Essay : A real phenomenon, a cultural taboo

Why is this phenomenon still not officially recognised?

Photo de Matheus Bertelli

Since UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) have been recognised by certain American institutions, the phenomenon has moved from the margins to become a legitimate subject of investigation. The report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), published on 25 June 2021, acknowledges that most of the objects observed and detected by several independent sensors (radar, infrared, optical, etc.) are probably physical.

Since 2023, another concept has appeared in official American texts: that of non-human intelligence (NHI). This term, introduced in a bill by Congress, does not replace the term UAP, but rather deepens its meaning. Whereas UAP refers to an observable phenomenon, often of a technological nature, but with no known explanation, INH evokes a more ambitious hypothesis: that of one or more conscious intelligences, external to our species, technologically advanced and potentially interacting with us.

This shift in terminology reflects a major change in institutional discourse, from a phenomenon to be identified to a presence to be considered. However, despite Pentagon authenticated videos, sworn testimony before Congress, and public and private study programmes, no decisive shift has yet occurred.

The phenomenon remains in a grey area. Neither totally denied nor fully recognised. It is progressing in discourse, but remains far from certainty. It intrigues, but has yet to receive a clear answer.

An ontological vertigo

Political scientist Alexander Wendt, in an academic article co-authored with Raymond Duvall, asks a central question: why doesn’t the government take UAPs seriously? One explanation put forward is that the phenomenon cannot be accommodated without unsettling the very foundations of the modern political order. It challenges sovereignty, anthropocentrism and the monopoly on defining reality. It is not disturbing because it is false, but because it challenges our frameworks of understanding.

One of the great challenges posed by non-human intelligence is not only technological, but also symbolic. If such an entity exists and interacts with us, then humans would cease to stand alone at the top of the cognitive ladder. They would no longer be the sole possessors of self-awareness or technical mastery. They would become observable, vulnerable, perhaps even surpassed.

By transcending traditional categories and disciplinary boundaries, the phenomenon forces us to reconfigure our tools of understanding. This very requirement is an obstacle to its recognition and acceptance.

A structured historical cover-up

The taboo surrounding UAPs was not only forged in popular mockery. It seems to have been methodically constructed and maintained by American institutions since the late 1940s.

The year 1948 saw the launch of Project Sign, the first publicly known official initiative dedicated to the study of unidentified flying objects. It was entrusted to the US Air Force. This programme was established in response to a sudden increase in reports, particularly after the Roswell incident in 1947 and Kenneth Arnold’s sighting. In February 1949, the report Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the United States, written by the US Air Force’s Air Materiel Command, concluded that ‘the reported phenomena were real and not visionary or fictitious,’ while assessing that no direct threat had been proven. Nevertheless, it recommended continued surveillance to determine whether certain cases might reflect unknown technological developments that could have an extraterrestrial origin.

In early 1949, another initiative was launched under the name Project Twinkle. This programme sought to establish an observation station equipped with cameras and scientific instruments in an attempt to document so-called ‘green fireballs’, luminous green spheres observed at low altitude over New Mexico, often near sensitive nuclear sites such as Los Alamos, Sandia National Laboratories, or Holloman Air Force Base. Their recurrence in these areas led some officials to suspect that the activity was of foreign surveillance, possibly of Soviet origin. However, even before the programme was fully deployed, a final report drafted in 1951 concluded that there was insufficient usable data, leading to the programme’s closure.

Meanwhile, Project Grudge succeeded Sign and Twinkle with a radically different approach. The objective shifted to defuse public interest by systematically attributing sightings to misperceptions or trivial causes. A climate of institutional derision took hold, discrediting both the witnesses and the subject itself.

In 1952, with the Korean War in full swing and numerous unidentified objects being observed over Washington, the US Air Force launched Project Blue Book. Officially intended to collect and analyse sighting reports, the programme focused primarily on classifying cases and providing prosaic explanations, even when these remained questionable. J. Allen Hynek, scientific advisor to the project, later wrote:

‘The investigators seem to have been directed to find a conventional explanation for each case, no matter how far-fetched it might have been.’

(The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, 1972)

Shortly thereafter, in January 1953, the CIA, through its Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI), convened the Robertson Panel, a group of scientists led by physicist H. P. Robertson. The committee rejected the hypothesis of a non-human origin, and instead recommended a strategy of demystification, notably through collaboration with the media and the production of content to reduce public interest:

‘The public interest in the subject and the potential dangers of mass hysteria seemed to warrant an educational programme [...]. The debunking aim would result in a reduction in public interest.’

(Report of the Scientific Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, CIA/Robertson Panel, 1953)

These recommendations would profoundly influence the conduct of Blue Book in the years that followed.

Between 1952 and 1969, Blue Book recorded 12,618 reports. The vast majority were attributed to natural phenomena, misinterpretations, or known aircraft. 701 cases remain officially unidentified, some of which contain sufficient data to allow for further evaluation.

