Right off the bat, let’s get one thing clear.

‘UFO’ means ‘unidentified flying object’, but that doesn’t mean that the object is piloted by some odd-looking extraterrestrial being with an unhealthy obsession about probing humans.

Oh, they flew across the entire galaxy to come and stick a probe up the behind of some redneck farmer from Alabama? Yeah, makes complete sense.

Anyway, after more than 18 months of speculation over declassified military footage, the US Navy has finally admitted that they, too, don’t know what the hell they caught on camera.

Over to CNN:

The clips, released between December 2017 and March 2018 by To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences, appear to show fast-moving, oblong objects captured by advanced infrared sensors.

In footage from 2004, sensors lock on a target as it flies before it accelerates out of the left side of the frame, too quickly for the sensors to relocate it.

You may well have seen the footage (we have covered it before – a couple of times, actually), but let’s revisit it once more:

So, can we shout ‘alien!’ from the rooftops and storm Area 51? I would hold off on that for now:

Gradisher said the Navy’s transparency about unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, is largely done to encourage trainees to report “incursions” they spot in the airfield, which threaten pilots’ safety.

“This is all about frequent incursions into our training ranges by UAPs,” he said. “Those incursions present a safety hazard to the safe flight of our aviators and the security of our operations.”

The public clips capture just a fraction of the frequent incursions Navy training ranges see, he said.

“For many years, our aviators didn’t report these incursions because of the stigma attached to previous terminology and theories about what may or may not be in those videos,” he said.

Now that pilots can feel more confident about coming forward with what they see, perhaps we can begin to piece together what exactly these as of yet unidentified sightings really show.

Blink-182’s former guitarist, Tom DeLonge, certainly believes that aliens exist, and if you think along similar lines, you might like the new TV show he features in.

Other UFO aficionados believe that the Navy dubbing these sightings as UAPs is actually a huge step, reports VICE:

With this official statement, the Navy takes an unprecedented and dramatic shift from the US government’s long held company-line that there’s nothing to the whole UFO phenomenon…

Roger Glassel, a writer for the Swedish magazine “UFO-Aktuellt” and an expert who specializes in Freedom of Information Act Requests also said it was notable that the Navy is using this new terminology.

“That the Navy is using the term ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’ shows that they have broadened what is expected to be reported by U.S. fighter pilots to investigate anything unknown in their airspace that in the past has been connected with a stigma,” Glassel told Motherboard.

“If these investigations are due to an interest in finding the cause of the UFO phenomenon—in a ufology sense—or due to reducing flight hazards or to counter unidentified intrusions by known adversaries, and readiness for technological surprise, remains to be seen.”

Strap on the tinfoil hats, friend, and go find yourself some proof of extraterrestrial life.

Just don’t go all the way into the wormhole and start spouting nonsense about the earth being flat, or vaccines causing autism.

Ain’t nobody got time for that.

[sources:cnn&vice]