UFOs Potential Threat To National Security, Say Key Lawmakers At House Hearing

Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) must be investigated and taken seriously as a potential threat to national security, key lawmakers said at a House hearing on Tuesday.

This marked the first congressional public hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena in decades, reported CNN.

For several intelligence and military personnel and lawmakers working on unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP), the bigger concern is not that aliens are visiting Earth. They are more concerned that a foreign adversary like China or Russia might be fielding some kind of next-generation technology in American airspace that the US doesn't know about.

Democratic Representative André Carson of Indiana, the chairman of the panel holding the hearing, said that the unidentified aerial phenomena are "a potential national security threat, and they need to be treated that way." He added that for long, the "stigma associated with UAPs has gotten in the way of good intelligence analysis." He noted that pilots avoided reporting, or were laughed at when they did, and that officials "relegated the issue to the back room, or swept it under the rug entirely, fearful of a skeptical national security community." He said that today, they know better, and admitted that UAPs are "unexplained, it's true. But they are real."

At the hearing, testimony from top government officials was presented and there was a display of video and images of UAPs.

Ronald Moultrie, undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security, said that there is a need to balance transparency with the protection of sensitive intelligence information, and that there is an "obligation to protect sensitive sources and methods." He added that their goal is to "strike that delicate balance, one that enables us to maintain the public's trust while preserving those capabilities that are vital to the support of our service personnel."

Moultrie said that through "rigorous" analysis, most UAPs can be identified, reported BBC. But a small number of incidents, still have no explanation. In one incident, shown publicly for the first time on Tuesday at the hearing, an object, which can't be explained, can be seen on camera flying past a US Navy fighter jet.

Scott Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence, showed video and images to demonstrate what observations of UAPs may look like. One clip featured photos of flashing triangle shapes that was seen through night-vision goggles. He said that in the video, US navy personnel recorded "what appears to be triangles -- some flashing -- recorded several years ago" off the coast of America.

A Navy intelligence official told lawmakers at the hearing that a database of reports of UFOs now includes around 400 incidents, up from 143 assessed in a report released about a year ago, NPR reported.