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It has been only four months since the start of 2020, but the year already seems to be resembling a science-fiction story more and more everyday: first, an ongoing pandemic that has emptied out buzzing cities, and now, the Pentagon has released three declassified videos showing US Navy pilots encountering what appear to be unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
The three videos, according to various reports, have been in unofficial circulation in public domain since their "unauthorized releases" in 2007 and 2017.
The videos, reports suggest, show what the US Navy pilots saw during their training flights in 2004 and 2015, and they have, as expected, spurred discussions regarding the research on unusual sightings, and humans and their interaction with the extraterrestrials— with no less than a former Democratic Senator stating that the videos "only scratches the surface of research and materials available"."I’m glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available. The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications. The American people deserve to be informed," Harry Reid, former Nevada Senator tweeted.
The videos were, in fact, put out in the public domain by The New York Times back in 2017, when it interviewed the Navy pilots who experienced them for the newspaper's front page. The veracity of those videos was confirmed by the Pentagon in 2019, but this is the first time that it has formally released the videos in public domain.
"After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena," the Department of Defence said in a statement on its website.
According to experts, this essentially would pave way for more transparency on the part of the US government regarding its research on the subject. In 2017, the BBC had reported that the Pentagon ran a secret multi-million dollar program to investigate UFOs from 2007 to 2012, with only a limited number of officials being aware of it.
Incidentally, that programme was reportedly the brainchild of Reid, the former Nevada Senator, who had then said that he is "not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going".
However, US President Donald Trump doesn't seem to be much of a believer in the phenomenon or the subject. In an interview with ABC News in 2019, Trump had said that he does not "particularly believe" in UFOs.
"I did have one very brief meeting on it. But people are saying they’re seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly," Trump said during the interview.
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