Remember when a swarm of unidentified flying objects flew over a handful of US Navy ships off the southern California coast? (If you don’t, that’s okay—a lot has taken priority since then.) It turns out those mysterious lights were drones, not extraterrestrial aircraft, according to the Department of Defense (DoD).
Last week the House of Representatives’ Intelligence, Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee held a hearing on the DoD’s investigation of UFOs (which the government now refers to as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs). The goal was to determine whether UAPs pose any near or immediate national safety concerns. Since this is Congress’ first public conversation regarding unexplained aircraft in over 50 years, it also gave Americans a rare glimpse into the federal government’s current stance on possible alien activity. The resulting conversation was relieving, albeit a bit disappointing.
A major focus of the hearing was the aforementioned incident from July 2019, in which a troubling number of small aircraft swarmed US Navy Destroyers multiple nights in a row. Witnesses reported seeing the aircraft conduct erratic maneuvers within close proximity of the ships. The incident caught the attention of the Chief of Naval Operations, Navy intelligence, and the FBI, the last two of which quickly launched investigations that turned up nothing.