There are believers and non-believers: people who believe in aliens and people who don’t. Now, non-believers may have to re-consider their position as the US Department of Defense released three videos of UFOs in April 2020. The videos show unidentified flying objects that US Navy pilots encountered during training training flights. The videos had all been published previously, two by The New York Times and the other by the private science and media organisation To the Stars... Academy of Arts & Sciences.
But...Are UFOs Real?
Stranger things
One of the videos was taken in 2004, one hundred miles out over the Pacific Ocean. It shows an oblong object hovering above the water and then flying off. Commander David Fravor, one of the trainee pilots who saw the mysterious object, told The New York Times that, “It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen.” The other two videos are from 2015, and show objects flying and rotating through the air.
Freedom of information
The US Department of Defense released the three videos under the Freedom of Information Act, “to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos,” the department explained. Many people believe the UFOs in the videos are extraterrestrial in nature, and the department has confirmed that, “the aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified’.”
Science and entertainment
Tom DeLonge is among those who applauded the release of the videos. A former member of the rock band Blink-182, in 2015 DeLonge founded an entertainment company called To The Stars, Inc., and, two years on it, it merged to become To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences, an organisation that has aerospace and science divisions dedicated to ufology and fringe science.
The truth is out there
DeLonge works with ex-intelligence officials to investigate and inform the public about unidentified aerial phenomena. In 2017 he helped reveal the existence of a secret multi-million dollar UFO programme that had been run by the Pentagon. DeLonge told the magazine Rolling Stone that he thought the Department of Defense released the videos because of the work that he and his colleagues have been doing to get the truth out there: “Now they’re forced to recognize it and acknowledge it,” he said.