Pentagon’s ‘UFO’ tracking efforts focus of Senate hearing

In a rare open hearing, lawmakers on Wednesday questioned the head of the Pentagon's office charged with tracking UFOs — or what the Defense Department calls unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP).

The director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Sean M. Kirkpatrick, was testifying before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on the AARO's mission and budget, with some senators expressing concerns over whether the Pentagon's effort is getting adequately funded.

This is only the second recent hearing on the subject — following the first one in more than 50 years happening last May.

Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray explains a video of an unidentified aerial phenomena, as he testifies before a House Intelligence Committee subcommittee hearing at the U.S. Capitol on May 17, 2022 in Washington, DC.Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images, FILE

The ongoing review by the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon of hundreds of UAP incidents reported by military personnel was one of the techniques that helped identify that China was carrying out a foreign surveillance program using balloons, a U.S. official said in February.

That review of UAP incidents in recent years, required by congressional legislation, helped inform the identification process of the threat posed by China's balloon program and how it was being done according to the official.

MORE: New UFO report shows hundreds more incidents than previously thought

The U.S. intelligence community said in January that the number of UFO reports involving U.S. military personnel is increasing, "enabling a greater awareness of the airspace and increased opportunity to resolve" what is actually being reported.

Roughly half of the new incidents reported in the report had terrestrial explanations, the report said.

The increase in reporting is being partially attributed to the continuing effort to destigmatize the reporting of such incidents and to focus on the potential safety risks they could pose to U.S. personnel.

This video grab image obtained April 28, 2020, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense shows part of an unclassified video taken by Navy pilots that have circulated for years showing interactions with “unidentified aerial phenomena”.U.S. Dept. of Defense via AFP via Getty Images, FILE

The report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that since its first June 2021 unclassified report on what are now called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), it is now aware of 510 such reports.

That is significantly more than the 144 incidents reviewed in the initial report, only one of which could be explained.

MORE: How search for UFOs helped lead US government to Chinese spy balloons

The report said the Pentagon's new office looking at UAP reports has looked at 366 new reported incidents and initially determined that about half of them have "unremarkable characteristics."

Twenty-six are being attributed to drones, 163 are characterized as balloons or balloon-like entities, and six are attributed to clutter.

Sourse: abcnews.go.com