Ask and ye shall receive! After an inexplicable delay, the much awaited second (unclassified) report on UFOs (sorry, UAP) elaborated by the United States’ Department of Defense (DoD) which was expected since Halloween eve of last year, has finally been released.
This report was requested by the US Congress after the former UAP Task Force unit was rebranded first as the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG), and later as the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) —which definitely sounds like cooler sounding acronym if you ask me— due to the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2022, “Which included a provision to establish an office, in coordination with DNI, with responsibilities that were broader than those originally assigned to the AOIMSG.”
Basically (in layman’s terms) after Luis Elizondo left that black AAWSAP/AATIP project thingy to hang out with his new BFF Tom DeLonge in 2017, the Pentagon folks were eventually forced by some vocal Washington policymakers to put things in order, and establish a proper UAP desk within the government which would coordinate with other agencies —military, intelligence and civilian— in order to standardize and collect reports so they can finally figure out what the hell is going on with those pesky what-zits their pilots keep reporting: Are they a Chinese or Russian threat? An unexplained mercurial natural phenomenon? Just a bunch of trash flying around an creating a ruckus among impressionable military personnel?
Or maybe… well, we can’t actually use the “A word” within modern government discussions can we (or someone will soon start playing the X-Files music) but that’s what everybody and their dog is imagining whenever they hear competent witnesses like David Fravor or Ryan Graves discuss their experiences. Is the unthinkable something we are finally forced to face? Well, that’s when AARO comes in, good citizens!
…At least, that’s the plan.
Another improvement is that whereas the 2021 public report issued by the UAP Task Force was only nine paltry pages long, the new 2022 3 report is twelve pages long. TWELVE. That’s, like, a 33% increase in UFO Disclosure! Take that, skeptics!!
So, what amazing nuggets of otherworldly revelations can UFO (sorry, UAP!) enthusiasts expect to find in this official document?
For starters, it is evident that whomever was tasked with the joyless assignment of redacting this report didn’t get the memo that UAP no longer means “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” but it is now officially regarded as “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.” Sure, mister Unfortunate Redactor probably finished their job months ago, but still… stick to your own game rules, guys.
We’re also informed that whereas the first UAPTF report only covered 144 cases (spanning from 2004 to 2021), this new and improved report now covers 510 reports as of 30 August 2022 —the original 144, plus 247 brand new ones, along with 119 old ones that for whatever reason were never included in the first report. Now, no doubt you’ll see a few articles on the Internet claiming the bigger number means there are more UFOs (sorry sorry sorry, UAP!!) buzzing the skies, but AARO is quick to reply (and probably rightly so) that the higher number of reports can be very well attributed to the (partial) lifting of the stigma among pilots to report strange anomalies during missions.
Same way some idiots like to claim there has been an explosion in autism in the past decades, when in reality what happened is a change in screening protocols which allowed more people to be added into the spectrum. In other words, the bigger the net the more fish you get to catch.
The report is also rather reiterative about its reason d’etre —origin of AARO, possible foreign government threats… flight hazard issue… stronger interagency communication… cooperation with allies and international partners… yadda yadda yadda— before stating what would be anti-climatic to novice enthusiasts of the UFO (you know what, screw it!) phenomenon, but soberly expected around seasoned researchers: of the 366 additional cases investigated, more than half showed “unremarkable characteristics.” Meaning they were either common drones, balloons of some sort, or just common things you’d expect to see in the sky like birds, weather events or floating trash —why would anyone bother to fill a lengthy report on birds is anyone’s guess, though.
And yet (this being the really juicy part) of the remaining 171 cases that remain unexplained —despite the tired “insufficient data” gimmick exploited ad-nauseam by Blue Book since the ole days of Dr. Hynek— some of those ‘uncharacterized’ objects “appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis.”
There is also a short and rather vague admittance that, despite the fact AARO does not admit any confirmed UAP encounter to have “contributed directly to adverse health-related effects to the observers,” it does acknowledge health-related effects “may appear at any time after an event occurs.” Just *why* AARO makes such an admittance is nowhere to be found in the document, but it does suggest that perhaps someone in that little UFO office did have a chance to read Dr. Christopher “Kit” Green’s paper regarding physiological effects allegedly caused by UFOs, which was created during the wacky tenure of the Bigelow boys under AAWSAP.
In other words, UFOs have never officially killed or deliberately harmed anyone… but stay away from them just in case.
And finally, the last mildly interesting morsel of information shared by the document is its commitment to report before Congress (and hopefully the public at large) about any potential updates regarding efforts underway on the ability to “capture or exploit discovered unidentified aerial phenomena” —again with the outdated acronym, AARO dudes!
Aaand… that’s it.
Other than a brief appendix with a list of ‘key terms’ which were never used in the public document proper —“Range Fouler”: a term coined by US Navy aviators to categorize UFO events interrupting scheduled military maneuvers (just how many of these were part of the 510 official cases acknowledged so far by the Pentagon is anyone’s guess)— there’s nothing of any substance in this “official UFO report” by the US government. In fact, the addition of this index of key terms would make anyone think the unclassified document is merely the introduction to a potentially larger, classified document which was supposed to be handed to members of Congress.
The reader of this op-ed might be right in assuming I’m letting my personal emotions get in the way of objectivity, but in the humble opinion of this disgruntled veteran UFO student, the AARO report feels like asking for a BLT sandwich, waiting hours for your order to arrive, only to discover the ‘sandwich’ is nothing but two pieces of bread spread only with mayo and with the tiniest, crummiest slice of old cheese in the middle.
I mean sure, now the Pentagon can wash their hands claiming they obeyed the Congressional mandate to keep them informed about the UFO issue, by exercising the least amount of effort producing a document that barely fills the requirement to pass the grade. They can gloat on their D- and move on, but I for one feel entitled to ask: Where’s the meat?
But hey, at least they’re still admitting they can’t explain some of the reports! That’s gotta count for something, right? RIGHT?
I fully understand this is what bureaucracies do best, and we should have never expected more when the new heroes of Disclosure were asking us to rejoice that the US government was once again giving a damn about UFOs. But at this point it is really hard not to enter into conspiracy mode for a few moments and wonder if this is not a deliberate mode to re-bury the matter once again: reporting on the bare minimum, striping away all the interesting bits on the grounds of “National Security,” and hope the public quickly loses interest so they can forget about the matter yet again.
Maybe 30 years from now someone in the Metaverse will be able to stop the never-ending clutter of noise from their Neuralink for a few moments, and mention to his Buddybot®, “Hey, remember the years before the Big Pandie when those pilots were seeing all those Tic-Tacs and Gimbals? Weird, huh?”
“Totally weird,” the Buddybot will reply, as it resumes developing its 400th virtual iteration of the Sistine Chapel copying the style of Andy Warhol, while simultaneously erasing spam holo-messages advertising the 2047 “Centennial MegaCon” in Roswell, New Mexico.
