For decades, the mere mention of UFOs conjured up images of flying saucers and little green men. But at some point in the past few years, U.S. officials crossed the line, heralding something of a golden age for UFO research.

In 2017, a New York Times bombI confirmed the existence of a secret program at the Pentagon that had, for years, investigated reports of unidentified flying objects. Program officials studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and U.S. military personnel, including one from 2004 that has since been released to the public showing a white oval object, the size of a commercial aircraft, followed by a pair of ‘Navy fighter jets. off San Diego. In it, the Tic-Tac-shaped plane appears to “bounce like a ping-pong ball,” with no visible wings or propulsion means, wrote journalist Gideon Lewis-Krauss in a recent article. New Yorker room. Then just last month the Pentagon has confirmed the authenticity of a number of alleged leaked UFO footage and footage (although officials stopped before labeling the objects “unidentified aerial phenomena,” the military’s preferred nomenclature), including the one of the most confusing clips yet to be released. Recorded in 2019 from the bridge of USS Russell, a Navy destroyer that was also stationed off San Diego, night vision footage appears to show several unidentified flying triangles “blinking” in the clouds before merging.

For an institution as opaque and buttoned up as the freakin ‘American military, recognizing the existence of UFOs is a big deal. For better or worse, UFOs have officially become mainstream, and are no longer the exclusive domain of foil-wearing crackpots and conspiracy theorists. And for good reason. Unexplained aerial phenomena may capture the imagination of alien hunters, but they could pose a much greater threat if linked to alien adversaries. Although, for more water for the alien mill, several senior security officials believe it is virtually impossible for a foreign power to possess such advanced technology as the unidentified objects observed by military personnel. “When we talk about sightings”, former director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said to Washington post, “We are talking about objects… which frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain, movements that are difficult to reproduce, for which we do not have the technology, or which move at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without sound boom. Funny things.

Donald Trump, for all his faults, has probably done more to promote public disclosure of the UFO phenomenon than any US president in recent memory. Buried in last year’s 5,500-page, US $ 2.3 trillion bill, which provided millions in humanitarian aid for coronaviruses, was a bizarre provision demanding a report, expected next month, detailing everything what the government knows about UFOs.

It goes without saying that whatever the origin of these unexplained aircraft is not the kind of thing that governments can simply ignore. So what about Canada, where UFO sightings increased by 50% during the pandemic? Thanks to the work of Vice reporter Daniel Otis, this month we have official proof that the Canadian military is documenting an unexplained aerial phenomenon, thanks to an unclassified January 2019 intelligence report from a medical transport flight crew that reported “that an inexplicable bright light was following them … at the same altitude and at the same speed ”over northern Manitoba.

Otis has since combed through thousands of reports in a government database of theft incidents, focus on dozens of recent UFO sightings Canadian and international airlines. The Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System, a publicly searchable archive operated by Transport Canada, contains nearly 300,000 aviation incident reports over three decades. This is the most easily accessible – albeit enigmatic – window we have on UFO sightings in Canadian airspace, but, at least at this point, officials have little to say to them. subject, which is troubling to experts in the field.

“It worries me that there is so much secrecy about this,” said Professor Timothy Sayle of the University of Toronto’s international relations program. Vice.

With the help of aviation experts, Otis was able to explain many sightings, but there are still a handful that defy easy answers, such as a Kalitta Charters Boeing 747 cargo flight that reported a “sporadically flying” object. and traveling as fast as Mach 4, beyond the capabilities of modern aircraft, over the Northwest Territories in 2018, or at the 2015 shutdown when a Porter Airlines plane over Lake Ontario was forced to dive out of the path of an unidentified object, injuring two crew members.

For decades now, UFOs have been treated as a joke, and it is only thanks to the efforts of a handful of American officials and dogged journalists that the subject is finally taken seriously in public. Given the security implications, it would behoove Canada to do the same, even if it turns out, to my dismay, that these unexplained phenomena are not the product of an army of little green men. Until then, all we can do is look up and marvel.