American military pilots and satellites have seen "a lot more" unidentified flying objects than have been previously made public, and last year's massive appropriations bill requires the government to make everything it knows about them public.
The massive $2.3 trillion appropriations mandates the director of national intelligence work with the secretary of defense on a report publicizing information about "unidentified aerial phenomena" or "anomalous aerial vehicles," and former president Donald Trump's intel chief John Ratcliffe promised it would be big, reported the Washington Post.
"Frankly, there are a lot more sightings than have been made public," Ratcliffe recently told Fox News. "Some of those have been declassified, and when we talk about sightings, we are talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery, that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain, movements that are hard to replicate, that we don't have the technology for or traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom."
The spending package Trump approved gives intelligence officials until June to deliver a writeup to lawmakers, but the report could be held up.
Agencies have missed similar congressional reporting deadlines in the past, and the provision tucked into the massive spending bill is technically not binding.
But Ratcliffe promised the details were anything but mundane.
"There are instances where we don't have good explanations for some of the things that we've seen," he said, "and when that information becomes declassified, I'll be able to talk a little bit more about that."
