Pentagon received 291 UFO sightings over the past year

The Pentagon has investigated nearly 300 UFO sightings over the past year — some of which they fear may actually be the creations of foreign governments trying to spy on the US.

Investigators said in the report released Wednesday that the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office received 274 confirmed sightings from April 31, 2022 through April 30, 2023.

The agency has also been looking into 17 other sightings that occurred between 2019 and 2022, that have not been included in prior reports.

Some of these flying objects — now referred to as “UAPs” or “unidentified anomalous phenomena” — exhibited “concerning performance characteristics” including high-speed travel and “unusual maneuverability,” according to the report submitted to Congress.

“I am worried from a national security perspective,” physicist Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, told CNN in advance of the report’s release.

“There are some indicators that may be attributed to foreign activity, and we are investigating those very hard.”

He expressed his fears that hostile foreign nations may be designing espionage drones specifically to evade US radar and other detection hardware.”

“There are ways to hide in our noise that always concerns me,” said Kirkpatrick, who had previously worked at the Air Force Research Laboratory and CIA.

However, the report notes, “none of these UAP reports have been positively attributed to foreign activities.”

About half of the reports contained enough data that they could be attributed to “mundane things” like errant balloons or space trash, and just 2% to 4% are actually anomalous and require further investigation, Kirkpatrick told CNN.

Most of the sightings and observations came from near restricted military airspace, where radar and detection systems were likely able to pick them up, according to the report.

Of the sightings collected, about a quarter of the UAPs were described as being “orb, round, or sphere” shaped, while about 53% of the sightings did not include any shape.

A majority of the sightings also reported the objects as having no visible lights, with just 21% saying they saw accompanying lights on the supposed ships.

More than 40% were flying just below the height of Mt. Everest, at 29,000 feet.

“For the few objects that do demonstrate characteristics of interest, AARO is approaching these cases with objectivity and analytic rigor,” the report says.

“This approach includes physical testing and employing modeling and simulation to validate analyses and the underlying theories, and then peer-reviewing those results before reaching any conclusions.”

The office is now planning to work with the US Navy and National Intelligence Manager for Military Integration to improve the speed and quality of reporting on undersea or sea-to-air UAPs, the report says.

It will also create two online portals: one for citizens to submit reports and another for historical sightings by current or former government employees.

The portals will automatically match known objects to public reports, allowing the government to more easily dismiss previously identified objects, which Kirkpatrick said could prove valuable.

“If it’s a foreign adversary and I got 100,000 people with cellphones who can collect it, well now it makes it really hard for the foreign adversary to do anything,” he told CNN.