Will the China Balloon Affair End UFO Speculation

Will the China Balloon Affair End UFO Speculation?

Could the Chinese balloon affair finally allow the American army to better identify the unidentified flying objects, the famous UFOs, that have fueled so much speculation?

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After a Chinese balloon was spotted in US airspace, the United States changed the settings of its radars, originally set up to detect fast-moving planes and missiles, to scan the sky for smaller, slower-moving objects.

It is these new parameters that allowed them, in particular, to detect and then shoot down three objects – whose nature is still unclear – in the North American sky, one after the other on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

If these tools couldn’t explain UFOs discovered in the past, they could help clear up the mystery about more air anomalies in the future, and maybe slow down the fantasy machine.

For a long time, reports of flying saucers and other UFOs were quickly dismissed by American authorities, giving way to the most eccentric theories—especially extraterrestrial ones.

However, after several unexplained sightings of American fighter pilots a few years ago, the Pentagon decided to take the matter seriously, with initial fears of not being able to detect Chinese spy devices.

In 2020, Washington is creating a special task force with the help of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Many reports were quickly discarded after identifying weather balloons, sun reflections…

However, some remain a mystery, like this video of a fighter pilot in which we see an object faster and more maneuverable than the US Navy plane.

“The truth is (…) there are images and reports of objects in the sky that we do not know what they are,” said former President Barack Obama in 2021.

Hundreds of reports

After an initial report in June 2021, a second US intelligence report released a month ago notes hundreds of UFO reports.

Of the 510 cases studied, almost 200 can be explained in a banal way: drones, or sometimes a group called air pollution (birds, special weather events, plastic bags in the wind, etc.).

But others have no known explanation, according to the summary in a non-confidential version of the report submitted to Congress.

In the first report of 2021, out of 144 identified cases, 18 raised questions such as holding a stationary position downwind at very high altitude or traveling very fast with no visible means of propulsion.

The January 2023 report notes that “unidentified airborne phenomena continue to pose a risk to flight safety and a potential threat to intelligence gathering”.

No alien arrival

A fear materialized in Washington’s eyes a few weeks later with the eruption of the Chinese balloon, which the United States has described as a spy, which Beijing denies.

Arrived from northwestern North America, the object seemed to benefit from technologies that allowed it to move and conduct surveillance activities – it would have flown over strategic American military locations.

The Pentagon said there have been at least four other similar cases of Chinese balloons since 2017 — devices that may have been labeled unidentified flying objects at the time.

After that case – in which the balloon was shot down by an F-22 in the Atlantic – the US military changed its radar sight settings, resulting in the three objects being spotted over Alaska, Canada’s Yukon and Lake Huron.

If the American government, unlike the Chinese balloon, says they don’t know their nature, all three of them were shot down as well.

The American executive rushed to clarify that this was not a peak in UFO arrivals, but simply better detection.

And John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, wanted to reassure the population: “I don’t think the American people need to be concerned about extraterrestrials in connection with these planes, period . »