The Pentagon is creating a new office to investigate unidentified flying objects amid concerns that after broad probes it cannot explain mysterious sightings near highly sensitive military areas.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, working with the US director of national intelligence, ordered the new investigatory body to be established in the US Defense Department’s intelligence and security office, the Pentagon said late Tuesday.
The order came five months after a classified US intelligence report on possible alien UFOs came up inconclusive: it could explain some reported incidents but was unable to account for other phenomena, some filmed by pilots near military testing areas.
The new office will focus on incidents in, or near, designated “special use airspace” (SUA) areas strictly controlled and blocked from general aviation due to security sensitivities.
The US military is worried some of the unidentified aerial phenomena spotted by military pilots in the past may represent technologies of strategic rivals unknown to US scientists.
“Incursions by any airborne object into our SUA pose safety of flight and operations security concerns, and may pose national security challenges,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
The Defense Department “takes reports of incursions — by any airborne object, identified or unidentified — very seriously, and investigates each one,” it added.
The new office was dubbed the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization…
