UFO at Night
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Last year, the issue became the bottom line of a Pentagon report which concluded that there was no "single explanation" for over 140 UFO-like occurrences recorded by military personnel since 2004, but that they posed a threat to flight safety and national security.

Nick Pope, who spent the early 1990s investigating the possible sightings of unidentified flying objects for the British Ministry of Defence, has said he is "confident" that 2022 "is going to be a seismic year for UFOs".

Such objects are also referred to as "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAP) or "anomalous aerial vehicles" (AAVs).

Referring to the US, where a Pentagon report on the matter was released in 2021, Pope told The Guardian that he senses "a genuine desire" from the country's Department of Defence (DoD) and Intelligence Community "to "grip the issue".

"I think we'll see congressional hearings on UFOs. I also think we'll see the release of more US military photos and videos of UFOs, and associated documents. Some of this may come via whistleblowers, but much of it may be released by the government itself, either proactively, or in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act", he argued.

Pope suggested that "finally, [...] we'll see more high-calibre witnesses coming forward, including commercial airline pilots, military aircrew, radar operators, and intelligence officers with direct knowledge of this subject".

The expert was echoed by Leonard David, author of the book titled Moon Rush: the New Space Race, who argued that concerted efforts to explore UFOs could make 2022 "a banner year".

"It's a great time to be alive. The bottom line is something's coming. You can't have that many people doing that much research and come up dry. At some point we're going to have a confluence of scientific data that supports the likelihood that we're a pretty mundane place here on earth, and there's a lot of alien civilizations that are out there. We've got to start thinking we're not alone. It's: how crowded is it up there?" David asserted.

Pentagon Report on UFOs

The much-anticipated report made public by the US Department of Defence on 25 June 2021 revealed that 143 of 144 UAP-related reports since 2004 remain beyond the government's explanation, and that extraterrestrials haven't been ruled out as a potential source.

Titled "Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena", the nine-page document published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) aimed to provide Congress with a glimpse into how the government would handle a more complete report on UAP.The publication of the document was preceded by a host of leaked photos and footage from the US Navy showing what resembled mysterious UFO-like objects flying through American airspace.

In August 2020, the Pentagon launched a special task force to meticulously look into UAPs under then-Deputy Secretary of Defence David Norquist. The DoD emphasised at the time that they "take any incursions by unauthorised aircraft into our [Pentagon] training ranges or designated airspace very seriously", pledging to "examine each [such] report".