In 1969, following the publication of the Condon Report, commissioned by the US Air Force from the University of Colorado, Blue Book was officially closed. The report concluded:

‘Our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge. Further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.’

(Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, Edward U. Condon, 1968)

After the programme was shut down, J. Allen Hynek, who had been its chief scientific advisor, made a radical change. He founded the Center for UFO Studies and published the book The UFO Experience, in which he severely criticised the military’s approach:

‘I found myself in the embarrassing position of being a scientist with a reputation to protect, yet associated with a project whose only purpose seemed to be to debunk.’

(J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, 1972)

After the official end of Project Blue Book in 1969, no known programme immediately took over. It was not until the 2000s that a new institutional effort was documented. At the initiative of Senator Harry Reid, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) launched the AAWSAP (Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program) in 2008, entrusted to the private company Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS). This 22 million dollars programme aimed to produce a series of forward-looking analyses of advanced technologies, document certain physiological effects observed in witnesses of unidentified aerospace phenomena, and investigate recurring manifestations reported at the famous Skinwalker Ranch, then owned by Robert Bigelow, to serve as a field of study.

The programme is organised around seven areas of investigation defined by BAASS:

1. Medical and physiological effects on witnesses

2. Electromagnetic phenomena associated with UAP events

3. Physical traces and material analysis at encounter sites

4. Optical and light-related anomalies

5. Cognitive and psychological effects on observers

6. Persistent effects following close contact (the ‘hitchhiker effect’)

7. Implications for national security and aerospace defence

These field investigations are conducted systematically by BAASS, with data collection, witness debriefing, and environmental analysis.

At the same time, 38 theoretical technical reports called DIRDs (Defence Intelligence Reference Documents) were commissioned by the DIA. These documents were only revealed in 2019, following a FOIA request. Thirty-seven were made public, with the exception of the one entitled State of the Art and Evolution of High-Energy Laser Weapons, which remained classified.

Here are a few examples:

• Traversable Wormholes, Stargates, and Negative Energy (K. Kwon)

• Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions (R. Obousy, E. Davis)

• Invisibility Cloaking (B. Green)

• Advanced Space Propulsion Based on Vacuum Engineering (H. Puthoff)

• Biological Effects of UAPs (C. Kit Green)

These reports, although theoretical, reveal a marked interest in technologies at the frontier of known science.

The AAWSAP programme ended in 2010. The DIA provided no clear official justification. Several sources mention a lack of interest within the Pentagon in continuing research on such a broad scale, despite the active support of Senator Harry Reid, one of the programme’s main initiators.

The history of the AAWSAP programme and some of its investigations have been recounted in two books co-authored by James Lacatski, programme manager at the DIA, Colm Kelleher, scientific director at BAASS, and Georges Knapp, a well-known journalist. In their second book, Inside the US Government Covert UFO Programme: Initial Revelations, published in 2023, Lacatski asserts that the United States had access to a craft of unknown origin, whose configuration did not feature any identifiable conventional propulsion system. He reports that an inspection of the craft’s interior was conducted, which detected no propulsion system, fuel tank or control surface. During a classified meeting held in 2011 at the Capitol, Lacatski questioned the officials present about the object’s nature and function: was it a manned craft intended for atmospheric re-entry, or for some other use? And if so, how did it work?

AAWSAP was followed by a more restricted programme, AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme), which was no longer based on a contract with a private company, but on an internal effort within the Department of Defence. The main objective of AATIP is to collect and analyse reports of unusual aerial phenomena involving unconventional objects, with a view to monitoring capabilities and identifying potential threats.

According to several sources, AATIP has studied incidents involving unidentified objects, such as the now-famous Gimbal, GoFast and FLIR1 cases. These videos, captured by sensors on Navy fighter jets, have been authenticated by the Pentagon. They show unconventional objects in motion, with no apparent means of propulsion or lift. According to witnesses, these objects manoeuvred at speeds and accelerations far exceeding the known capabilities of conventional aircraft, whether American or foreign.

The media coverage of these videos, which were not classified at the time, led to a significant hardening of the Department of Defence’s stance. Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Intelligence and responsible for releasing these videos to journalists at the New York Times, reports that a classification guide drafted a few years later systematically classified all information related to UFOs as secret, even in cases where this was not justified.

Mellon sees this as a bureaucratic reflex aimed at preserving a monopoly on access to information deemed sensitive and likely to raise embarrassing strategic and political questions. He regrets that this logic of control has taken precedence over the democratic requirement for transparency and need to alert elected officials and the public to a possible technological or operational threat, regardless of its origin.

The DoD confirmed the existence of AATIP in 2017 and stated that the programme had ended in 2012 due to a lack of funding. Furthermore, it is now established that whistleblower Luis Elizondo was the director of this programme.

