As part of the $2.3 billion omnibus spending bill passed last December, there was a section in the bill that stipulated that the Department of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence provide an unclassified report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), which are known more colloquially as UFOs to people outside of the military. This report is supposed to be delivered sometime in June, 2021 and has been a lot of hype leading up to this report’s release, culminating on early reporting with a 60 Minutes episode on March 16th, 2021 (Watch the CBS 60 Minutes piece on it). The basic gist of the segment was that there is a lot going on in our skies (UAP/UFOs) and the military has no clue what it is. Which of course makes us think of Aliens right off the bat. Because, it’s always aliens!
What’s going to be in this UAP report? The spending bill specifies that the report must include “detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence” collected by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the FBI, and the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. It also says that “a detailed description of an interagency process” that directs how this data will be collected, analyzed and disseminated along with future research and funding for UAPs. On the surface, that sounds pretty crazy. We are going to legitimize UFO research by the military?
My best guess is that the report will be a re-hash of the 60 Minutes report that was on CBS with probably a little more detail and it might include information from other branches of the armed forces since it’s mostly been the Navy providing footage so far. There might be some Marines, Air Force and possibly some Army footage thrown on the pile to try and make it sound more legitimate.
In the 60 Minutes interview, former Navy pilot Ryan Graves said he is worried about the UAPs off the eastern seaboard of the United States that he and his pilots saw “every day for at least a couple of years”. Then he went on to say, “You know, if these were tactical jets from another country that were hanging out up there, it would be a massive issue. But because it looks slightly different, we’re not willing to actually look at the problem in the face. We’re happy to just ignore the fact that these are out there, watching us every day”. That sounds very ominous if you actually thought we had a threat.
The new law, that was passed last December, says that this report must declare whether these UAPs pose a security risk to the United States and try and figure out if they are from our foreign adversaries. The report must also say whether “a potential adversary may have achieved breakthrough aerospace capabilities that could put United States strategic or conventional forces at risk.” Basically, they are worried about if China or Russia or someone else on Earth has made a leapfrog in technology over the United States, with nothing specifying that it’s aliens. But everyone wants to go there because what everyone sees on the screen is far fetched by current human technology.
The timing on the report was listed as 180 days after the bill passed into law which would put it at the end of June, 2021. But the Washington Post said:
“Two factors might delay the report’s release: Agencies have missed similar congressional reporting deadlines in the past; and the provision is not technically binding, as the language was included in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the bill, not the bill itself.
“In other words, it isn’t statute, but the agencies/departments generally treat report language as bill language,” said one senior Senate aide familiar with the legislation.”
So, it’s quite possible we won’t see a report soon. Speculation is that it will probably be delivered sometime in 2021 but who knows.
Probably the biggest thing that will frustrate UFO followers is the addition of a classified section to the report. This is obviously where all the good stuff will be jammed into the report. The unclassified version will just be pabulum for the masses. Enough for the press to go bonkers but not enough to explain anything. But this is by design. The Pentagon needs more money apparently.
So, why is this all going on now? This all came about because of someone “leaked” some Navy footage in 2017 that showed grainy videos of some objects that the Navy couldn’t identify. These took place in 2004 so it took 13 years to leak it. The mainstream press got ahold of this footage and started reporting on it as UFOs which of course made the UFO devotees go nuts stating that finally we have real evidence of aliens visiting us. They’ve been here all along and they are silently watching us. Forget about all the plausible explanations, the public fed on a diet of science fiction about aliens jumps to the most outlandish scenario first because it’s great entertainment.
As with most things in this world we live in today, you just need to follow the money. The Pentagon is having a little identity crisis right now. The war in Afghanistan has ended and on top of that the new F-35 fighter jet is a train wreck. The budget for the Pentagon is going flat for the next cycle or two. Because of these issues. What better to way than to drum up support for a growing defense budget than an alien invasion! Forgot the fact that China and Russia have been building their militaries at an alarming clip, but now we need aliens and UFOs to really get the public interested in the military again? This is my fear, that the report will outline a nebulous threat that we can’t really see or have no evidence of these aircraft actually existing. In the era of disinformation, why not exploit aliens? They can’t talk back. They are a good example of a bad guy to spook the population into funding the war machine of the Pentagon. A nebulous unseen alien race that is going to invade our country. Sounds like Mexico… Seriously? Just like from the movie Independence Day from 1996. It’s like someone watched the old movie and decided this is how we fund the Pentagon in the next year or two.
As I wrote about in a Medium article, if aliens were visiting us across interstellar space, surely they would have the technology to cloak or camouflage themselves so that we would never see them. Showing up on a fighter plane’s radar is a clumsy and ineffective way of introducing themselves. The fact that this has been going on for decades, and yet we still have no physical proof that they are here should be proof enough to say they aren’t visiting us.
While we don’t have evidence of extraterrestrial life in our galaxy, the Drake Equation surely suggests that extraterrestrials must be out there somewhere. The odds are in favor of there being other life in the universe that is not earth based. We just haven’t found evidence of it yet.
This is why I think this is a wild goose chase by the Pentagon to drum up support and get the attention of the President in the next funding cycle. Unfortunately, the report won’t offer any new information on extraterrestrials, just enough to make you think you’ve been inserted into an X-Files episode.
The report will be a big nothing burger.
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