Depending on what type of person you are, the news about UFOs and UAPs is either incredibly scary or very exciting. We’re actually learning more about the issue than we ever have before, thanks to a bipartisan effort in Congress to investigate the issue and declassify some comments.
A man named David Grusch, who served as an intelligence officer in the Air Force and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, appeared before congress on Wednesday and told lawmakers that information about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) was being hidden from them.
Another term for UAP is unidentified flying object (UFO), and they’re almost interchangeable, but not quite. There are actually some differences between the two, which are small but important.
Before we get into that, let’s summarize this info, per CBS. Grusch was on a UFO task force for the Pentagon and said there was a “multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program” happening.
He said he asked for more information but was denied access to it. He also said he spoke to officials who knew about spacecraft that had “nonhuman” origins. Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee, said he wanted to get to the bottom of all this.
“We’re going to uncover the cover-up, and I hope this is just the beginning of many more hearings and many more people coming forward about this,” he said.
Recently, there have been some videos that confirm “400 UFO sightings.” For the record, this doesn’t mean they’re extraterrestrial in origin. They could simply be advanced craft from other countries.
Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot, also testified.
“If everyone could see the sensor and video data I witnessed, our national conversation would change. I urge us to put aside stigma and address the security and safety issue this topic represents. If UAP are foreign drones, it is an urgent national security problem. If it is something else, it is an issue for science. In either case, unidentified objects are a concern for flight safety. The American people deserve to know what is happening in our skies. It is long overdue.”
Man. This seems to be really happening. Regardless, let’s get into the difference between the two terms.
What does UFO mean?
UFO is the main term we’ve been using for decades to describe possible alien spaceships. The big sighting in history allegedly happened in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico.
Usually in popular culture, they’re depicted as flying saucers or other cylindrical-type craft that are definitely alien in origin. By the way, we’re aliens to them. Bothers me when people only think “other” is alien. We’re on a floating rock spaceship!
What does UAP mean?
UAPs are a little different than UFOs. They’re not necessarily alien in origin, and the term is used to describe things that are unexplainable in the sky, but might not be UFOs. It’s a new-ish term that helps to differentiate the two.
Agencies started using UAPs over UFOs a few years ago to help stem the spread of conspiracy theories floating around. UFO specifically refers to aliens or extraterrestrials, and UAPs is meant to take away that heavy alien connotation associated with the former.