Aliens? US general says nothing is ruled out yet

By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) – The U.S. Air Force general who oversees North American airspace said on Sunday, following a series of downings of unidentified objects, that he would not had still not ruled out the presence of extraterrestrials or any other explanation, referring to the US intelligence experts.

When asked if he had ruled out an extraterrestrial origin for three aerial objects shot down by American warplanes in as many days, General Glen VanHerck replied: “I will leave the intelligence community and the counter-terrorism community espionage to find out. I haven’t ruled anything out. . “.

“At this time, we continue to assess every unknown or potential threat approaching North America with the goal of identifying them,” said VanHerck, chief of the North American and U.S. Aerospace Defense Command. Northern Command.

VanHerck’s comments came during a Pentagon briefing on Sunday after a US F-16 fighter shot down an octagonal-shaped object over Lake Huron on the Canada-US border.

The incidents of the past three days follow the downing of a Chinese balloon on February 4, which put US air defenses on high alert. US authorities said the balloon was used for surveillance. Another US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the military had seen no evidence to suggest any of the objects in question were of extraterrestrial origin.

VanHerck said the military could not immediately determine the means by which one of the last three objects was held aloft or where it came from.

“We call them objects, not balloons, for a reason,” VanHerck said.

The incidents come after the Pentagon launched a new initiative in recent years to investigate military sightings of UFOs, known in official jargon as “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP for its acronym in English, FANI in Spanish). .

Government efforts to investigate unidentified anomalous objects — whether in space, in the sky or even underwater — have led to hundreds of documented reports that are being investigated, said senior military commanders.

However, the Pentagon says it has found no evidence pointing to terrestrial visitations by intelligent extraterrestrial life.

Analysis of military sightings is conducted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in conjunction with a newly created Pentagon office known as AARO, short for All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

Its first report to Congress, from June 2021, examined 144 sightings by US military airmen since 2004.

This study attributed one incident to the deflation of a large balloon, but found the rest to be beyond the government’s ability to explain without further analysis.

A report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released last month cited 366 other sightings, mostly of balloons, drones, birds or atmospheric debris. But 171 were officially left without explanation.

“Some of these uncharacterized UAPs appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis,” the bureau said in the report.

In December, Ronald Moultrie, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, told reporters he had seen nothing in the records to indicate the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

“I haven’t seen anything in these files to date to suggest there was an alien visitation, an extraterrestrial accident or anything like that,” Moultrie said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali in Washington; Additional reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing in Spanish by Tomás Cobos)