The U.S. government has been inundated with hundreds of UFO encounter reports in the past year, and about half of them remain inexplicable, according to an unclassified document released by the Pentagon(opens in new tab) Thursday (Jan. 12).

The 11-page report, filed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), reveals that the Pentagon has cataloged a total of 510 reports of alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) — or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), as the government prefers to call them — largely filed by U.S. military personnel. Of these cases, 366 were newly identified in 2022, while the remaining 144 were identified in a prior ODNI report that looked at UFO data compiled between 2004 and 2017.

Of the 366 newly opened cases, 195 have been initially resolved with relatively mundane explanations; according to the report, 26 cases were identified as drones, 163 were classified as “balloons or balloon-like entities,” and six were labeled as airborne clutter, such as birds or plastic bags. These findings fit with prior claims from Pentagon officials that most recent UAP reports were likely the results of foreign surveillance drones and clutter.

The remaining 171 cases are still “uncharacterized and unattributed,” due to a lack of detailed data, according to the report. Some of these cases, which involved objects moving in unusual or inexplicable ways, remain under investigation.

source livescience.com

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