{"it":{"id":"GOV-ODNI","sub":"Public report","name":"ODNI Preliminary Assessment on UAP","place":"Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Washington, D.C. area, USA","lat":38.95,"lon":-77.15,"date":"Released 25 June 2021","rep":"An unclassified report on 144 government-source reports.","off":"The rest could not be explained with the data available.","src":[{"t":"ODNI: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (PDF; site blocks automated checks)","u":"https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf"},{"t":"Wikipedia: Unidentified flying object","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object"},{"t":"House Oversight Committee 2023: statement of Cdr David Fravor (PDF)","u":"https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/David-Fravor-Statement-for-House-Oversight-Committee.pdf"}],"tags":["Intelligence","Report","Military","USA"],"kind":"gov","sum":"Of 144 UAP reports from US government sources between 2004 and 2021, the intelligence community could explain one: a large deflating balloon. That was the headline of its preliminary assessment, published on 25 June 2021, the first such review Congress had asked for in public.\n\nThe reports came mostly from military crews, and 80 of them had been picked up on more than one sensor. Pilots logged 11 near misses. In 18 incidents, described in 21 reports, observers saw objects that seemed to hold still in winds aloft, move against the wind, turn abruptly or travel fast with no visible means of propulsion. Aircrew told the analysts they faced ridicule for reporting.\n\nThe 2022 annual report, prepared with AARO, counted 510 reports as of 30 August 2022: the first 144, plus 247 new ones and 119 older ones reported late. Of those 366, an initial review found 26 looked like drones, 163 like balloons and 6 like clutter, leaving 171 'uncharacterized and unattributed'. Some of the 171 'appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics'. The report credits the rise in reporting partly to 'reduced stigma'.\n\nThe official reading is that thin data, not a mystery, explains the 143 of 2021, and that most cases resolve to ordinary objects, above all balloons. The report warns that an initial label 'does not mean positively resolved'. Pilots who were there, among them David Fravor, who chased one off California in 2004, say what they saw matched no aircraft they knew.\n\nWhether better sensors close the remaining cases, or deepen them, is still being decided.","qs":["The 2021 report blamed thin data for the unexplained cases. Did the 2022 count, with 163 balloons, prove it right?","Some of the 171 uncharacterized reports showed unusual flight. Why has no public report said what they were?","Pilots logged 11 near misses. Should UAP be treated as a flight-safety problem first, whatever they turn out to be?"],"yt":"The report blamed thin data for the unexplained cases. Is that a fair verdict, or a way of not answering?","rel":["GOV-AARO"],"hook":"Of 144 UAP reports from US government sources, the intelligence community could explain one","why":"It was the first time the US intelligence community said in public that it could not explain most of what its own aircrews were reporting, and the 2022 count showed how quickly that changed."},"S":{},"rec":{"id":"GOV-ODNI","src":[{"id":null,"t":"Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, 25 June 2021.","u":"https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf"},{"id":null,"t":"Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2022 Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, January 2023.","u":"https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Unclassified-2022-Annual-Report-UAP.pdf"},{"id":null,"t":"ODNI and Department of Defense, Fiscal Year 2023 Consolidated Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, October 2023.","u":"https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/FY2023-Consolidated-Annual-Report-UAP-Oct2023.pdf"},{"id":null,"t":"Department of Defense / AARO, Fiscal Year 2024 Consolidated Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, November 2024.","u":"https://media.defense.gov/2024/Nov/14/2003583603/-1/-1/0/FY24-CONSOLIDATED-ANNUAL-REPORT-ON-UAP-508.PDF"},{"id":null,"t":"US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, 26 July 2023 (Grusch, Graves, Fravor).","u":"https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-118hhrg53022/html/CHRG-118hhrg53022.htm"},{"id":null,"t":"AARO, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Volume I, 2024.","u":"https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-CLEARED-508-COMPLIANT-HRRV1-08-FEB-2024-FINAL.PDF"},{"id":null,"t":"National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, Public Law 117-81, Section 1683, approved 27 December 2021 (govinfo).","u":"https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-117publ81/html/PLAW-117publ81.htm"},{"id":null,"t":"US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation, open hearing “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” 17 May 2022, transcript.","u":"https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG05/20220517/114761/HHRG-117-IG05-Transcript-20220517.pdf"},{"id":null,"t":"NASA, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team Report, September 2023.","u":"https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/uap-independent-study-team-final-report.pdf"}],"sum":"A large balloon, slowly losing its air, drifting across the field of view of a military sensor. That was the single object, out of 144, that the United States intelligence community could name when it first reported to Congress on unidentified objects in the sky. \"In that case, we identified the object as a large, deflating balloon,\" the report said. \"The others remain unexplained.\"\n\nThe document was the Preliminary Assessment on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on 25 June 2021. Congress had ordered it in the Senate intelligence committee's report on the 2021 Intelligence Authorization Act. It was drafted by the Navy-led UAP Task Force with the intelligence community's manager for aviation, with input from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Security Agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, the weather agency NOAA and every military service. It was the first time the American intelligence community had published an assessment of the subject the public calls UFOs, and which it now called UAP. Its opening judgement set the tone: \"the limited amount of high-quality reporting\" hampered \"our ability to draw firm conclusions.\"\n\nThe 144 reports covered 2004 to 2021, and all came from US government sources, mostly military aircrews. Many described objects that \"interrupted pre-planned training or other military activity.\" Eighty of them involved observation by more than one sensor, which is why the assessment judged that most reported objects \"probably do represent physical objects\": radar, infrared, electro-optical cameras and weapon seekers had all picked them up. It also admitted that \"some UAP may be attributable to sensor anomalies.