The U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist approved the establishment of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF). The Department of the Navy, under the cognizance of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, will lead the UAPTF. The U.S. Department of Defense established the UAPTF to improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs. The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.
As U.S. Department of Defense has stated previously, the safety of U.S. personnel and the security of U.S. operations are of paramount concern. The Department of Defense and the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into U.S. training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report. This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAP when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing.
U.S. Department of Defense officials did not immediately respond to questions about the timing of this announcement, what sparked it, or whether the UAP designation pertains directly to alien spacecraft. Members of Congress and Pentagon officials have long expressed concern regarding the appearance unidentified aircraft in the vicinity of military installations. A consensus remains elusive, however, with some believing the sightings are intelligence-gathering drones operated by earthly adversaries rather than anything extraterrestrial.
According to MilitaryTimes, amid uncertainty the Senate Intelligence Committee voted in June to have Pentagon and intelligence personnel provide analysis of the encounters, a move spurred on by the official Pentagon release of three short videos showing encounters between U.S. aircraft and unidentified flying objects. After circulating online for years, the now-declassified videos capture the bewildered reactions of Navy pilots as they were witnessing the inexplicable flight behaviors of up close and personal UFOs.
After the June 2020 Senate hearing, Senator Marco Rubio requested the release of video footage of unexplained aerial vehicles collected by the United States Navy, including the Pentagon UFO videos. On June 24, 2020, the Intelligence Committee voted to require United States Intelligence Community and the United States Department of Defense to publicly track and analyze data collected on unexplained aerial vehicles. A reports from the task force will be issued to the Intelligence Committee 180 days after the passage of the intelligence authorization act.
Now the Senate panel, chaired by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), is directing the executive branch to centralize all relevant information about such intrusions collected from a wide range of sources, including the Office of Naval Intelligence, the FBI, satellites or other technical means, and human spies.It also wants a recounting of how agencies share such information and who is responsible for the task; whether the aircraft in question could indicate a major technological breakthrough by a foreign adversary.
