Feb 05, 2024
Written By [Christopher Sharp](https://www.liberationtimes.com/?author=610434e320e3e945538177b1)
Photo by [Tom Chen](https://unsplash.com/@tomcchen?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/big-bens-clock-at-night-w3mEcHyuk_E?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash)
Liberation Times Opinion
5 February 2024
Note: This article has been written anonymously by a British author.
“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.”
\- John Maynard Keynes
In recent years, the government of the United States has been treating Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP, previously known as UFOs) as an increasingly serious and bipartisan issue.
This has followed ground-breaking revelations in [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html) in December 2017, that the US Department of Defense was running a secret UAP study programme with funding initiated by the late Senate Majority Leader, Senator Harry Reid. Three leaked Navy UAP videos (two of which were published by The New York Times) were confirmed as real by the US [Department of Defense](https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/2165713/statement-by-the-department-of-defense-on-the-release-of-historical-navy-videos/) in April 2020.
In June 2021, the US government’s [Office of the Director of National Intelligence](https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf) (ODNI) published an unclassified preliminary assessment, presenting UAP as a matter of national security and air safety.
The report said UAP are real, the US military is encountering them, and the US government is seriously studying them.
The classified full report was submitted to the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees of the US Congress, and distributed within the relevant intelligence and defence organisations of the executive branch.
In an interview shortly before the unclassified UAP report was published, former Director of National Intelligence [John Ratcliffe](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/22/us-government-ufo-report-sightings) said:
“Frankly, there are a lot more sightings than have been made public. 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 engage in actions that are difficult to explain, movements that are hard to replicate, that we don’t have the technology for. Or travelling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom.”
[Christopher Mellon](https://youtu.be/8LjlmAY54yI?si=IVlE89uCuh0hh4ua), former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, also commented on the UAP report.
Mellon said:
“It’s very interesting. The report submitted by the Director of National Intelligence said we see no evidence it’s from foreign government, none of the incidences in the 144 incidences they identified could be explained by US classified research programmes, so that leaves you wondering then what hypothesis best fits the facts, and frankly, the alien hypothesis, fits the facts. Better than the alternatives. I’m afraid I have to say that.”
UFO Expert Chris Mellon: Based On What We Know About UAPs, Aliens Are The BEST Explanation – YouTube
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[UFO Expert Chris Mellon: Based On What We Know About UAPs, Aliens Are The BEST Explanation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LjlmAY54yI) [The Hill](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPWXiRWZ29zrxPFIQT7eHSA)
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Partly in consequence to the ODNI’s UAP report, Dr. Avi Loeb, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard’s Astronomy Department, and Dr. Frank Laukien, Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, founded the [Galileo Project](https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/sites/projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/galileo/files/galileo_project-announcement_pr-7.26.21.pdf) at Harvard University in July 2021.
The Galileo Project [aims](https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/project-goal) to “identify the nature of UAP and ‘ [Oumuamua](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aaeda8/pdf) -like interstellar objects using the standard scientific method based on a transparent analysis of open scientific data to be collected using optimized instruments.”
While almost silent on the issue today, the UK government has given UAP serious attention in the past.
A UAP study, “Project Condign,” was undertaken by the UK’s Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) between 1997 and 2000.
A report entitled [_Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region_](https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20121110115327/http:/www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/FreedomOfInformation/PublicationScheme/SearchPublicationScheme/UnidentifiedAerialPhenomenauapInTheUkAirDefenceRegion.htm) was produced, drawing on approximately 10,000 sightings and reports that had been gathered by the DI55, a section of the Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence (DSTI) within the DIS.
This report was released to the public in 2006, after a 2005 Freedom of Information Act request by UAP researchers. Although the UK report was [inconclusive](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2007/feb/22/freedomofinformation.it), it stated:
“That UAP exist is indisputable. Credited with the ability to hover, land, take-off, accelerate to exceptional velocities and vanish, they can reportedly alter their direction of flight suddenly and clearly can exhibit aerodynamic characteristics clearly beyond those of any known aircraft or missile — either manned or unmanned.”
The report also said: “No attempt should be made to out-manoeuvre a UAP during interception.”
In France, the Committee for In-Depth Studies (abbreviated to COMETA), chaired by Major General Denis Letty, was created in 1996 to study UAP.
The [COMETA Report](https://ia800403.us.archive.org/17/items/pdfy-NRIQie2ooVehep7K/The%20Cometa%20Report%20%5BUFO%27s%20And%20Defense%20-%20What%20Should%20We%20Prepare%20For%5D.pdf) was written by thirteen retired French generals, scientists, and space experts, including Andre Lebeau, the former head of the Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales (CNES, the French Space Agency) and General Norlain, former commander of the French Tactical Air Force and counsellor to the Prime Minister.
Although the report was written independently of the French government, some of the military officers were at the time serving with the French Institute for Higher Studies of National Defense, a quasi-government agency.
At that time, the French government had been officially studying UAP for twenty years and had a substantial amount of information.
The COMETA Report was submitted to the highest authorities in the French government and published for public consumption in July 1999. Describing COMETA in _UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on The Record_ ( [Kean, 2010](https://www.waterstones.com/book/ufos/leslie-kean/9780307717085)) Letty stated:
“All the testimony we retained for the COMETA Report is supported by tangible pieces of evidence: radar echoes, tracks on the ground, photographs, electromagnetic phenomena, and even the modification of the process of photosynthesis in plants. Many accounts given by totally independent witnesses confirm one another.
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