负责审查军事人员报告的不明飞行物事件的五角大楼办公室负责人周三告诉国会，他的办公室现在正在审查650起事件，但没有证据表明其中任何一起事件来自外星。
在罕见的关于无法解释的异常现象(五角大楼称之为UAPs)的公开国会听证会上，发布了两个新视频，以强调最近成立的全域异常解决办公室(AARO)是如何可以解释一些事件但其他人不会。
“我今天想强调的是，只有很小一部分UAP报告显示了可以合理地被描述为‘异常’的签名，”全域异常解决办公室主任肖恩·柯克帕特里克(Sean Kirkpatrick)告诉参议院武装部队新兴威胁和能力小组委员会。
“向AARO报告的大多数不明物体显示了气球、无人驾驶航空系统、杂乱回波、自然现象或其他易于解释的来源的平凡特征，”他补充说。
第一个彩色视频，发布在五角大楼的网站上，据说是2022年7月12日发生在中东的事件。
其他的录像展示了五角大楼称2023年1月15日发生在南亚的事件的两个视图。
柯克帕特里克告诉专家小组，他的办公室正在审查军事人员报告的650多起UAP事件，比美国情报界在1月份发布的上一份UAP报告中报告的510起有所增加。
情况就是这样在前一份报告中，柯克帕特里克说，未解决事件的数量是由于缺乏可用的数据，可以帮助调查人员进行审查。
柯克帕特里克说:“没有足够的数据，我们无法得出符合我们为解决问题而设定的高科学标准的可辩护的结论，我不会结束一个我们无法为其结论辩护的案件。”。
根据Kirkpatrick的说法，大多数UAP报告的坠落遵循类似的趋势线，大多数发生在15，000到25，000英尺的高度，这是军用飞机的控制空域。
52%的报告涉及被描述为“圆形或球形”的物体，其余的属于其他形状类别。大多数圆形物体的大小从1米到4米不等，被描述为“白色、银色或半透明金属”，表观速度从静止到两倍音速不等。
柯克帕特里克说，通常没有探测到热排气，并补充说，“我们得到间歇的雷达回波，我们得到间歇的无线电回波，我们得到间歇的热信号。”
但是他强调说，他的团队仍然没有在这些事件中找到任何非地球的解释。
柯克帕特里克说:“我还应该明确声明，在我们的研究中，AARO到目前为止还没有发现外星活动、外星技术或违背已知物理定律的物体的可信证据。”。
他补充说:“如果获得了足够的科学数据，证明UAP遇到的问题只能用外星起源来解释，我们将致力于与美国宇航局的跨部门合作伙伴合作，以适当的方式向美国政府领导层通报其发现。”
Kirkpatrick敦促UFO爱好者向可信的同行评审科学期刊提交他们对UAP事件的研究和分析，因为AARO也在努力这么做。这就是科学的工作方式，而不是通过博客或社交媒体，”他补充道。
Kirkpatrick向委员会播放了美国军事侦察MQ-9无人机在中东和南亚上空收集的两段视频，这些视频捕捉到了UAP飞过他们的摄像头屏幕。
他说，他展示这两个视频的目的是展示一个无法解释的事件，并将它与另一个可以用数据解释的事件进行对比。
第一个无人机视频是在无人机监控下面的一些建筑物时拍摄到的一个原因不明的事件，当时一个似乎是圆形的银色物体突然飞过屏幕。
柯克帕特里克说:“仅仅根据那段视频，完全确定这一点几乎是不可能的。”。
“现在，我们能做的和我们正在做的是保持这52%的一部分，看看有什么相似之处，所有这些的趋势是什么?我们在特定的分布中看到这些吗?它们的行为是否相同?”他说。“随着我们获得更多的数据，我们将能够回过头来看看这些数据和背景。”
第二个无人机视频显示了一个被描述为一个斑点的东西在视频的视野中移动，在它后面创建了一个似乎是推进尾流的东西。
柯克帕特里克说，尾流实际上是无人机传感器捕捉到的一个“假象”，他解释说，在调查人员“逐帧”查看视频后，他们能够确定这不是真实的。
“如果你眯着眼睛看，它看起来像一架飞机，因为它实际上是一架飞机，”他说。
他说，一个红外探测器确定“这是一架通勤飞机引擎发出的热信号，这架飞机恰好在那两架MQ-9所在的附近飞行。"
Pentagon's 'UFO' tracking efforts still find no alien origins
The head of the Pentagon office reviewing UFO incidents reported by military personnel told Congress Wednesday that his office is now reviewing 650 incidents, but that there is no evidence that any of them is of extraterrestrial origin.
