The U.S. government is investigating more than 650 potential UFO sightings, a Pentagon official confirmed Wednesday.
Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Defense Department's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, made the revelation in an appearance before a subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The sightings are concentrated off the East Coast and West Coast of the U.S., in the Middle East and in the area of the South China Sea, Kirkpatrick said.
Newly-declassified video of an American military drone conducting surveillance in the Middle East showed an unidentified object zipping in and out of frame. If the video is slowed down, it appears to show a metallic sphere. But where it came from and what it was doing remains one of many such mysteries to the Pentagon.
According to the Pentagon, there is no credible evidence any of the still unidentified objects came from outer space. However, the Pentagon said a small number of them exhibited advanced flight characteristics which indicate they may have been developed by China.
This acknowledgment comes after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report in January which disclosed that its office had tracked a total of 510 UFO sightings since 2005.
That was up significantly from 2021, when ODNI had reported just 144 total sightings. Of the 366 new sightings reported in the January report, 26 were characterized as drones, 163 as balloon-like objects and six as aerial clutter, with the remaining 171 unexplained, some of which exhibited "unusual flight characteristics or performance, and require further analysis."
