Remember how UFOs used to be laughed at? The subject of conspiracy theories, the topic was part fringe, part sci-fi, with a little bit of innuendo about bodily probing thrown in for good measure.
What a difference three years make. In that time, the narrative has flipped 180 degrees, and the subject has come out of the fringe and into the mainstream.
So what changed? As former PM Harold Macmillan is once reported to have said, ‘Events, dear boy, events.
Why you’ll soon be hearing a lot more serious talk about UFOs
Just over three years ago, it was revealed that the conspiracy theorists were right and that the US government really was investigating UFOs, despite the denials and debunking.
While spun as a project to probe next-generation aerospace threats, the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Investigation Program (AATIP) really did look at UFOs – or UAP as they’re known inside government: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.
US Navy pilots have seen them, and military radar operators have tracked these mystery crafts performing speeds, maneuvers, and accelerations that seem to go beyond anything in our own inventory. When news began to leak of this, the US Congress demanded answers.
Like the media and the public, they’d been told the government wasn’t researching UAPs, so they were outraged to find out they’d been lied to and that $22million (£16million) had, in fact,,, been spent on all this.
Classified briefings followed, and the super-secret Defense Intelligence Agency wrote to US lawmakers, explaining that AATIP had produced scientific papers covering topics such as anti-gravity, invisibility, wormholes, stargates (apparently there is such a thing), and warp drive.
It sounds like science fiction, but it’s there for everyone to see in the Congressional record.
The Senate Intelligence Committee took a particular interest in this. Some of their members received classified briefings and were so concerned that they demanded a formal report. You can read the UFO report here.
Their request was written into the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, and asked Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, for an assessment of UFOs, in exactly the same way that they would ask her for an assessment of the North Korean ballistic missile program.
Her report has been written. Various Congressional committees and sub-committees have already been pre-briefed on the findings. So what’s about to be revealed?
According to leaks from senior US government administration officials who’ve seen the report’s conclusions, the study has found that there’s no definitive evidence that any of the unusual activity is extraterrestrial.
But, sensationally, neither has the extraterrestrial hypothesis been ruled out. The report apparently goes on to discuss whether any of this could be attributable to secret prototype aircraft, missiles, or drones – either from the US itself or from a foreign adversary such as Russia or China.
The US option has apparently been eliminated (apparently, this isn’t one part of the military blind-testing new toys against another), while Putin and Xi remain in the frame.
So, where do we go from here? Well, for a start, UFOs will never be ridiculed again. We now have military pilots, radar operators, and intelligence community personnel going on the record about this, framing this as a defense and national security issue.
Former CIA directors, directors of national intelligence, and even presidents are saying this is real – whatever the true nature of the phenomenon.
There’s something flying in our airspace, and we don’t know what it is. Whether we’re skeptics or believers, it’s time to find out.
Over the next few days, there’s going to be a lot of mainstream media coverage of UFOs, with people discussing the unclassified report to Congress and speculating about what’s hidden in the classified annex.
One thing’s for sure: the subject of UFOs will never be the same again.