In Brief:
Fascination with the possibility that aliens have visited Earth was brought to new levels by the 2021 release of a report from the director of national intelligence. It didn’t include any confirmed sightings of extraterrestrial craft, but it didn’t say such visitations were impossible.
Video from military sensors, declassified by the Pentagon and shared widely online, brought things up a notch, adding fuel to suspicions that the government knows more than it’s sharing with the public. Earlier this month, the Senate majority leader announced a bipartisan push for legislation that would create a commission with the power to declassify government documents about UFOs. On Tuesday, a House hearing heard electrifying testimony from a whistleblower claiming that "non-human biologics" have been found near crash sites.
Amid all this, terminology is changing, with “UAP” (unidentified aerial phenomena) replacing “UFO” to expand possible explanations for sightings beyond objects and include such things as light or sounds. For the Department of Defense, UAP means “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” which includes “anything in space, in the air, on land, in the sea or under the sea that can't be identified, and which might pose a threat to U.S. military installations or operations.”
Definitely Not the X-Files
If security is the issue, a new report from the RAND National Defense Institute, Not the X-Files: Mapping Public Reports of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Across America, may bring the UAP conversation down to Earth. RAND researcher Marek Posard, lead author of the report, is less concerned about extraterrestrial threats than the likelihood that humans will use emerging airborne technology to cause harm.
At the beginning of the year, a Chinese surveillance balloon flew over as many as 12 states before it was shot down by a fighter jet. People have posted videos of guns and flamethrowers attached to drones. Drones have been spotted flying over chemical plants and a pipeline in Louisiana, prompting the FBI to warn that drones pose threats to critical infrastructure.
A military sociologist, Posard also studies disinformation. These two research interests converged in an exploration of civilian and military interactions around UAPs.
“It would be unfortunate if all the talk of extraterrestrials overshadows threats that we have very clear evidence do exist, or could easily exist in the near future,” he says.
Posard and his colleagues studied more than 100,000 reports of UAP sightings. The most significant predictor of these sightings was that they occurred at a distance of 20 miles or less from military operations areas (MOAs). MOAs aren’t military facilities, but airspace used by airline and cargo operators that has been designated for nonhazardous military operations. They can be permanent or temporary. The locations are public, but few Americans are likely to know if they live near one.
(RAND)
In a conversation with Governing, Posard talks about the report and the role state and local governments can play in improving the data collected about UAPs.
Governing: What message were you sending with the report’s title?
Marek Posard: We have 5.3 million square miles of domestic airspace, and another 24 million square miles of oceanic airspace.
I am not an expert on extraterrestrials or aliens, but there are a lot of other risks flying in the sky. My guess is that in the future, we'll need to rely on public reporting of threats like the Chinese surveillance balloon. The first logical questions are what are people reporting and where are they reporting these things?
If we move beyond the drama of The X-Files and extraterrestrials, we can get to a conversation about very real potential risks in our airspace. How do we go about protecting our airspace and making sure people understand what's going on above their heads, particularly in military operation areas (MOAs)?
Governing: What does it mean to say that airspace has been “democratized”?
Marek Posard: In the past, only a few countries had the ability to fly things. What we've seen is what we've called the democratization of air power; you or I can go to a Costco or go on Amazon and buy a drone.
There are a lot of suspicious things that could potentially be flying in the sky, and they're very real threats. Having a system in place where people can report those sooner rather than later can be quite useful, but it's not helpful if people are cooking up conspiracies or stories that are not rooted in fact.
Governing: What were you hoping to learn from this study?
Marek Posard: My working hypothesis was that people don't always realize what's going on near military installations in their home communities and that claims or rumors might spread about routine exercises.
(Karen Sayre/Eikon Photography)
There’s a MOA in the middle of Lake Michigan. There’s a MOA in the middle of Wisconsin, in Vermont and New Hampshire. A lot of civilians don't realize that they are living, working, traveling underneath these areas.
When they're active with routine training exercises or other types of activities, these activities may be mistaken as UAPs that are not from the U.S. government.
Governing: Is there any reason the military wouldn't want people to know where MOAs are?
Marek Posard: All the information in our reports is publicly available; the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lists these military operations areas. In many cases, you can see when they might be potentially active or inactive.
The military isn't going to disclose every specific type of mission. But there is an opportunity to do greater outreach, so at least people know that these MOAs exist, and they can be aware of what is or is not flying that may — or may not — be suspicious.
Governing: The report recommends that state and local governments do a better job with this kind of outreach. How might that work?
Marek Posard: Federal, state and local government can work together to better communicate what type of airspace is being used for what in a locale. There’s a real role for local government here. People should know.
It doesn't mean you have to disclose every detail but making sure there's greater awareness could go a long way. You want people to be vigilant, but you also don't want them to overreact.
In the long term, there is a need to consider what infrastructure for a reporting system would look like. Having a public reporting system where you can leverage technology to record things that are suspicious would be helpful, to sift out actual threats from things that are not really of concern. What we propose is open up to an evaluation. You could also see a decentralized approach that relies on state universities or nonprofits.
Maybe aliens will come to Earth someday. I can't speak to that, but what I can tell you is there are a lot of immediate threats.
Governing: The Chinese balloon is an example of a foreign threat. How big are concerns about domestic actors?
Marek Posard: There's a range of threats from the democratization of airspace. The FBI has warned about malicious drones.
Again, it's not that hard to buy a drone. The biggest concern we should have is that there are actors, both domestic and abroad, who can easily access these things and use them for attacks, for surveillance, for intercepting communications, voyeurs trying to take private photos.
When the Chinese surveillance balloon flew across states, I guarantee there were people who thought, “that looks kind of weird, but I'm not going to say anything.”
If I was a local government official, I would want people reporting those things immediately to law enforcement, not because they think an alien is showing up from outer space but because a lot of people have access to things that can fly in the sky and those things can be used in dangerous ways.
There are a lot of things that can be potentially “unidentified” — look at piracy off the coast of Somalia. Once we get past the alien talk, focus on the range of known possibilities and prioritize those that are of most concern, I think we can do a lot of good for our country and bring down the temperature.
(Shutterstock)
