If you've ever had any doubt that UFOs are real, those doubts were likely put to rest Tuesday during the first congressional hearings on UFOs in 50 years.
Top Pentagon officials told lawmakers there have been 400 reports of possible encounters with UFOs, which are now known as UAPs, which stands for unidentified aerial phenomena.
In 2019, a series of UAP sightings were filmed by Navy personnel off the coast of San Diego.
Investigative filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, who was recognized during the hearing as one of the people and organizations who collect UAP video and data, spoke with NBC 7 Tuesday about the military-filmed sightings he obtained and released.
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“They leave our fighter pilots and our supersonic missiles in the dust," Corbell said. "They seem immune to inertia. They seem immune. They can travel between space, air and sea without any friction."
Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray told legislators on Tuesday that the military is seeing UAPs more frequently and on a continued basis in military training areas.
Because the sightings happen so fast, though, there’s often a limited amount of high quality data, hampering the ability to figure out what the UAPs are or their intent.
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Nick Pope, a former lead investigator for the British Ministry of Defense's UFO project, told NBC 7 that the first UFO hearing in 50 years will go a long way toward destigmatizing the issue and that sightings may be reported more frequently in the future.
“The message here should be: This isn't some crazy conspiracy theory," Pope told NBC 7 on Tuesday. "This is no longer confined to science fiction movies. This is real and the department of defense and Congress are now treating it as such."
Bray told legislators that, despite the increasing frequency of UAP sightings, they haven't uncovered any extraterrestrials. He also noted that all the objects appeared unmanned and didn't try to communicate with the military pilots who observed them.
“They did talk about, for example, radio frequency emissions,” Pope said. “So it's clear that some of these things are solid objects under intelligent control with the technology. But the question is: Who or what is driving all this?"
"Every scientist on planet Earth should be salivating over the mountain of evidence and studying this because we could have a transformative society,” Corbell said.
While most of the UAP sightings are by the military, lawmakers are hoping to see a standardized civilian reporting process as well.
