Pentagon officials have confirmed that leaked images and video of triangle-shaped unidentified aerial phenomena (more commonly known as UFO) are indeed real and were captured in 2019 by a U.S. Navy Pilot, CNN reports.
According to Pentagon spokeswoman Sue Gough, the grainy clip shot in night vision, along with three other photos of unidentified flying objects, were all taken by Navy personnel. The leaked photos and videos were published by Mystery Wire and on Extraordinary Beliefs’ website last week, but had been circulating online since last year.
“As we have said before, to maintain operations security and to avoid disclosing information that may be useful to potential adversaries, DOD does not discuss publicly the details of either the observations or the examinations of reported incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace, including those incursions initially designated as UAP,” Gough said in a statement Thursday.
It isn’t the first UFO-related news that’s surfaced this year. In February, American Airlines reported seeing “a long, cylindrical object” soaring over New Mexico. The FBI confirmed it was aware of the incident, but declined to say whether the department was investigating the matter.
Additionally, last month former Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe said that an upcoming UFO report would include information on “difficult to explain” sightings.
“We have lots of reports about what we call unidentified aerial phenomena and this is actually a program that’s been in place for a few years in terms of a task force that’s been there under the National Defense Authorization Act … There’s now a report that will be issued by the Pentagon, by the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of National Intelligence,” Ratcliffe said. “I actually wanted to get this information out and declassified before I left office but we weren’t able to get it down into an unclassified format that we could talk about quickly enough.”
The impending report is believed to be arriving in June.
