Pentagon Shoots Down UFO Rumors But Says 650 Cases Are Still Pending

The Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was created last year to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs), said on Wednesday that they have not found any evidence of aliens in its analysis. The office within the Secretary of Defense is, however, tracking more than 650 potential cases of so-called "unidentified aerial phenomena" -- up from the 350 reports referenced in an unclassified intelligence report released earlier this year. Half of them are considered "especially interesting and anomalous." The Register reports: At hearings (one open and one closed) held by the Senate Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities this week, Sean Kirkpatrick said most sightings of UFOs are not as strange as they first appear. They are often balloons, unmanned aerial systems, or aircraft, and look odd due to natural phenomena. "I want to underscore that only a very small percentage of [unidentified anomalous phenomena] (UAP) reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as anomalous," he said during this opening testimony at the hearing. AARO has failed to resolve some incidents, but it's not because something is inexplicable but due to a lack of data. "In our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics," Kirkpatrick confirmed. In other words: It's not aliens. Kirkpatrick said that if the Office does find sufficient scientific data supporting the idea of an object of extraterrestrial origin, it would share its findings with NASA and alert US government personnel. Amateur UFO spotters are fine, he said, but need to apply scientific method to their claims. Further reading: Pentagon Official Floats a Theory For Unexplained Sightings: Alien Motherships

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