Pentagon Says Videos of Unidentified Aircraft Are Authentic

In 2017 and 2018, multiple videos of “unidentified aerial phenomena” were brought to light by the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (or AATIP), a secret investigatory effort funded by the U.S. government with the aims of studying unidentified flying objects. Now, the Department of Defense is confirming that those unearthed UAP videos are indeed authentic. And that the DoD still has no idea what the unidentified aircraft actually are.

CBS News reported on the DoD’s confirmation, which was announced via a brief, yet (relatively) transparent statement. The statement, which can be found in full here, is only a paragraph long, but clearly notes that the three UAP videos are indeed real, and that “The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified.'”

For those who haven’t been keeping up with this particular “they’re out there” story, it began, as mentioned, when the AATIP released videos of these UAP encounters. Although it’s not exactly clear when the videos were first released to the public, the story first took off when one of the three videos, dubbed “FLIR1,” was shown in a 2017 New York Times article. That Times article—which is currently not behind a paywall—describes a 2004 encounter, as well as the reaction of the Navy pilots who recorded it. (It’s definitely worth a read, and includes tidbits like one UAP hurtling to 20,000 feet above sea level from 80,000 feet and then simply hovering in place.)

The other two videos, which capture encounters between Navy pilots and the UAPs, were taken in 2015. Incidentally, all three videos were released by To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, an entertainment/science/aerospace company co-founded by Blink-182 guitarist, Tom DeLonge. According the company’s Wiki, Luis Elizondo, who headed the AATIP, is one of the key members of To The Stars.

It’s unclear if anybody is offering a reasonable explanation for the unidentified aircraft in the videos. The UAPs perform maneuvers that flabbergast the jet fighter pilots; they also accelerate in ways that at least one pilot had never seen, and were supposedly able to fly without the use of any wings, rotors, or engines that produce plumes. And while the Navy has also confirmed that the videos are authentic, it too has offered no explanation.

Of course, Occam’s Razor should probably be applied here, and common sense still points toward these objects being made by humans—for example, many people are speculating that the UAPs in these videos are actually just advanced drones. But the fact remains: Nobody knows what these unidentified aircraft are. And there are also, according to the pilot in the video up top, at least one “whole fleet of them.”

What do you think about these UAP videos and the Pentagon’s acknowledgement of them? Are we looking at some otherworldly tech here, or do we need to hold onto our assumptions until we have more evidence? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Feature image: To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science