This Sunday was Super Bowl day in the United States. But while Patrick Mahomes was leading the Kansas City Chiefs to victory, the Pentagon called a press conference to clarify UFO appearances in the airspace of the United States and Canada. Clear up? There weren’t many explanations, and the Pentagon didn’t even want to rule out the hypothesis that the objects are extraterrestrial, although there’s no evidence to support this.
This was the question asked by New York Times journalist Helene Cooper and answered by General Glen D. VanHerck, commander of Air Force Northern Command:
“Since you still haven’t been able to tell us what these things we’re shooting out of the sky are, the question arises. Have they ruled out aliens or extraterrestrials, and if so, why? Because that’s what we’re all asking right now.
-Thanks for the question. I’ll let the intelligence and counterintelligence community find out. I haven’t ruled anything out at this point. We continue to assess each unknown threat or potential threat approaching North America with the intention of identifying them.
Excluding nothing does not mean believing that something is so or suspecting it, but such a statement did not do much to clarify things. They also arrived after the third unidentified flying object was shot down in three days. “We call them objects and not balloons for a reason,” VanHerck added. The one shot down on Friday was the size of a small car, the one shot down on Saturday was cylindrical, and the one shot down on Sunday was octagonal.
Perhaps due to the concern and confusion caused by the general’s statements, Pentagon sources came out after the press conference to explain to various media outlets that there was no indication that the objects shot down were of extraterrestrial origin. The main hypotheses they work with are that they are from another country, and that so many have been spotted in such a short time is a consequence of the fact that all the alarms have been on since a Chinese balloon appeared the week before the appearance of these new mysterious objects.
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Melissa Dalton, Under Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs, noted at the same press conference: “We have been taking a closer look at our airspace at these altitudes, including upgrading our radar equipment, which may at least partially explain the increase in objects, that we have discovered in the last week”.