Documents / Report

Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

Office of the Director of National Intelligence · 2021-06-25 · 9 pages · text from the file's own layer

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued this preliminary assessment on 25 June 2021, as Senate Report 116-233 required. It reviews 144 U.S. Government reports of unidentified aerial phenomena from 2004 to 2021, compiled with the UAP Task Force. Only one case was identified with high confidence, as a deflating balloon. The report concludes that UAP pose a flight safety issue and possibly a national security challenge, and it calls for standardized reporting, more collection and more investment.

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The majority of UAP data is from U.S. Navy reporting, but efforts are underway to standardize
incident reporting across U.S. military services and other government agencies to ensure all
relevant data is captured with respect to particular incidents and any U.S. activities that might be
relevant. The UAPTF is currently working to acquire additional reporting, including from the
U.S. Air Force (USAF), and has begun receiving data from the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA).
• Although USAF data collection has been limited historically the USAF began a six-
month pilot program in November 2020 to collect in the most likely areas to
encounter UAP and is evaluating how to normalize future collection, reporting, and
analysis across the entire Air Force.
• The FAA captures data related to UAP during the normal course of managing air
traffic operations. The FAA generally ingests this data when pilots and other airspace
users report unusual or unexpected events to the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization.
• In addition, the FAA continuously monitors its systems for anomalies, generating
additional information that may be of use to the UAPTF. The FAA is able to isolate
data of interest to the UAPTF and make it available. The FAA has a robust and
effective outreach program that can help the UAPTF reach members of the aviation
community to highlight the importance of reporting UAP.
Expand Collection
The UAPTF is looking for novel ways to increase collection of UAP cluster areas when U.S.
forces are not present as a way to baseline “standard” UAP activity and mitigate the collection
bias in the dataset. One proposal is to use advanced algorithms to search historical data captured
and stored by radars. The UAPTF also plans to update its current interagency UAP collection
strategy in order bring to bear relevant collection platforms and methods from the DoD and the
IC.
Increase Investment in Research and Development
The UAPTF has indicated that additional funding for research and development could further the
future study of the topics laid out in this report. Such investments should be guided by a UAP
Collection Strategy, UAP R&D Technical Roadmap, and a UAP Program Plan.

About this file

Report, from the odni collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 9 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.