Published by
Reuters

(Reuters) – The United States Department of Defense late on Tuesday said it will establish a new group to investigate reports on the presence of UFOs in restricted airspace.

The formation of the group comes after the government released a report in June, encompassing 144 observations, which said there was a lack of sufficient data to determine the nature of mysterious flying objects.

The new group, Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group, will be overseen by the Under Secretary Of Defense for Intelligence, the director of the Joint Staff and officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said in a separate statement the presence of unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) in restricted airspace poses a potential safety of flight risk to aircrews and raises potential national security concerns.

The new group which will succeed the U.S. Navy’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, will work to detect, identify and attribute objects, assess and mitigate any associated threats, the Pentagon said.

The U.S. military have spent decades deflecting, debunking and discrediting observations of unidentified flying objects and “flying saucers” dating back to the 1940s.

(Reporting by Radhika Anilkumar in Bengaluru; editing by Philippa Fletcher)