The Pentagon’s inspector general is evaluating how the Pentagon has responded to unidentified aerial phenomena, including unidentified flying objects UFOs.
In a newly released memorandum, the watchdog said it plans to begin the probe next month.
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the DoD has taken actions regarding Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” or UAP, Randolph Stone, assistant inspector general, wrote to top officials, including the secretaries of the military departments.
“We may revise the objective as the evaluation proceeds, and we will consider suggestions from management for additional or revised objectives,” he added.
The Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force is scheduled to release a report on its findings in June. The countdown was triggered by the passing of the December 2020 stimulus bill.
The report should include “detailed analysis of unidentified phenomena data collected by” various intelligence methods, such as geospatial intelligence, and “a detailed analysis of data of the FBI, which was derived from investigations of intrusions of unidentified aerial phenomena data over restricted United States airspace,” according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is overseeing the report’s production.
The task force was established last year. The Pentagon said it was established “to improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPS.
“The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security,” it added at the time.
John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence, said the report would detail more information than has been released before.
“There are a lot more sightings than have been made public,” he said on Fox News in March.
“Some of those have been declassified. And when we talk about sightings, we are talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery that frankly engages in actions that are difficult to explain. Movements that are hard to replicate that we don’t have the technology for. Or traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom,” he added.
The new evaluation will be performed at the offices of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, as well as a slew of other offices. Each top official was told to provide the inspector general’s office with a point of contact for the evaluation within 5 days of the memo, which was disseminated on Monday.
The Pentagon did not return a request for comment on the memo.
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