This year, a rebranding took place. It wasn’t the redesigning of a logo, the tweaking of a font, or the grand-scale overhaul of a corporate identity. It was a conscious, effective, three-letter shift. One very well-known acronym was carefully replaced with another. UFO became officially UAP.
UAP stands for ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’, and is not a new term per se, overlapping with the more common acronym UFO, meaning ‘unidentified flying object’. NARCAP (National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena) claim that their use of the term UAP since 1999 has influenced its popularity and gradual uptake by other bodies, including the United States Navy.*
Consider the acronym UFO, in name and context. What does it say? Its phonetics and even its shape evoke a certain personality that is hard to disassociate from long-standing prejudice against it. The UFO phenomenon has, only this year, been officially and openly recognised. Since the 1940s, it had been awkwardly shunted out of mainstream acceptability into a fringe zone. The subject of unidentified flying objects sat in a grey area, overlaid with supposition, conspiracy theories and ridicule. Commercial pilots were not, until recently, able to freely report sightings, for fear of losing their jobs.
On 25 June 2021, the United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence published its long-awaited document, Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. The thrust of this very concise, yet quite hazy report deals with the implications of “potential threat” posed by UAP, and was something of an anticlimax for anyone hoping for a big reveal.
It gives a summary of investigation of only 144 cases, and confesses lack of data and knowledge to make any concrete conclusion about most, placing them in a “catchall ‘other’ bin”. In other words, splendidly unexplained. The final paragraph is headed “Increase Investment in Research and Development”, suggesting further study.
There’s a certain satisfying quality about this report, contrary to the criticism it has received for not divulging deeper levels of information and greater scope of cases. It scoops up the UAP branding, placing the UFO in a respectable category, with its very own task force, the UAPTF. This wouldn’t have worked quite so well with the old brand. It also makes provision for developments to come. The story is clearly not over.
The report – intentionally, or otherwise (even taking into consideration that anything more interesting it may have to say is not to be released for public consumption), presents a simple fact. This is that – no matter how the subject is styled – UFOs are not the domain of governments, who do not understand them. The British government has commented, but released no counterpart to the ODNI report. The language used across the board is biased toward national security, and therefore lacking in more contemplative respects.
And this is where I’d like to rest – with contemplation. We are living in strange – and fascinating – times. Whether we wish to call the unexplained things we experience UFOs, UAP, or something else entirely, it’s clear that they exist outside of conventional levels of understanding. This means that they are very unlikely to be correctly identified through human interpretation. No matter how many self-styled experts there may appear to be in this field – in truth, there are none.
So, the door – or more rightly – the sky, is wide open. Perhaps it’s not time for us to try to identify the unidentified at all, but simply to clear our minds and open ourselves to something entirely new.
Photo: Chrys Charteris
*The Definition of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or UAP, Ted Roe, Executive Director, NARCAP.org
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