\" Pilots had logged 11 near misses. And the authors named a human obstacle: aircrew and analysts described \"disparagement associated with observing UAP, reporting it, or attempting to discuss it with colleagues.\"\n\nThe section that drew most attention was short. In 18 incidents, described in 21 reports, observers saw objects that \"appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion.\" In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency energy linked to the sightings. The task force said it held a small amount of data that appeared to show \"acceleration or a degree of signature management,\" military language for, roughly, controlling how visible an object is to sensors. Its next words were careful: more analysis was needed \"to determine if breakthrough technologies were demonstrated.\"\n\nThe assessment proposed that \"UAP probably lack a single explanation,\" and it offered five bins into which solved cases would fall: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, secret programmes of the US government or industry, foreign adversary systems, and a catch-all called \"other.\" It warned that the objects posed a hazard to the safety of flight and might be sophisticated collection by a foreign power, but said it lacked data to show any were.\n\nHere the political layer becomes visible, because what followed was an institution changing its own incentives. Congress turned the task force into law, through section 1683 of the defense authorization act for 2022, approved on 27 December 2021, which ordered a new office within 180 days and an annual report each October through 2026. Its duties included studying \"adverse physiological effects\" and links to \"adversarial foreign governments.\" On 17 May 2022 a House intelligence subcommittee held an open hearing. Its chairman, André Carson, said: \"For too long the stigma associated with UAPs has gotten in the way of good intelligence analysis.\" Scott Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence, said the database had grown to \"approximately 400 reports.\"\n\nThe 2022 Annual Report, prepared with the Pentagon's new All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, AARO, and released in January 2023, showed what happens when a stigma lifts. As of 30 August 2022 the count stood at 510: the original 144, plus 247 new reports and 119 older ones that had come in late. Of the 366 new and late reports, an initial review found 26 that looked like drones, 163 like balloons and 6 like clutter. That left 171 \"uncharacterized and unattributed.\" The report credited the rise in reporting partly to \"reduced stigma.\"\n\nThe official reading is clear and deserves its full weight. The one-in-144 figure of 2021, on this view, reflected thin data rather than a mystery. As more reports and better sensors arrived, most cases resolved to ordinary things, above all balloons. At the 2022 hearing Bray played Navy night-vision video of triangles and said his analysts were now \"reasonably confident\" they were drones, the triangle shape created by light passing through the goggles to the camera. Asked about physical evidence, he was flat: \"we have no material,\" and nothing detected suggested \"anything nonterrestrial in origin.\" The Fiscal Year 2023 report, with 801 reports by 30 April 2023, found none linking UAP to adverse health effects. By 24 October 2024 the Pentagon office held 1,652 reports, had resolved hundreds to balloons, birds, drones, satellites and aircraft, and reported \"no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology.\" No report has needed the \"other\" bin to mean something non-human.\n\nAnd yet the language on the record has not been withdrawn. The 2022 report insisted that \"initial characterization does not mean positively resolved,\" and said some of the 171 \"appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities.\" At the same hearing that explained the triangles, Bray showed a video of a reflective sphere passing a Navy aircraft on a training range and told Representative Adam Schiff: \"I do not have an explanation for what this specific object is.\" He spoke of \"a small handful\" of data-rich cases showing \"flight characteristics or signature management that are not what we had expected.\" The Under Secretary of Defense, Ronald Moultrie, said the effort would examine \"potential breakthrough technologies.\" Pilots who were there have gone further. David Fravor, who chased one object off California in 2004, says what he saw matched no aircraft he knew.\n\nWhat has never appeared in any public document is an answer for the 18. No later unclassified report has stated what each of those objects was. The radio frequency data and the apparent acceleration were flagged for further study, and no public result has been published. If any of the objects were secret American programmes, the record does not say which. The 171 uncharacterised cases of 2022 were not individually resolved in public either. The gap, in the end, is not between belief and evidence. It is between classified analysis and what has been released.\n\nThe balloon still stands as the first answer, and in a sense it was the right one: 163 more were found in the next count, floating in front of military sensors all along. But the government also wrote, in its own words, that some objects moved against the wind, held still in it, or crossed the sky at speed \"without discernable means of propulsion.\" Those words are not the claims of enthusiasts. They are an official finding, signed and published, with the explanation left blank.\n\nWhether better sensors will close the remaining cases or deepen them is still being decided. When they finally look closely at the handful the balloon could not explain, what will they find?"},"img":null,"md":{"h":"img/m/GOV-ODNI-16x9.webp","w":1600,"hh":900,"alt":"ODNI Preliminary Assessment on UAP, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Washington, D.C. area, USA — Front cover of the Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena published by The Office of the Director of…","by":"The Office of the Director of National Intelligence","lic":"Public domain","lu":"","p":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Preliminary-Assessment-Unidentified-Aerial-Phenomena-cover.jpg","g":false,"ct":true,"cap":"","sec":[{"src":"img/t/GOV-ODNI.webp","by":"United States Navy","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gimbal_The_First_Official_UAP_Footage_from_the_USG_for_Public_Release.webm","cap":"Gimbal The First Official UAP Footage from the USG for Public Release.webm"}]},"hh":[{"v":"144","u":"reports","h":"US government UAP reports reviewed, 2004–2021","s":[352]},{"v":"1","u":"explained","h":"Only one, a deflating balloon, was explained with the data available","s":[352]}],"hs":{"352":["ODNI: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (PDF; site blocks automated checks)","https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf"]}}