Sky View Final Draft
AI Summary
This document presents an analysis of publicly reported UAP sightings in relation to environmental factors, exploring spatial patterns and potential explanations for these sightings. It discusses the evolution of UAP research, the establishment of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), and the methodologies used to analyze UAP data from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC).
Key Findings
- UAP sightings have increased significantly, with many remaining unexplained. - Environmental factors such as light pollution, tree canopy, and air traffic correlate with the frequency of sightings. - The majority of sightings are concentrated in the western U.S. and the Northeast. - Cloud cover does not significantly affect the rate of sightings, contrary to initial hypotheses. - The dataset used is valuable but has limitations regarding the validity of individual reports.
OCR Text
025 Public UAP Sightings and the Environment: An Analysis of Sky View Potential Richard M. Medina University of Utah Simon Brewer University of Utah Sean M. Kirkpatrick Department of Defense Proposed journal for submission: Annals of the American Association of Geographers Introduction There has been growing interest by the United States government in Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). Given the new focus on this potential security threat and the operational safety risks posed by these objects, the UAP Task Force was initiated on August 4, 2020 (U.S. Department of Defense, 2020). This task force, like all task forces, had a limited scope, authority and resources to address the issue and was temporary in its duration. The Deputy Secretary of Defense gave direction to transition the UAP task force into the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG) on November 23, 2021 (U.S. Department of Defense, 2021). Congressional legislation, however, overtook that direction and today’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was established on July 20, 2022 (U.S. Department of Defense, 2022) as the single authoritative UAP Office with the DoD and tasked with leading and synchronizing a whole of government approach to the issue. The mission of the AARO is to: “synchronize efforts across the Department of Defense, and with other U.S. federal departments and agencies, to detect, identify and attribute objects of interest in, on or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace and other areas of interest, and, as necessary, to mitigate any associated threats to safety of operations and national security. This includes anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects” (U.S. Department of Defense, 2022, np). As part of these efforts, this research team explores spatial patterns of publicly reported UAP sightings (analogous to UFO sightings in this research) from an open source online dataset. In the public 2021 DNI report, research on UAP sightings between 2004-2021 leaves most of its 144 government-based reports unexplained, due to limited data. Only one sighting was explained with high confidence, and was found to be a deflating balloon (Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2021). The public 2022 DNI report on UAP sightings indicates the number of governmental sourced reports rose to 510, with nearly half still unexplained. The Page determined to be Unclassified Reviewed by Chief of Staff, AARO IAW FY24 NDAA, Section 1841 (a)(1)(C) Date: 02/06/2025 All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office Chief of Staff, AARO Authority: FY24 NDAA, now codified at 44 U.S.C. 2107 Date: 02/06/2025 Released in Full: ____X___; Released in Part ______ Case Number: 330UAP000025 025 DNI report summarizes that there is no single explanation for all of these UAP, with potential sources including clutter, commercial drones, national security threats, and other unexplained phenomena. In 1969, another government effort, Project Blue Book determined that 701 sightings out of 12,618 were “unidentified,” but that there was no evidence of 1) any national security threat, 2) advanced technologies beyond present capabilities or knowledge, and 3) extraterrestrial vehicles (U.S. Air Force, nd). While there are some logical explanations for what many are seeing, that they think is unexplained, there are still many uncertainties surrounding UAP activity regardless of the source of the sightings. UAP research is often inconclusive. However, our ability to explain these events seems to have diminished as our sensor technology has advanced and our air activity has increased. In this research, we ask three foundational research questions: 1) What is the viability of publicly offered data on UAP sightings? 2) Are there credible spatial patterns to these sightings? and 3) If so, can these patterns be explained by physical and/or built environment factors? To answer these questions, we use UFO sighting data from the National UFO Research Center. These data offer an opportunity to analyze sightings not available before at a large geographic and temporal view. We model the total count of these sightings for a 20-year period from 2001- 2020, using environmental explanatory variables – light pollution, cloud cover, tree canopy cover, airports, and military installations. This model is intended to represent both the available view of the sky for any given county in the conterminous U.S., as well as the potential for airborne objects. The main hypothesis of this research is that people will report sightings of aerial objects where they have the most opportunity to see them. Specifically, we hypothesize that a) factors that limit visibility will be negatively correlated with sightings, and b) that factors related to air traffic will be positively correlated. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt…
Metadata
- Agency
- —
- Classification
- UNCLASSIFIED
- Department
- NARA
- Catalog source
- View NARA catalog record