The strange unidentified flying objects (UFOs) recently shot down by US aircraft may be something for "alien hunters" to be excited about, British UFO expert Nick Pope told the Daily Star on Monday.
These statements follow several recent sightings of UFOs, known in current parlance as an unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAPs), in the US and Canada, as well as alleged Chinese spy balloons in sovereign US territory.
Within the past 10 days alone, there have been three UFOs in North America: One in Alaska, one in Michigan and another in Canada.
Each of these was shot down by US fighter jets. However, as Pope explained to the Daily Star, these may just be the ones that weren't missed, calling whatever is happening "a catastrophic failure of intelligence."
However, Pope, a journalist and former UK Defense Ministry official formally responsible for investigating UFOs, further stressed that now is a good time for UFO enthusiasts.
"These are exciting times, for sure, and Chinese spy balloon hysteria has now been replaced by UFO hysteria," he told the Daily Star.
"These are exciting times, for sure, and Chinese spy balloon hysteria has now been replaced by UFO hysteria,"
Nick Pope
UFO hysteria replaced fear of Chinese spy balloons
Supporting this is the fact that, while the main theory in the press is that the UFOs are foreign aircraft of some kind, like the Chinese spy balloon, the Pentagon seemed to cast these incidents in a different light.
Asked whether he had ruled out an extraterrestrial origin for three airborne objects shot down by US warplanes in as many days, Gen. Glen VanHerck said: "I'll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven't ruled out anything."
"At this point, we continue to assess every threat or potential threat, unknown, that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it," said VanHerck, head of US North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command.
VanHerck said the military was unable to immediately determine the means by which any of the three latest objects were kept aloft or where they were coming from.
"We're calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason,” said VanHerck.
Currently, there hasn't been any known evidence that aliens may have visited Earth. However, the US government has at the very least been taking UFO sightings more seriously, as evidenced by their publicized UAP report in 2021.
NASA has also been working on amping up its own UAP research with a designated study team.
However, NASA isn't necessarily looking for extraterrestrial life – rather, their main concern is ensuring aircraft. After all, unidentified aerial phenomena could, in theory, pose a danger to aircraft even if it's purely a natural occurrence.
Even Pope doesn't actually think that these objects are aliens, explaining to the Daily Star that they are likely balloons or surveillance devices. But because the US is now looking closer than ever at UFOs, there is always the chance that they might find something else.
The truth may very well be out there.