotted by befuddled U.S. pilots and radar operators. Russia and China, both geopolitical foes with rapidly advancing militaries and a keen interest in blunting the U.S. A theory within defense circles is that at least one foreign navy has been flying aircraft near American vessels to spy on their reactions. The repeated sightings around military ships makes U.S. defense officials wonder if another country with malicious motives could be responsible. The most famous UAP encounters in modern aviation history—cases from 2004, 2014, and 2015 that involve pilot sightings, radar tracking, and objects caught on video—remain unsolved.

A total of 37 scientists wrote chapters or parts of chapters for the report, which covered investigations of the 59 UFO sightings in detail. Like the Robertson Panel, the committee concluded that there was no evidence of anything other than commonplace phenomena in the reports and that UFOs did not warrant further investigation. This, together with a decline in sighting activity, led to the dismantling of Project Blue Book in 1969. H.P. Robertson, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and included other physicists, an astronomer, and a rocket engineer. The Robertson Panel met for three days in 1953 and interviewed military officers and the head of Project Blue Book. Parts of the panel’s report were kept classified until 1979, and this long period of secrecy helped fuel suspicions of a government cover-up.

Perhaps a combination of physical objects and electronic warfare is responsible for some of the UAP incidents, but no one seems to be able to put all the puzzle pieces together in a way that makes sense. Spoofing sounds a lot like what happened in the Gimbal encounters, and the DNI report addresses the possibility. “These observations could be the result of sensor errors, spoofing, or observer misperception and require additional rigorous analysis.” But if spoofing was involved, it would be very advanced tech for 2015. These pilots, and others who remain unidentified, saw objects at various altitudes, including sea level, and tracked them accelerating to hypersonic speeds—greater than five times the speed of sound.

The Robertson Panel came to the conclusions that the vast majority of UFO sightings could be explained by natural phenomena, that the UFOs sighted posed no security risk to the U.S., and that there was no evidence in Project Blue Book’s records that proved the existence of extraterrestrials. The first widely publicized UFO sighting took place in 1947, when businessman Kenneth Arnold claimed he spotted a group of high-speed, crescent-shaped, flying objects while piloting his own plane near Mount Rainier in Washington. Some interpret the sighting of UFOs as evidence that extraterrestrial life exists and has visited Earth. Project Grudge, which in 1952 was itself replaced by the longest-lived of the official inquiries into UFOs, Project Blue Book, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The intense secrecy surrounding the secret Nevada base, known as Area 51, has made it the frequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component of UFO folklore. In July 2019, more than 2 million people responded to a joke proposal to storm Area 51 which appeared in an anonymous Facebook post.

Two music festivals in rural Nevada, "AlienStock" and "Storm Area 51 Basecamp", were subsequently organized to capitalize on the popularity of the original Facebook event. A spaceship was allegedly stored in the hangars of the SIAI Marchetti in Vergiate near Milan. Project Sign's final report, published in early 1949, stated that while some UFOs appeared to represent actual aircraft, there was not enough data to determine their origin. In Canada, the Department of National Defence has dealt with reports, sightings and investigations of UFOs across Canada. In addition to conducting investigations into crop circles in Duhamel, Alberta, it still considers "unsolved" the Falcon Lake incident in Manitoba and the Shag Harbour UFO incident in Nova Scotia. An individual 1979 study by CUFOS researcher Allan Hendry found, as did other investigations, that less than one percent of cases he investigated were hoaxes and most sightings were actually honest misidentifications of prosaic phenomena.

The Air Force subsequently adopted that mechanism in November 2020, but it remains limited to USG reporting.” Indicating that the government never wanted to acknowledge UFOs. Loeb added that he would be delighted to lead a scientific project aimed at clearing up the nature of UAP. "I do not enjoy science fiction stories because the storylines often violate the laws of physics. But we should be open-minded to the possibility that science will one day reveal a reality that was previously considered as fiction."

Skeptics including various scientists, and organizations such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, state that the entire topic can be explained as conventional objects or phenomena, while self-styled "Ufologists" disagree and instead argue in favor of various extravagant hypotheses. The topic of UFOs has been, and is currently, popular in worldwide culture in fictional movies, television and other media. UFO reports are also the subject of continuing fascination in sensationalist media.

It said materials recovered near Roswell were consistent with a crashed balloon, the military's long-standing explanation, and that no records indicated that there had been the recovery of alien bodies or extraterrestrial materials. After the report's release, the Pentagon announced plans to "formalize" its UAP investigation mission currently handled by the task force. "Many unidentified objects from eyewitness testimonies may have mundane explanations, but we need better evidence to be sure," he said.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio was instrumental in commissioning the report, ordered by Congress six months ago as part of broader intelligence legislation. The senior official said the findings did not provide any "clear indications" that the UAP are part of a foreign intelligence-collection program or a major technological advancement by a potential adversary. At this time, the possibility that any UAP are extraterrestrial is highly speculative, Loeb said. "Months before the UAP report was made public, my feeling was that it was an important development by itself, no matter what it might contain," Knapp said. "I am glad to see that the focus is ufo sightings on data collection, and I really like that there was no speculation about their nature," Kopparapu said.