8 key takeaways from the US Government’s big UFO report

A much-anticipatedreport on UFOs has been released by the US government, and it seems we’re still unclear as to whether extra terrestrial life is out there.

After being submitted to Congress, the unclassified nine-page assessment was released publicly by the Pentagon on Friday.

It looked into 144 reported sightings of “unidentified aerial phenomenon,” or “UAPs”, since 2004, mostly recorded by US Navy personnel first-hand.

Many of the sightings reported documented objects that interrupted training or other US military exercises.

To save our readers from trawling through its pages, we at indy100 have put together eight key takeaways from the report.

Here they are:

1. There is not enough evidence to prove the existence of alien life... but there’s also not enough evidence to rule it out

When the report looked into those 144 reported sightings, investigators said they didn’t find any extra-terrestrial connections.

But, with the data available, there wasn’t also wasn’t sufficient evidence to come up with an explanation.

“Of the 144 reports we are dealing with here, we have no clear indications that there is any non-terrestrial explanation for them - but we will go wherever the data takes us,” a senior official said.

2. Authorities created five categories to explain different sightings

The report came up with five potential explanatory categories to decipher what a sighting could possibly be, the five explanations are:

1. Airborne clutter,
2. Natural atmospheric phenomena,
3. U.S. government or American industry developmental programs,
4. Foreign adversary systems
5. “Other”

3. Only one of the sightings had an explanation

One sightings was attributed to a large, deflating balloon which was categorised as “airborne clutter”.

But what about the other 143 reported sightings?

4. For most reported sightings, there wasn’t enough evidence to provide a conclusive explanation

After investigating the claims, the report concluded there was too little information to even generally characterise the rest of the sightings.

5. Of the 144 sightings , witnesses in 18 of them saw ‘unusual’ patterns of movement or flight characteristics

More analysis is needed in order to see if those sightings were a result of “breakthrough” technology, the report added.

6. There were 11 UAP near-misses reported by pilots

A small number also reported “processed radio frequency energy associated with UAP sightings.”

The report also stated that around 80 reports involved detection by multiple sensors.

7. The report found no links to Russia or China

There was no “clear indication” of any links to foreign powers such as Russia and China, but most reported sightings didn’t have enough information to go by.

8. The Pentagon now plans to ‘formalise’ its investigation into UAPs

The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force has recognised that reporting “lacked sufficient specificity, ultimately recognised that a unique, tailored reporting process was required to provide sufficient data for analysis of UAP events.”

So maybe one day we’ll know if extra-terrestrial list exists.