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Quote:UFOs exist that appear to display technology the United States does not possess and lacks the ability to defend against,
according to a former intelligence chief.
John Ratcliffe, who served as former President Donald Trump’s final director of national intelligence and oversaw the nation’s 18 spy
agencies, made the observation while offering insight into a declassified report on “unidentified aerial phenomena,” which was released
by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday.
The long-anticipated but very brief document discussed 144 reports of UFOs originating from U.S. government sources between 2004
and 2021. Eighty were observed with multiple different sensors, and most reports described the UFOs as objects that interrupted
preplanned military training or other military operations.
The ODNI report said “a handful” of the UFOs “appear to demonstrate advanced technology” and “in 18 incidents, described in 21
reports, observers reported unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics.” Parts of the assessment also remain classified.
In giving his first public reaction to the unclassified ODNI report since its release, Ratcliffe told Fox News host Dan Bongino for a
Saturday episode of Unfiltered that UFOs are a matter of national security and stressed that the real number of UFOs that have
been observed remains unknown to the public.
“That report started while I was the DNI. I was hoping to get it out, or some version of it out, before I left. Getting that information
out to a declassified public level was difficult, but I’m actually glad that there’s a report out there,” Ratcliffe said.
“Look, the bottom line is, unidentified aerial phenomena — many, many cases we’re able to explain it away for reasons like visual
disturbances, or weather phenomenon, or foreign adversaries and their technologies, or even our own experimental technologies
with certain aircraft and vehicles, but what this report really underscores … is that there are a number of instances — and the specific
number remains classified — but a number of instances where we’ve ruled all of that out.”
Ratcliffe added: “And there are technologies that we don’t have and frankly that we are not capable of defending against — based
on those things that we’ve seen, multiple sensors, in other words, where not just people visually see it but where it’s picked up on
radar, where it’s seen on satellites.
And so, you know, it’s an issue of national security, and as the person who was informing policymakers about national security threats,
it’s not good to say, ‘Gosh, we don’t have good answers.’ And so, we have to have a larger discussion to try and figure out specifically
what this is all about.”
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The ODNI report, which was labeled as an unclassified "preliminary assessment," came after the Defense Department announced in
August it had approved the creation of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. The Senate Intelligence Committee wrote up
a 180-day directive for such a disclosure that was included in the $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief and government funding bill that
Trump signed into law in December.
“Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed,
without discernable means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency energy
associated with UAP sightings.
The UAPTF holds a small amount of data that appear to show UAP demonstrating acceleration or a degree of signature management,"
the intelligence community said on Friday.
“We were able to identify one reported UAP with high confidence,” but “the others remain unexplained," the assessment also said.
The ODNI declined to draw firm conclusions on the UFOs themselves.
"There are probably multiple types of UAP requiring different explanations based on the range of appearances and behaviors described
in the available reporting," the intelligence community assessment contended. "Our analysis of the data supports the construct that if
and when individual UAP incidents are resolved they will fall into one of five potential explanatory categories: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, U.S. government or U.S. industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall 'other'
bin."
The intelligence community warned that “some UAP may be technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or a
non-governmental entity.” And when discussing its “other” category, the ODNI stated: “We would group such objects in
this category pending scientific advances that allowed us to better understand them.
The UAPTF intends to focus additional analysis on the small number of cases where a UAP appeared to display unusual flight
characteristics or signature management.”
UFOs “would also represent a national security challenge if they are foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence
a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology," the ODNI said.
"UAPTF concentrated its review on reports that occurred between 2004 and 2021 … Most of the UAP reported probably do represent
physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon
seekers, and visual observation," the report added.
Former Obama CIA Director John Brennan said on a podcast in December that "some of the phenomena we’re going to be seeing continues
to be unexplained and might, in fact, be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don’t yet understand and that
could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life."
The possibility of the UFOs being of extraterrestrial origin was not mentioned in the ODNI report.
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Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee when it requested the ODNI report on UFOs,
said on Friday that “the Defense Department and Intelligence Community have a lot of work to do before we can actually understand
whether these aerial threats present a serious national security concern.”
Last year, videos from the Navy were released through the Freedom of Information Act that showed UFOs appearing to move at
incredible speeds and performing impressive aerial maneuvers. Since then, the Pentagon confirmed the authenticity of numerous
other videos that it said it was investigating, though it had not said what conclusions it had reached about them.