By Amanda Macias -
CNBC
The main intelligence agency of the United States reported this Thursday that it has registered 366 new sightings of UFOs (unidentified flying objects) since March 2021. The new figure adds to the 144 documented reports in the last 17 years.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence wrote in an unclassified 11-page report that multiple agencies found the flying objects "demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities."
A classified version of the report was submitted to Congress.
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Most of
the new sighting reports come from US Navy and Air Force aviators and operators
who encountered the aerial objects while on duty.
In 2020, the Pentagon formed a new task force to investigate UFO sightings, detected on several occasions by US military aircraft.
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The creation of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) is the continuation of an effort that began in recent years to investigate unexplained aerial incidents observed by the US military.
Before, it was the Navy that led the investigation of these sightings.
Drones, balloons or something else?
Of the 360 reports of UFO sightings reported to the Pentagon since March 2021, about half of them appear to be balloons or drones, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
An initial assessment found that 26 cases involved unmanned or drone-like aircraft, 163 were balloons or "balloon-like entities" and six could be attributed to birds, plastic bag-like debris or weather phenomena, according to the unclassified report. .
An unidentified flying object is recorded above the clouds in 2015 in a Department of Defense video.Department of Defense via AP file
In April 2020, the Pentagon declassified three videos taken by US Navy pilots that appear to show unidentified flying objects.
In two of them, members of the armed forces comment on the speed with which they move, while in another there is speculation that it could be a drone.
"Dude, this is a b---drone, bro," one pilot is heard saying, while another comments that "there's a whole fleet."
“They all go against the wind.
The wind is 120 knots to the west. Look at that thing, man!” says the first person.
"It's spinning!"
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At the time, then-President Donald Trump described the footage from the Navy as "a hellish video" and told the Reuters news agency that he wondered "if it was real."
Two months later, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to make the Pentagon, as well as intelligence community leaders,
release information to the public about these sightings
.
