Look to the sky enough and you may eventually see something you can’t explain.
For decades such occurrences were often called “Unidentified Flying Objects,” or UFOs, a title the Air Force coined in 1952.
But over the last few years, the Pentagon and other government agencies have changed the catchall term, first to “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” and most recently to “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena” –both known as UAP.
Like other phrases that change over time, future generations will someday consider UFO an old-time synonym for UAP.
While more accurate and comprehensive, the term “UAP” needs more years and stories to carry the same mystique as UFOs.
The shift in the language represents a larger change in how the government thinks about and addresses the unknown– or at least a shift in how it is talking with citizens about these phenomena.
A more science-based conversation about the unexplained is a necessary step forward, however, it requires as much transparency as rigor.
Talking about UAP is good, but the real test of the government’s newfound candor on the heavens’ mysteries will be how it addresses evidence of extra-terrestrial life.
Has the government found evidence of non-earthly life in prior UAP incidents?
Will the government reveal signs of extra-terrestrial life if it finds them, or will it follow its past playbook of secrecy? Is this new conversation a new way to veil facts?
In July 2022, the Pentagon stood up a new office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, to lead the government’s effort to understand UAPs.
The agency will “improve data collection, standardize reporting requirements, and mitigate the potential threats to safety and security posed by UAP.”
Working with other government agencies, such as NASA, is part of that approach.
On Sept. 14, the space agency released the report from its independent study team that had analyzed UAP.
The document explains that most sightings of strange things in the sky can be explained, however, “a small handful cannot be immediately identified as known human-made or natural phenomena.”
According to AARO, most UAP since 1996 have been round white, silver or translucent shapes that are 1 to 4 meters wide and flying as high as 30,000 feet. Some were stationary, while others flew at speeds up to Mach 2.
Outside of government channels, people report thousands of UAP sightings around the world each year.
While not a scientific database, the National UFO Reporting Center lists more than 6,000 incidents for Texas since the 1940s.
Many of those have been explained, but some remain unsolved.
The list shows more than 300 for the San Antonio area since 1965.
Reading the accounts of spheres, eggs, orbs, fireballs, triangles, cones, cigars, lights and unknowns zigzagging across local skies captures the imagination.
To learn more about UAP, the NASA report calls for “new and robust data acquisition methods, advanced analysis techniques, a systematic reporting framework and reducing reporting stigma.”
The report also highlighted how “negative perceptions” of reporting UAP is an obstacle to accurate data.
The agency hopes its involvement will help break down such stigmas.
This movement came too late for Walter Andrus Jr., a former Seguin resident who died in 2015 at the age of 94.
In 1969, he founded the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, known as “the world’s oldest and largest UFO phenomenon investigative body.”
Andrus led the group for decades, and as the area expert on UFOs, reporters often interviewed him when weird things happened in the sky.
He was breaking the stigma and pushing the conversation about the phenomena formerly known as UFOs when the government rarely acknowledged the subject.
In a 1997 interview with the Express-News, when asked if UFOs exist, he said, “There is no question they exist. The evidence is overwhelming. We have tens of thousands of reports in our files. All these people are not liars.”
More knowledge will come from the government’s renewed focus on UAP. The question is, will we believe?
