A HIGHLY AWAITED US intelligence report on dozens of mysterious unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings said most could not be explained, but did not rule out that some could be alien spacecraft.

The sightings “probably lack a single explanation,” said the report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

We currently lack sufficient information in our dataset to attribute incidents to specific explanations.

Congress in December required the director of national intelligence to summarise and report on the US government’s knowledge of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs – better known to the public as unidentified flying objects or UFOs.

The effort has included officials on a Defence Department UAP task force established last year. 

The Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency have for decades looked into reports of aircraft or other objects in the sky flying at inexplicable speeds or trajectories.

The US government takes unidentified aerial phenomena seriously given the potential national security risk of an adversary flying novel technology over a military base or another sensitive site, or the prospect of Russian or Chinese development exceeding current US capabilities.

It is also seen by the US military as a security and safety issue, given that in many cases the pilots who reported seeing unexplained aerial phenomena were conducting combat training flights.

The report’s lack of firm conclusions will likely disappoint people anticipating the report given many Americans’ long-standing fascination with UFOs and the prospect of aliens having reached humankind.

With reporting by Press Association