Since March of 2021, the US government has received over 350 new reports of what it calls unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP), a new term for what used to be known as UFO
According to a report released on Thursday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, over half of the reports remain unexplained.
"Some of these uncharacterized UAP appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities and require further analysis," the report stated.
The Pentagon office in charge of monitoring and analyzing the sightings, according to the article, has tentatively classified 163 of the reports as "balloon or balloon-entities."
The reasons for a few additional sightings have included drones, birds, weather variations, or flying debris like plastic bags.
In essence, a number of strange flying objects that have been observed traveling across restricted military airspace over the past few decades continue to elude both the intelligence community and the Pentagon, at least in part.
According to the report, the majority of the new reports were from pilots and operators in the U.S. Navy and Air Force "who witnessed UAP during the course of their operational duties and reported the events."
Under congressional pressure to investigate so-called UFO or UAP sightings, the Defense Department has actively encouraged pilots and other personnel to report odd sightings. In 2021, the intelligence community issued its first report on the subject.
That report looked at 144 UAP cases, just one of which investigators could explain by the end of the study. Investigators discovered no evidence that the sightings were caused by alien life or a significant technological progress by a foreign opponent such as Russia or China, although they recognize that this is a possibility.
The Pentagon and the intelligence community were then ordered to research and report on the problem by Congress in its year-end defense funding bill.
The Thursday report revealed a dramatic increase in reported incidents since the 2021 report, which investigators attribute in part to "a better understanding of the possible threats that UAP may represent, either as safety of flight hazards or as potential adversary collection platforms," and in part to "a reduced stigma surrounding UAP reporting."
Although some of the 366 newly discovered reports describe instances that occurred in the 17 years preceding March 20, 2021, 250 of the documented sightings occurred after that date.
The Thursday report acknowledged the persistent potential that the sightings may represent a foreign intelligence-collection platform, but investigators do not appear to have accumulated any evidence to support that finding.
