UFO or UAP? Pentagon and Researchers Analyze Mysterious Phenomena

UFO vs. UAP: From Pop Culture to Government Analysis

For decades, the mysteries of the sky have captivated the imagination, intriguing scientists, sci-fi fans, military personnel, and governments of major nations. People long used the term UFO, or Unidentified Flying Object, but this term became too sensational. Therefore, today, we more frequently use the term UAP – Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. This term better reflects a scientific approach and a broader context for observations. Currently, the official stance of the United States government on UFO and UAP mysteries focuses on the systematic study of these phenomena from a national security perspective.

Not Just the USA: The Gdynia Incident

On January 21, 1959, in Gdynia, Poland, it was an early, frigid morning, around 5 a.m. Dockworkers, warehouse employees, and sailors were busy in the port. Suddenly, a small point of light appeared in the dark sky. It approached rapidly, shimmering with various colors. Finally, it blazed a fiery red and plunged with a metallic crash into Gdynia’s Basin No. IV.

Everyone nearby witnessed the event, including dockworker Jan Blok. “I felt it was flying straight towards us,” he recounted a few hours later. The media, scientists, foreign intelligence agencies, Poland’s secret service (SB), and paranormal enthusiasts quickly took an interest. Dziennik Bałtycki (a Polish newspaper) reported the revelations, quoting another witness who saw “a fiery orb larger than a full moon, moving low over the ground in a luminous halo toward Gdynia.” The object’s fall into the port basin was accompanied by “the glowing of the object and the bubbling of boiling water.” Ultimately, this case remains unsolved, leading to many theories—from a falling meteor or a satellite to a crashed spacecraft.

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A Polish People’s Republic Mystery: The Legend of Emilcin

The most famous Polish story involving an unidentified flying object is the Emilcin incident. On May 10, 1978, a farmer named Jan Wolski was on his way home. While passing through a clearing, he reportedly saw a silvery vehicle hovering 4-5 meters above the ground. From his account, humanoid beings emerged to meet him. Shorter than him and with olive-colored faces, slanted eyes, and prominent cheekbones, they soon climbed onto his cart. “They were talking. In a very high-pitched voice that I don’t know. I didn’t understand any of it, but I did notice some kind of car in the air,” Wolski recounted, with his statements captured on recordings.

The Emilcin incident continues to fascinate paranormal enthusiasts. Several books have been written about it, and the farmer’s account made headlines worldwide. The Nautilus Foundation even funded a monument at the alleged site of the third-kind encounter, inscribed with the words: “The truth will still astound us.” However, the largest community of truth-seekers exploring UFO and UAP mysteries is in the United States, not Poland.

UFOs: From Ridicule to Investigation

For decades in the United States, people debated the existence of extraterrestrials and their vehicles, a conversation many found laughable. The Roswell incident gave rise to numerous accounts from both questionable sources and respected military personnel.

The US military began seriously investigating these phenomena in 1948 after the so-called Chiles-Whitted incident. Pilots Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted were flying a passenger plane when they saw a dull red, “wingless, approximately 100-foot-long object shaped like a torpedo or cigar” that “rose with a powerful burst of flame from the rear and flew into the clouds.” A passenger also saw “a streak of light.”

A Multi-Million Dollar Program

Just a few years ago, a military pilot reporting a UFO could face ridicule and potentially a career-ending stigma. But in recent years, this has changed. In 2017, The New York Times revealed the existence of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which had been secretly studying encounters with unidentified objects since 2007.

The program, initiated by Senator Harry Reid, cost $22 million and analyzed reports from Navy pilots who described objects moving at speeds and performing maneuvers that defied known technology. For example, in a 2004 incident, Commander David Fravor, a pilot with the USS Nimitz carrier strike group, saw a white, oval-shaped object resembling a “Tic Tac.” “It had no wings, no rotors, and no visible propulsion, yet it moved in a way we cannot explain,” he later told CBS. The object, tracked by radar and seen by four witnesses, dropped from 80,000 feet to sea level in a fraction of a second, then hovered motionlessly. This was not an isolated case. From 2014 to 2015, pilots from the USS Theodore Roosevelt reported similar encounters, filming the now-famous Gimbal and GoFast videos that the Pentagon has officially declassified.

