This provision was largely overlooked in the focus on stimulus checks and extended unemployment, partly because it was not part of the actual text of the 5,593-page legislation. Instead, it appeared as a "committee comment" that was attached to the yearly Intelligence Authorization Act that was rolled inside the bill.
In the comment, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Senator Marco Rubio directs “the [director of national intelligence], in consultation with the Secretary of Defense and the heads of such other agencies … to submit a report within 180 days of the date of enactment of the Act, to the congressional intelligence and armed services committees on unidentified aerial phenomena.”
The report must discuss “observed airborne objects that have not been identified,” along with “detailed analysis of unidentified phenomena data collected by a.) geospatial intelligence; b.) signals intelligence; c.) human intelligence; and d.) measurement and signals intelligence.”
The committee said the report should also include a detailed analysis of FBI data derived from investigations of any unidentified aerial phenomena found over restricted air space and an assessment of whether such activity could be related to foreign adversaries.
The New York Post reports that former legislative and Pentagon officials have confirmed that the package begins a countdown on UFO-related disclosures. A Defense Department spokesperson acknowledged that the committee requires such a report.
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon told The Debrief: “Assuming the Executive Branch honors this important request, the nation will at long last have an objective basis for assessing the validity of the issue and its national security implications. This is an extraordinary and long overdue opportunity.”
Mellon, who was also a staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, added that concerns by military personnel and the public have been “ignored by a complacent national security bureaucracy for far too long.”
Just how forthcoming will the report be?
Some experts have expressed skepticism about just how forthcoming the report will be. Nick Pope of the UK Ministry of Defence said that there are questions about how much will ever be made public due to the highly classified nature of such occurrences, but he conceded that it was a positive step nevertheless.
In April, the Department of Defense declassified three UFO videos and acknowledged the footage was taken by pilots for the U.S. Navy. One was recorded in 2004 and the others were recorded in 2015. After determining the footage did not reveal “sensitive capabilities or systems,” the DoD released the videos.
In a statement, the department said they were releasing the videos to clear up public misconceptions about the validity of the videos and admitted the aerial phenomena they contained remains “unidentified.”
In one clip, a dark circular object can be seen flying in front of a jet. A second video shows a small object racing above land at a dizzying speed, while the third shows a circular object that speeds before slowing down and getting closer to the pilot’s camera. The trio of videos have been widely circulated among UFO research groups.
When discussing the creation of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force earlier this year, Senator Rubio said: “We have things flying over our military bases and places where we are conducting military exercises and we don’t know what it is – and it isn’t ours.”
He added that it would be preferable for the task force to find that the aircraft was from somewhere beyond Earth rather than other nations here that could be threatening the U.S.
“Frankly, that if it’s something from outside this planet – that might actually be better than the fact that we’ve seen some technological leap on behalf of the Chinese or the Russians or some other adversary that allows them to conduct this activity,” he said.
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