More than 350 new UFO incidents reported by federal government

Jan. 12 (UPI) -- The United States has received more than 350 new reports of "unidentified aerial phenomena" since March 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a report released Thursday.

The unclassified report released by intelligence officials said that the reporting of such UFOs "is increasing," which enables "greater awareness of airspace and increased opportunity to resolve" such incidents.

Interest in the unidentified aerial phenomena has grown in recent years after unclassified videos of some of them were leaked to The New York Times in 2017.

In 2020, lawmakers added a provision to former President Donald Trump's budget requesting that the Pentagon and ODNI release a report on what the government knows about such UFOs.

ODNI released a preliminary report on the incidents in June 2021, which largely focused on evidence gathered from U.S. Navy reports over the previous 20 years.

That report did not make any conclusions as to what the mysterious flying objects that had been identified by military pilots were.

The latest report was provided as a requirement of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2022 at the request of lawmakers.

It includes details of the coordinated efforts of the ODNI with the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, a new Defense Department division tasked with detecting, identifying and attributing objects of interest near military installations "to mitigate any associated threats to safety of operations and national security."

"The ODNI preliminary assessment on UAP discussed 144 UAP reports and had an information cut-off date of 05 March 2021," the latest report reads.

"Since then, AARO received a total of 247 new UAP reports. An additional 119 UAP reports on events that occurred before 05 March 2021, but were not included in the preliminary assessment, have been discovered or reported after the preliminary assessment's time period."

Intelligence officials noted that these 366 new reports, when combined with the 144 reports identified in the preliminary assessment, bring the total reports of UFOs cataloged by the United States to 510.

Of those newly reported UFOs, the Pentagon said 163 were characterized as "balloon or balloon-like entities," while another 26 were characterized as drones while six others were attributed to "birds, weather events or airborne debris like plastic bags."

Still, nearly half of the sightings have yet to be identified and were described as having "demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis."

The ODNI noted that such unidentified aerial phenomena "pose a safety of flight and collision hazard to air assets, potentially requiring aircraft operators to adjust flight patterns in response to their unauthorized presence in the airspace."

There have been no reported collisions with military planes in any of the incidents.