Navy Announces Major Changes to UFO Reporting, Citing Uptick in Sightings

There are few great mysteries left on this planet of ours, and, in some ways, that might be a shame.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore the power of mankind’s shared knowledge base, and the speed with which we can now all communicate.  My concern is only that this ability to discover nearly anything, may make some of us that much more obsessed with knowing everything.  And, as these mysteries fade away, so will some of the whimsy of life.

One realm in which we are still struggling, at least as far as we know, are unidentified flying objects.

Commonly referred to as “UFO”‘s, and once-popularly iconized as flying saucers, these intelligently controlled anomalies have appeared all over the world for what some would argue are centuries.

Where they were once the objects of fringe pop culture, they are now mainstream and federally studied.  In fact, a recent uptick in sightings over sensitive military locations has forced the US Navy to update their reporting procedures in order to more accurately document the phenomenon.

The U.S. Navy is drafting new guidelines for pilots and other personnel to report encounters with “unidentified aircraft,” a significant new step in creating a formal process to collect and analyze the unexplained sightings — and destigmatize them.

The previously unreported move is in response to a series of sightings of unknown, highly advanced aircraft intruding on Navy strike groups and other sensitive military formations and facilities, the service says.

And if that didn’t give you the heebie-jeebies…

“There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years,” the Navy said in a statement in response to questions from POLITICO. “For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report.

In December of 2017, the Pentagon released an incredibly compelling video of an encounter between a US fighter pilot and a UFO that had even the most hardened skeptics spooked.