Two new videos were released at the rare open congressional hearing on Unexplained Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs as the Pentagon calls them, to highlight how the recently established All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)can explain some incidentsbut not others.
"I want to underscore today that only a very small percentage of UAP reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as 'anomalous,'" Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, told the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.
"The majority of unidentified objects reported to AARO demonstrate mundane characteristics of balloons, unmanned aerial systems, clutter, natural phenomena, or other readily explainable sources," he added.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images, FILE
The first video, in color,posted on the Pentagon's website,was of an incident it said took place in the Middle East on July 12, 2022.
The othervideoshowed two views of an incident the Pentagon said occurred over South Asia on Jan. 15, 2023.
Kirkpatrick told the panel that his office is now reviewing more than 650 UAP incidents reported by military personnel an increase from the 510 the U.S. intelligence community reported in its last UAP report released in January.
As was the casein that earlier report,Kirkpatrick said the number of unresolved incidents is due to a lack of available data that could help investigators in their reviews.
"Without sufficient data, we are unable to reach defendable conclusions that meet the high scientific standards we set for resolution, and I will not close a case that we cannot defend the conclusions of," said Kirkpatrick.
Most of the UAP reports fall follow similar trendlines, according to Kirkpatrick, with most occurring between 15,000 to 25,000 feet in altitude which is the controlled airspace for military aircraft.
Fifty-two percent of the reports involve objects that are described as "round or spheres" with the remainder fall into other shape categories. Most of the round objects range in size from one-to-four meters and are described as being "white, silver, or translucent metallic" with apparent velocities ranging from stationary to twice the speed of sound.
Kirkpatrick said no thermal exhausts are usually detected adding that "we get intermittent radar returns, we get intermittent radio returns and we get intermittent thermal signatures."
But he emphasized that his team has still not found any non-Earthly explanations in the incidents.
"I should also state clearly for the record that in our research AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics," said Kirkpatrick.
"In the event sufficient scientific data were ever obtained that a UAP encountered can only be explained by extraterrestrial origin, we are committed to working with our interagency partners at NASA to appropriately inform the U.S. Government's leadership of its findings," he added.
Kirkpatrick urged UFO enthusiasts to submit their research ana analysis of UAP incidents to credible peer reviewed scientific journals because AARO is working to do the same. That is how science works, not by blog or social media," he added.
Kirkpatrick played the committee two videos gathered by American military surveillance MQ-9 drones flying over the Middle East and South Asia that captured UAP's flying across their camera screens.
He said his purpose in showing the two videos was to demonstrate one incident that cannot be explained and contrast it with another one that could be explained by data.
The first drone video was of an unexplained incident captured while the drone monitored some buildings below when what appeared to be a round silvery object suddenly flew across the screen.
"It is going to be virtually impossible to fully identify that just based off of that video," said Kirkpatrick.
"Now what we can do and what we are doing is keeping that as part of that group of 52% to see what are the similarities, what are the trends across all these do we see these in a particular distribution do they all behave the same or not?" he said. " As we get more data, we will be able to go back and look at these and for context."
The second drone video showed what was described as a blob moving across the video's field of view creating what appeared to be a propulsion wake behind it.
Kirkpatrick said the wake was actually an "artifact" captured by the drone's sensors and he explained that after investigators reviewed the video "frame by frame" they were able to determine that it was not real.
"If you squint, it looks like an aircraft because it actually turns out to be an aircraft," he said.
An infrared detector, he said, determined that "this is the heat signature off of the engines of a commuter aircraft that happened to be flying in the vicinity of where those two MQ-9's were."
