The U.S. government released its hotly-anticipated report on UFOs (or to use government speak, UAPs) Friday, and many who were hoping for revelations about strange lights in the sky were not satisfied.
It wasn’t a complete dud:
- Intriguingly, 143 sightings that occurred in the last 17 years are still unexplained.
- Of those, 18 sightings, according to the Pentagon, “appear to have some sort of advanced propulsion or advanced technology.”
- The report does not rule out alien involvement.
Still, The New York Times‘s summary of the drily titled “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” illustrates why many with a long-term interest in the subject might find the report frustrating:
The nine-page document essentially declines to draw conclusions, announcing that the available reporting is “largely inconclusive” and noting that limited and inconsistent data created a challenge in evaluating the phenomena.
The report said the number of sightings was too limited for a detailed pattern analysis. While they clustered around military training or testing grounds, the report found that that could be the result of collection bias or the presence of cutting-edge sensors in those areas.
The response to this has been basically “pick a lane!” While it is remarkable enough that the government declined to try and wave away 143 reports as easily explained by known phenomena, not coming down on the side of any single explanation of what’s up there was seen as typical bureaucratic hesitancy to make a decisive statement.
Frustratingly neutral as the document may be in some ways, it was still enough for one guy to get credit on social media for his role in turning the entire subject from a joke to something worthy of serious consideration: Tom DeLonge.
Even as the former Blink-182 singer was occupied with publicly responding to the news that his old bandmate Mark Hoppus is battling cancer, DeLonge was getting kudos for his dedication to shedding light on something he’s convinced should be subject to serious public discussion.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, DeLonge didn’t shy away from taking the credit he deserves:
“It’s wild,” says DeLonge, who feels that the government released the statement because of the investigative work his team is doing. “I can’t believe we pulled this off. It’s a big deal, and so much more is coming. I think people need to buckle up.”
Asked why the Pentagon chose to release the report at this particular time, Delonge said in part:
I think To the Stars Academy made all the noise. We’ve been working tirelessly to get all the senators and [congressmen] briefed. We’ve been connecting the people that are still running the program to other players in the government to make sure the info is getting passed around. We’ve been giving advice on national security policy on how they can create a system to be accountable for all the reporting and basically have all the data flow up to the proper think tanks.
As to where this subject goes from here, that’s anyone’s guess. However, given that Tom DeLonge was right in unequivocally stating that where UFOs/UAPs are concerned, there is definitely a real mystery afoot, his statement that “so much more is coming” and we “need to buckle up” is worth remembering.
The truth is still out there, but it looks like we’re getting a lot closer to finding it.
