Sylvie Claire / August 15, 2020
The Pentagon announced Friday the establishment of a unit officially charged with studying unidentified flying objects (UFOs), which has been entrusted to the US Navy.
With the creation of the "work cell on unidentified aerial phenomena", approved on August 4, the ministry intends to "better understand and better know the nature and origin" of these phenomena, said a spokesperson for the ministry. Defense Officer Susan Gough in a statement.
For the US military, "unidentified aerial phenomena" have nothing to do with potential little green men, but rather with very real adversaries of the United States.
Washington is particularly concerned about China's spying capabilities, using drones and other airborne means.
The new Pentagon unit's mission is to "detect, analyze and catalog these unidentified aerial phenomena which could represent a threat to the national security of the United States," the spokeswoman said.
Very seriously
The Pentagon takes any incursion of unauthorized aircraft into our training centers or our airspace very seriously, and reviews every report on it, she added.
The US Senate took an interest in the Pentagon's activities in this area in June, officially confirming the existence of an informal working group on the subject, disclosed in 2017 by the New York Times.
The new unit formalizes the operations of these soldiers and will allow Congress to monitor their activities more closely.
The Pentagon released three videos taken by US Navy pilots in late April showing in-flight encounters with what appear to be UFOs.
One of these videos - all in black and white - dates from November 2004 and the two others from January 2015.
On one, we can see a fast moving oblong object which, a few seconds after being spotted by one of the sensors on board the US Navy aircraft, disappears on the left following a sudden acceleration.
In another video, we see an object above the clouds, the pilot wondering if it is a drone