Lawmaker calls for UFO hearings amid ‘possibility they could be from China or Russia’

Democratic Rep André Carson (left) said an investigation into UFOs (right) is needed because a newly unclassified US intelligence report was ‘inconclusive’ on the origins of more than 140 objects (Pictures: CBS/Department of Defense)

A Democratic lawmaker has called on Congress to hold a series of hearings on reported UFO sightings after the US released an intelligence report on the matter.

Rep André Carson, who chairs the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation, said an investigation into UFOs is needed because the report was ‘inconclusive’ on the origins of more than 140 of them.

The report unclassified last month stated that ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ (UAP), as the Pentagon refers to UFOs, could possibly be developed by US adversaries like China or Russia and could pose a threat to national security.

Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Carson said that possibility was especially reason for concern.

‘We don’t want our adversaries to have… a technological advance over us in terms of what they can do with their capabilities,’ Carson said.

He added that it is ‘curious that many of these sightings have occurred around many of our military assets, our naval bases, our military installations’.

Carson said his hope was that ‘we will have a series of hearings and possibly a public hearing in the very near future’ but did not give an exact date.

The representative from Indiana pointed out that 80 of the nearly 150 UFO sightings were detected with some of the most advanced technology in the world. The report stated that almost all of the 144 UAP documented since 2004 are mysteries. However, the Office of Naval Intelligence’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force described one of the objects as a ‘large, deflating balloon’.

Carson said that officials ‘can’t rule out something that’s otherworldly’ but noted that they were likely only a ‘very small percentage’ of the sightings, if anything.

The report stated that UAP sightings near US military bases ‘may result from a collection bias as a result of focused attention, greater numbers of latest-generation sensors operating in those areas, unit expectations, and guidance to report anomalies’.

It would be ‘arrogant to say that there isn’t life out there’, Carson said.

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