At a House hearing on unidentified flying objects (UFOs), three retired military personnel warned that the administration has been keeping too much information about the sightings hidden and that they pose a threat to national security.
A hearing on UFOs was held on Wednesday by a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee at the request of politicians who want the government to be more open about unexplained abnormal occurrences.
“If UAP are foreign drones, it is an urgent national security problem. If it is something else, it is an issue for science. In either case, unidentified objects are a concern for flight safety,” said Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot who now runs Americans for Safe Aerospace, a group he founded to encourage pilots to report incidents of UAPs.
Outcomes of UFOs
The government labels the mysterious sightings as UAPs and has recently published reports on the instances. Others have been linked to “balloon or balloon entities,” drones, birds, meteorological conditions, or flying trash like plastic bags, while others are still unknown.
Both Graves and former US Navy captain David Fravor gave testimony in court concerning encounters they had with UAPs while serving in the military. Former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch said that material he provided to the inspector general of the intelligence community was withheld by the government from its investigation into the mysterious sightings.
When asked whether UAPs represent a national security danger, Fravor remarked of the incident he saw in 2004, “The technology that we faced was far superior to anything that we had.”
“This is an issue of government transparency,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican who pushed to hold Wednesday’s hearing. “We’re not bringing little green men or flying saucers into the hearing. … We’re just going to get to the facts. We’re going to uncover the cover-up, and I hope this is just the beginning of many more hearings.”
NASA’s Decisions
According to Gough, who spoke with NBC News, the Defense Department is “committed to timely and thorough reporting to Congress” on UAPs.
A NASA team charged with researching UAP sightings conducted its first open meeting this year. The experts urged the federal government to gather more accurate data, stating that the stigma attached to reporting UAP sightings as well as the intimidation of those who strive to research them may be impeding efforts to ascertain their origins.
