The truth about the existence of UFOs / The report that the Pentagon has sent to the American Congress is clarified

2024-03-09 10:26:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

The truth about the existence of UFOs / The report that the Pentagon has sent to

A surge in UFO sightings in the 1950s and 1960s was caused by tests of advanced US spy planes and space technology, a Pentagon report has concluded, the BBC reports .

Officials also said there was "no evidence" that the US government had encountered alien life. Most of the UFO sightings were ordinary objects from Earth, according to the report submitted to Congress on Friday.

But Pentagon officials acknowledged that their research will not dispel popular beliefs about foreign visitors.

"The proliferation of television programs, books, films, and the vast amount of Internet and social media content focused on UFO-related topics has most likely influenced the public conversation on the subject and reinforced these beliefs within some parts of the population" says the report.

The report is part of a broad public effort by the US government to examine UFOs - or as officials call them, "unidentified anomalous phenomena". The effort has included public meetings with NASA officials and congressional hearings.

One "particularly persistent narrative," the researchers said, is that the government has recovered alien spacecraft and debris and conspired to keep its alien research activities secret.

A Pentagon spokesman said officials had approached the report with an open mind, but had simply found no evidence of extraterrestrial visitors.

"All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most of the sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification," Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters.

According to a 2021 Gallup poll, just over 40% of Americans think alien spacecraft have visited Earth, a number that rose from 33% in just two years.

According to a Central Intelligence Agency estimate, more than half of the UFO reports investigated at the time were determined to be US reconnaissance flights.

A number of secret research projects involved the development of aircraft that appeared circular or saucer-shaped - matching the image of alien spacecraft in the popular imagination - such as the Canadian VZ-9AV Avrocar bomber, which was designed to take off and sitting vertically.

Over the decades, the US government ran a number of research programs, yet large parts of extraterrestrial research were kept secret./CNA