Somewhat disappointing journalism from Reuters regarding the new NASA UAP team. Reuters doesn't usually disappoint
as much as many other mainstream outlets. The bolded bits are particularly slanted and inaccurate reporting.
The parallel NASA and Pentagon efforts highlight a turning point for the U.S. government after spending decades deflecting, debunking and discrediting observations of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, dating back to the 1940s.
A Pentagon report issued a year earlier likewise found insufficient data to determine the nature of more than 140 credible sightings documented by military observers since 2004, mostly Navy personnel.
Senior defense and intelligence officials testified before Congress five months ago that the list of cataloged UAP sightings had since grown to 400 but many remain beyond explanation, either as advanced earthly technologies, atmospherics or something alien.
Among them are video released by the Pentagon of enigmatic airborne objects exhibiting speed and maneuverability exceeding known aviation technology and lacking any visible means of propulsion or flight-control surfaces.
The following bit is accurate reporting of Zurbuchen but his statement is in itself problematic whilst not at all uncommon (the likes of Avi Loeb and Eric Weinstein have been spouting similar stuff):
"Understanding the data we have surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena is critical to helping us draw scientific conclusions about what's happening in our skies," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate NASA administrator. "Data is the language of scientists and makes the unexplainable explainable."
There will always be LIZ even with the best and the most futuristic of sensors in the year 2222. Consequently the scientific approachability of perennially sketchy LIZ evidence will likewise always remain poor. It is overkill to hire the most brilliant minds from every Ivy League school to establish what Mick West (without similar credentials which, personally, is a plus in my book) has already established with sufficient confidence as poor and unimpressive evidence, lending itself remarkably poorly to further analysis. The best we can do is demonstrate whether anything extraordinary in terms of defying physics actually transpires in such footage. This is usually sufficient for most people in demystifying the evidence.
On the other hand, for a military organization such as the DoD, a
reasonable certainty (not requiring full-fledged scientific identification of an object) of a threat-level of
a likely mundane object is enough for most operational decisions and hence UAPs haven't been a significant concern for the DoD as also evidenced by the extremely modest budgetary appropriations for the likes of UAPTF/AOIMSG. These entities were never established based on high-priority internally identified operational needs within the DoD that the department needed major funding for, but rather due to external lobbying and pressure.
Now that the DoD has largely been purged from Bigelowists, Bigelow's found NASA as the next and willing target.
