Post by JoannaL on May 17, 2022 8:52:02 GMT -5
(Randy Haragan)
Congressional Subcommittee Holds Hearing on UFOs
Because sightings of what many believe to be extraterrestrial visitors are raising more questions than answers, today (May 17), the House Intelligence Counterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation Subcommittee is holding the first congressional hearing on UFOs in 50 years.
In a statement announcing the hearing, Congressman Andre Carson (D-Ind.), who chairs the subcommittee, said it is crucial that the government “seriously evaluate and respond to any potential national security risks – especially those we do not fully understand.”
“There are a lot of unexplained aerial phenomena. We don’t know what they are, and they can’t be easily rationalized as weather phenomenon or balloons or anything else. So it’s quite a mystery,” added House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
The hearing on what the government now calls “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP) comes after years of unexplained reports, primarily by U.S. military personnel, who claim the flying objects have unusual “movement patterns” with no “discernible” propulsion systems.
“I think they will be comfortable telling the public what we do know, and what is still yet to be explained,” Shiff remarked. “But they’ll be very careful not to speculate that this is some extraterrestrial or this is some foreign adversary with some … unknown technology. They will set up the limits of what we know and what we don’t.”
The government admits UAP “probably lack a single explanation,” however, thus far, neither classified nor unclassified reports rule out space aliens. But there are other explanations such as “airborne clutter,” e.g., birds and balloons, and “natural atmospheric phenomena,” e.g., ice crystals. Other possibilities are highly classified U.S. government programs and/or “foreign adversary systems” that originated in Russia, China or some other nation.
“Let's assume that it’s … another country, another nation or another group that’s operating something that we don’t fully understand,” said Brent Sadler, Heritage Foundation senior fellow for naval warfare and advanced technology. “That’s definitely a security threat … that we can’t necessarily defend against because you can’t defend against something you don’t understand.” The classified nature of the government’s UAP information could make it difficult to learn much from the hearing, he explained. Foreign nations will likely be watching to potentially gather information about U.S. military capabilities. But, he added, lawmakers could use general questions to get an idea of how much a threat UAPs actually are. “They don’t have to go classified if they ask it in the general and say, ‘Are any of these reported incidents … a national security threat for our defense?’ Hopefully the answer is no.”
Should UAPs belong to a hostile power, he continued, they are most likely for intelligence purposes and should this turn out to be the case, it could “galvanize” Americans to refocus on science like the “Sputnik moment where the Soviet Union launched the satellite and it scared everyone into action.” But even if UAPs do not belong to a hostile power, there’s still a risk for military personnel, particularly pilots, if they cannot detect UAPs and do not know how to react to them, he emphasized.
The desire for additional information on UFOs is one of the few bipartisan issues in Congress. In 2021, a group of bipartisan senators introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act calling for a new government office as a “central repository” for UFO information and their possible threat to the United States. It would be a collaborative effort between the Defense Department and the Director of National Intelligence. The effort was led by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), joined by Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and several others.
According to Stefanik, the primary concern should be protecting Americans. “My hope is that this hearing focus on transparency for the public and protecting our national security,” she said.
Sources: Tyler Olsen, Cecilia Duffy, Kelly Phares, Tanner LaCoste and Chad Pergram, Fox News, May 17, 2022; and Ben Turner, LiveScience, May 16, 2022.
