Lawmakers in the United States have heard evidence from three former military and intelligence officials about UFOs and extraterrestrial life. How did we get here and what did we learn?
Lawmakers in the United States have heard evidence from three former military and intelligence officials about UFOs and extraterrestrial life. Recently a congressional subcommittee held a hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena or UAPs, known more commonly as “unidentified flying objects” or UFOs.
Throughout the hearing, committee members repeatedly noted that UAPs represent a cross-party issue that raises national security concerns.
Representative Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, said that UAPs are “an issue of government transparency”. He said the hearing would not involve discussions of “little green men or flying saucers”, the aim was to “get to the facts” about UAPs.
In popular culture, UFO sightings are associated with conspiracy theorists and far-fetched stories of alien abductions. Ryan Graves, one of the witnesses in the hearing and a former navy pilot, said that pilots reporting UAP sightings face potential professional repercussions.
Graves highlighted the national security concerns posed by UAPs. “If UAP are foreign drones, it is an urgent national security problem. If it is something else it is an issue for science. In either case unidentified objects are a flight safety concern,” he said.
Another of the witnesses, David Fravor, a retired navy commander, claimed to have seen an advanced UAP during a flight. He said the technology he and his crew saw was “far superior” to anything the United States possesses.
Among the most xx testimony in the hearing came from David Grusch, an Air Force veteran who worked with the Pentagon team charged with investigating unexplained flying objects. He claimed to have interviewed 40 people with knowledge of the US government’s UAP programme. Grusch alleged it has access to UAP vessels that have crash landed, including possible alien craft, and that it has been running a “multi-decade” programme to reverse-engineer crashed UAPs.
The Pentagon denied his claims, saying there’s no evidence linking UAPs to alien life forms. Although it hasn’t ruled out that explanation.
The consensus among experts is that UAP sightings can usually be explained by something much more ordinary than an alien vessel. At a meeting in May, a NASA research group studying UAPs said they are normally things like research balloons, drones and light tricks caused by the weather.
This episode was written and mixed by Ella Hill.