A highly anticipated government report did not find evidence that the unexplained aerial phenomena likened to "UFOs" that Navy pilots have witnessed in recent years are alien spacecrafts, but the report also does not definitively say they aren't, The New York Times and CNN reported.
The two news outlets cited multiple unnamed officials said to have been briefed on the contents of the government report but not authorized to speak publicly. The New York Times was first to publish details on the report expected to be publicly released in the coming weeks by the Pentagon and the US intelligence community.
The government has not reached a definitive conclusion about what these "unidentified flying objects" are, and many of their qualities remain a mystery, the officials told CNN and the Times.
According to the Times, officials said the report could not tie most of the more than 120 incidents of such phenomena over the last two decades to the U.S. military or other advanced government technology.
CNN reported the findings leave open the possibility these flying objects were created by other countries, like China or Russia.
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The report, commissioned by Congress, has garnered considerable attention as lawmakers and the public speculate on what the report may reveal about unidentified flying objects.
"What is true, and I'm actually being serious here, is that there are – there's footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don't know exactly what they are," former President Barack Obama said last month upon news of the report's commission.
A 2017 New York Times report revealed multiple Navy pilots had seen UFOs while in flight. The Pentagon later declassified video of the incidents, which showed high-speed objects with no clear propulsion outpacing the officers' jets.
According to the officials that the Times cited as having been briefed on the report, the objects' acceleration and ability to change direction and submerge remains hard to explain. The possibility that the objects were weather balloons or other research was ruled out in at least some cases, the Times reported.
China and Russia have both invested heavily in hypersonic technology, the Times reported. If the objects ultimately were to be Chinese or Russian, that would be a much more troubling finding, one official told CNN, and it would indicate the countries were far outpacing the U.S. in such research, the Times reported.
The report will also include a classified annex, but officials told the Times that annex still does not include information linking the phenomena to aliens.
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