By Trevor Hunnicutt and Nandita Bose
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House said on Monday there is no indication of alien or extraterrestrial activity after a series of unidentified objects shot down in U.S. airspace.
“I know there are questions and concerns about this, but there is, again, no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent crashes,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
On Sunday, a US Air Force general said he was not ruling out aliens or any other explanation yet, turning the discussion over to US intelligence experts.
The general’s comments came during a Pentagon briefing on Sunday after a US F-16 fighter shot down an octagonal-shaped object over Lake Huron on the US-Canada border. It was the third unidentified object shot down after the February 4 downing of a Chinese balloon off the coast of South Carolina, which put US air defenses on high alert.
US officials said the balloon was being used for surveillance.
Several White House officials on Monday ruled out the possibility that the objects came from extraterrestrials.
“I don’t think the American people need to be concerned about aliens in relation to these objects, period,” White House spokesman John Kirby said during a White House briefing with reporters on Monday.
The incidents come as the Pentagon has embarked on a new push in recent years to investigate military UFO sightings — renamed in official government parlance as “unidentified aerial phenomena,” or UAPs.
The government’s effort to investigate anomalous and unidentified objects – whether they are in space, in the skies or even underwater – has already resulted in hundreds of documented reports being investigated, senior military leaders said.
A US government report in June 2021 did not rule out the possible extraterrestrial origin of 144 “unidentified aerial phenomena”.
That report marked a turning point after the military spent decades debunking, disproving and discrediting observations of unidentified flying objects and “flying saucers” dating back to the 1940s.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Nandita Bose in Washington)
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