Number of UFO incidents reported by US military rises to 650 - official
"As of this week, the team is examining 650 cases. Of that number, the team has prioritized about half of them that appear to be especially interesting and anomalous," Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
- Americas
- Anadolu Agency
- Published Date: 09:48 | 20 April 2023
The number of UFO incidents reported by US military personnel has risen to 650, an official said Wednesday.
"As of this week, the team is examining 650 cases. Of that number, the team has prioritized about half of them that appear to be especially interesting and anomalous," Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
The latest figure represents an increase from a number in an unclassified annual report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in January, which said that 510 cases were cataloged through Aug. 30, 2022.
The Defense Department is working to better understand and respond to unidentified flying objects, he said.
During the hearing, Kirkpatrick showed videos of two recently declassified cases of unidentified objects spotted by US military drones and said that one of them could be resolved, but the agency still could not resolve the other.
The first video showed a small sphere passing through the screen of an MQ-9 drone camera in the Middle East in 2022. The second video showed an object flying past two MQ-9s in South Asia earlier this year.
A large number of cases remain technically unresolved, but this is primarily due to a lack of data associated with these cases, he added.