The US Department of Defence is continuously tracking hundreds of suspicious “anomalous phenomena” that may threaten national security, it revealed during a Senate hearing this week, including one unidentified object seen in the Middle East.
The director of the Pentagon's new All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Sean Kirkpatrick, told the Senate Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities that sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) were on the rise and that the office he leads is currently looking into more than 650 sightings.
That number is a sharp increase from what was previously reported in January.
“I should also state clearly for the record that in our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity,” Mr Kirkpatrick said.
He shared that a UFO was seen over Iraq in July last year, showing the committee declassified video of the sighting.
In the footage, an object can be seen moving near an MQ-9 drone, which attempts to follow the fast-moving object with its camera.
The object appears to be silver in colour and metallic.
Mr Kirkpatrick said the office deemed the object “not [to be] exhibiting anomalous behaviour”, though it was still classified as unidentified due to a lack of data.
“It is going to be virtually impossible to fully identify that, just based off of that video,” CNN cited as Mr Kirkpatrick saying on the sighting.
US intelligence finds no evidence of alien spacecraft — video
US intelligence finds no evidence of alien spacecraft in UFO videos