See also: UAP: The New Era of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – Why the Shift from UFOs?

Congress, Reports, and Alarming Statistics

Public pressure and a series of reports prompted Congress to act. In December 2020, as part of a COVID-19 relief package, Senator Marco Rubio demanded that intelligence agencies prepare a report on these UFO and UAP mysteries. The term “unidentified aerial phenomena” was used to avoid the sensationalism of “UFO.”

The result? In June 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published a nine-page document analyzing 144 incidents reported by the military since 2004. The findings were surprisingly inconclusive: only one case was explained (a falling balloon), while the remaining 143 remained a mystery. “We have no evidence of extraterrestrial origin, but we are not ruling it out,” the authors stated.

The Pentagon did not stop there. In 2022, they established the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which by November 2024 had already collected 757 new UAP reports. Jon Kosloski, head of AARO, emphasizes: “We have not found evidence of aliens, but we do have cases I don’t understand—and neither does anyone else.” Among these is a 2023 report from a commercial pilot who nearly collided with a “cylindrical object” over the Atlantic. Military pilots also report being “tracked” by unknown objects.

Senator Rubio and Extraterrestrial Visitors

American Senator Marco Rubio has actively engaged with the topic of UAPs for years. As the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Rubio consistently emphasizes the importance of taking these phenomena seriously, especially for national security. Thanks to his efforts, the topic of UFO and UAP mysteries has gained prominence in public and political debates, leading to greater transparency and government involvement in their study.

Rubio, now Secretary of State in Donald Trump’s administration, claims that “high-ranking US officials have firsthand knowledge of a secret Pentagon program. The program sought and recovered crashed unidentified flying objects.” This narrative is supported by a recent report from a retired pilot, Jake Barber, who revealed in January that his mission was to collect data on technologies used by UFOs as part of a classified military program. The goal? To learn “reverse-engineered technology” from extraterrestrial craft.

Science vs. Extraterrestrial Hypotheses

Theories are multiplying rapidly. Some, like Fravor, suggest we are dealing with technology “far exceeding our own.” Others, like skeptical researcher Mick West, point to more mundane explanations for UFO and UAP mysteries: optical illusions, drones, or sensor errors. A 2024 Pentagon report notes that most resolved cases involve balloons, birds, or satellites—as in the case of a pilot who mistook a Starlink rocket launch for a UFO. But what about the rest?

UFO historian David Jacobs recalls sightings from the 1940s, such as Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 report of nine “saucers” flying over Mount Rainier at three times the speed of sound. Could Russia or China have surpassed the US by decades in a technological race? The Pentagon admits that a lack of data prevents clear conclusions. “If it’s aliens, we don’t have the proof. If it’s an adversarial state, we haven’t detected them either,” says Kosloski. However, the sheer number of reports—from 144 in 2021 to over 1,600 in 2024—forces us to ask: what is truly flying above our heads?

A Reflection on the Horizon

The American government has come a long way—from ridiculing UFOs and UAPs to treating them as a potential security threat. Congress is pushing for transparency, the Pentagon is analyzing footage, and pilots like Ryan Graves are calling for an end to the stigma and better reporting. Is there a grain of truth in stories about extraterrestrials? For now, a definitive breakthrough either way is absent. It seems inevitable that media will continue to receive electrifying reports from witnesses. Scientists will weigh the arguments and engage in academic disputes, and people will “know what they know” based on their beliefs and attitudes. But one thing is certain: the mystery of the skies still awaits its discoverer.

Read the original article: UFO czy UAP? Pentagon i badacze analizują zagadkowe zjawiska