This morning, I spent some time reading the U.S. Government’s exhaustive, nine-page report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. This report was delivered to the U.S. Congress on the 25^th of June by the ODNI – that being the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. That said, I can hardly believe I have managed to use the ‘U.S. Government’, ‘exhaustive’, and ‘nine-page report’ together in a sentence. I think it is remarkable that this report, or at least the publicly facing report to Congress, can be contained in such an abbreviated document. I should think a volume of at least a couple of hundred pages would be required for a topic that discusses at minimum, the military and safety concerns of erratic objects of uncertain origin navigating our airways at blinding speeds, but if nine pages is all that is required, so be it. I will leave a link to the document here, so that you can read it for yourself, should you be so motivated.

For many of us, myself included, who have seen UFOs, this report seems to say it is finally ok to come out and discuss what we saw without fear of ridicule, or in some cases, jeopardizing our employment. Reading further in the report, it states plainly, that “UAP threaten flight safety and, possibly, national security”. Think of the implications of that sentence alone.

Further reading of this ‘acronym saturated’ report says that UAPs are likely not explained by any single factor. The report suggests that most will fall into these 5 categories:

• Airborne Clutter: birds, balloons, maybe unmanned drones, possibly even high-flying plastic bags
• Natural Atmospheric Phenomena: ice crystals, moisture, and other naturally occurring stuff that will cause a misleading radar return.
• US Government, or Industry Developmental programs:  All kinds of things the government along with the private sector might be messing with that they can’t or won’t tell us about.
• Foreign Adversary Systems: Stuff the Russians or the Chinese are doing that we don’t know about, but we are pissed as hell we don’t, so don’t even go there.
• Other: Here is the big one. The words of the report explain this away as “We would group such objects in this category pending scientific advances that allowed us to better understand them”.

So, there we are. The report includes 144 cases of UAP encounters reported between 2004 and 2021. Of these only one has been attributed to a deflating weather balloon. It appears the rest are largely unaccounted for.

You are probably asking if I am going to wade into the deep dark mirth of whether or not we are being visited by beings from some other world, and I won’t do that, or at least not right now. I am not a scientist, or a mathematician. Not even close. But I do think that the government report is focusing on a very narrow dataset. Would we attempt to make assumptions about hurricanes, droughts or sunspots based upon only data gathered during a period of a few years?

As the report goes on to say: As the dataset increases, the UAPTF’s ability to employ data analytics to detect trends will also improve.

Perhaps the government is preparing another report which will further clarify the meaning of this phenomena. Or maybe not. Maybe we will wait for 80 more years.

Your thoughts are encouraged, but never required.

Happy 4^th to all of my US readers.