Officials, Ronald Moultrie and Scott Bray, appeared before a US House intelligence subcommittee 11 months following the release of a report documenting more than 140 cases of “unidentified weather phenomena” (UAPs) that US military pilots have reported observing since 2004.
Bray, the deputy director of naval intelligence, admitted there were some sightings that “US officials cannot explain.”
But Bray added: “There are a few cases where we have more data that our analysis simply might not put together a complete picture of what happened.” These include “flying characteristics” and an unexpected “nature of motion,” he said.
“When it comes to the materials we have, we don’t have any, and we haven’t detected any emissions from those objects, which would indicate anything extra-terrestrial in origin,” Bray added.
The term “UFO”, which refers to an unidentified flying object, has been widely associated with the concept of extraterrestrial spacecraft.
“We know that our soldiers have encountered unspecified weather phenomena, and because they pose potential aviation safety and public security risks, we are committed to a focused effort to identify their assets,” the deputy director of Naval Intelligence said.
Bray presented the Commission with two videos of “unspecified weather phenomena.” One showed flashing triangle-shaped objects in the night sky that were later identified as optical artifacts of light passing through night vision goggles. The other showed a shiny spherical object passing through the cockpit window of a military aircraft.
Of the second thing, Bray said, “I don’t have an explanation for what this particular thing is.”
Moultrie and Bray also said that the Pentagon is determined to remove the stigma long associated with unexplained UFO sightings by encouraging pilots to notify their subordinates when they notice such phenomena.
The report also included some previously revealed Pentagon video footage of UFOs, showing speed and maneuverability that exceed known flight technology and lack any visible thrusters or flight control surfaces.
That report was a nine-page “preliminary assessment” compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and a Navy-led task force set up by the Pentagon in 2020.
Subcommittee chairman Andre Carson said it was important that the Pentagon take the issue of “unspecified weather events” seriously.
“Meteorological phenomena are not understood, that’s right,” Carson said. But it’s real,” raising concerns that in the past Pentagon officials have focused on issues that are relatively easy to explain while “avoiding the unexplained.”
Moultrie and Bray were due to testify behind closed doors following the public hearing.
The report and today’s session represent a turning point for the US government following decades of distraction, debunking, and discrediting observations of unidentified flying objects and “UFOs” dating back to the 1940s.
There hasn’t been an open congressional hearing on the subject since the US Air Force ended the indecisive “UFO” program dubbed “Project Blue Book” in 1969.