A new Senate bill would require the intelligence community and Defense Department to reveal everything they know about UFOs – and it’s clear lawmakers are more concerned about China and Russia than extraterrestrial life.
The fiscal 2021 Intelligence Authorization Act includes a provision that would require the Director of National Intelligence to work with the defense secretary to provide Congress with an unclassified report on whether any of the unexplained aerial phenomena observed by Navy pilots in the past “may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries,” according to the bill report
Moreover, the report would also determine whether the mysterious aircraft could “indicate a potential adversary may have achieved breakthrough aerospace capabilities that could put United States strategic or conventional forces at risk,” the bill report says.
Submitted by the Select Committee on Intelligence, the bill would still need to be passed by the entire Senate and House in order to become law. The bill was first reported on by Bryan Bender of Politico and UFO blogger Danny Silva.
The proposed legislation comes after the Pentagon officially released videos in April that showed Navy pilots’ close encounters with aircraft that could not be identified. One incident took place in November 2004 and the other two happened in January 2015.
Right now, the Pentagon is particularly concerned that China and Russia could have made tremendous advances in hypersonic technology, which the U.S. military initially decided not to pursue years ago.
President Donald Trump has touted the Defense Department’s own work in this area of technology. On June 13, he told West Point’s class of 2020 that the U.S. military is developing “a hypersonic missile that goes 17 times faster than the fastest missile currently available in the world.”
Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough declined to comment on the bill while it is still under consideration. She also directed specific questions to the director of national intelligence, who would be tasked with preparing the report for Congress.
The Defense Department and all of the military branches closely examine intrusions into training ranges and designated airspace by unexplained aerial phenomena, which cannot be immediately identified at the time they are observed, Gough said.
“The safety of our personnel and the security of our operations is of paramount concern,” Gough said in a statement. “To protect our people and maintain operations security, which includes not providing information that may be useful to our adversaries, DOD does not discuss publicly the details of either the observations or the examination of reported incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace, including those incursions initially designated as UAP.”