IOWA, USA — U.S. lawmakers are pushing for more research and transparency from the military surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena, the government's term for UFOs.
A former Air Force intelligence officer testified Wednesday to Congress claiming the U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers UFOs. The Pentagon has denied these claims.
Although, Pentagon officials in December said they had received "several hundreds" of reports of UFO's. At that point, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security said they had no evidence to believe any of the objects are of alien origin.
"I haven't ever seen anything that I couldn't explain," said Greg Andersen, director of the Mutual UFO Network in Iowa. "I've talked to enough witnesses and... I've seen pictures and a lot of other evidence, and I'm convinced that there's something to it."
MUFON is a civilian organization that investigates reported UFO sightings. Andersen said there are an average of 40 sightings each year in Iowa.
"One of our most interesting cases took place in Britt, Iowa in 2015," he said. "There was a full moon eclipse, but they called it a blood moon eclipse. There were actually several people that saw triangular shaped craft, like probably 13 different sightings of triangular shaped craft in and around Britt that night."
Once MUFON receives a report, investigators interview witnesses and conduct background research to find out if it could be identified as something like a plane or the International Space Station. They're able to identify about half of the reported objects.
"A lot of our cases lately have been lens flares," Andersen said. "People have taken pictures and there's a bright light in the subject, but when they look at the picture later, they see something that they didn't see when they took the picture. It normally is a lens blur."
Another 40% could either be a hoax or lack enough data to make a determination. The other 10% are classified as unidentified.
When it comes to the Congressional subcommittee hearing on UAPs, Andersen said he wasn't surprised by any of the testimony. He said he'd seen a lot of the information before.
"I just want it to eventually lead to the public wanting disclosure, and come forward," Andersen said. "We investigate everything with MUFON that we can, but there's a lot of witnesses that are afraid to come forward. Therefore, we don't get the number of cases that we could be investigating."
In Illinois, the MUFON chapter has received 171 cases of reported UFO sightings from July 1, 2022 to June 30 of this year. Of those, 5-12% have "unknown" dispositions assigned to them. However, the Illinois State Director said he estimates 3-7% because he likes to see more verifiable supportive data and multiple witnesses.