In the years that followed, faced with growing pressure from Congress, particularly from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives, the Pentagon created in 2020 the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), a working group aimed at centralising operational reports from the military and placed under the authority of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).

A preliminary report, made public in June 2021 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), compiles the findings of the UAPTF. It is accompanied by a classified version, which was sent to members of Congress but is not accessible to the general public. The unclassified report examines 144 cases that occurred between 2004 and 2021. Only one of these can be attributed with certainty to ‘a large balloon deflating’, the type of balloon not being specified. The other 143 remain unexplained. It should be noted that this ‘preliminary’ report was never finalised.

It is also worth noting that David Grusch, a former intelligence officer, claims to have worked for the UAPTF before becoming a whistleblower. We will return to his explosive revelations in more detail in a future article.

The UAPTF was officially dissolved in 2022, after Congress mandated the creation of a permanent, centralised office to handle UAP reports.

Ahead of this UAPTF dissolution, the Department of Defence announced in November 2021 the establishment of the AOIMSG (Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronisation Group), tasked with ensuring continuity of work and coordinating inter-agency efforts around the detection and management of abnormal incursions into restricted airspace. Launched without prior consultation with Congress and placed under the oversight of the OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defence), this initiative was quickly criticised for its lack of transparency and its scope, which was deemed too limited, particularly by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Marco Rubio.

It will be replaced in July 2022 by the AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) at the instigation of the US Congress. This creation was in response to a growing demand for transparency and institutional rigour in the study of unidentified aerospace phenomena. Congress, notably through the Gillibrand-Rubio amendments to the defence finance bill, required the establishment of a permanent body with expanded access to military, civilian, and intelligence data. The bureau’s main mission is to collect and analyse reports of UAPs, whether observed in the sky, in space, at sea, or even objects with transmedium capabilities, i.e. capable of moving between different environments.

Since its creation, the AARO has examined more than 1,000 reports. To date, five cases have been officially presented as unexplained, including the now-famous GIMBAL, FLIR, GOFAST, FLYBY and Middle East UAP videos. The latter, filmed on 12 July 2022 by an MQ-9 Reaper drone in the Middle East, shows a “metallic orb “ moving rapidly. This footage was publicly released during a presentation to Congress by the agency’s director, Sean Kirkpatrick, who acknowledged the impossibility of providing a satisfactory explanation due to insufficient data.

But the AARO has not escaped controversy. Its first historical report, published in March 2024, was met with fierce criticism. It contains numerous factual errors and inconsistencies: for example, the date of Kenneth Arnold’s sighting is incorrectly reported, and some widely documented historical cases are simply ignored, including the incidents recorded by the US Navy, authenticated by the Pentagon and mentioned above. The numerous errors in this report contributed to de-legitimising the AARO’s rigour among some members of the public and specialists in the field.

Furthermore, some members of Congress, including Tim Burchett, as well as whistleblower David Grusch, have accused Sean Kirkpatrick of encouraging or imposing non-disclosure agreements on potential witnesses, preventing them from speaking freely to the authorities. Kirkpatrick has denied these allegations, claiming that the witnesses in question had, themselves, chosen not to cooperate with the agency.

These controversies have fuelled a climate of mistrust. Some elected officials and researchers are now questioning the AARO’s actual ability to conduct an independent and rigorous investigation. Since August 2024, the agency has been headed by Dr Jon T. Kosloski, a former technical executive at the NSA (National Security Agency) specialising in quantum optics and advanced cryptography. Upon his arrival, Kosloski stated that he wanted to ‘strengthen partnerships, promote transparency and intensify efforts to analyse anomalous phenomena’. His appointment has raised hopes for a renewal of the institutional approach.

This succession of nine known programmes, oscillating between derision, secrecy and narrative control, reveals a striking continuity. Since 1948, the United States has never stopped studying UFOs, mobilising significant resources while publicly asserting that the phenomenon does not deserve special attention.

Why so much effort to contain what is supposedly just a myth or a collective illusion? The disproportion between the resources mobilised and the official attitude suggests that a much deeper issue lies behind the ridicule maintained.

A challenge to national security

The authorities’ reluctance to publicly acknowledge the reality of the phenomenon does not therefore reflect a lack of interest, but rather a strategy for managing the issue. Another example concerns secret military programmes involving advanced technology. When witnesses see a craft with extraordinary capabilities, it can be convenient for institutions to suggest that it is a “UFO”. This confusion, if it arises spontaneously, preserves the confidentiality of certain classified programmes without having to admit to their existence.

This type of manipulation has been documented. In 1997, the CIA acknowledged that during the 1950s and 1960s, many UFO sightings were actually classified test flights, including those of the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes. Rather than revealing their existence, the authorities allowed the public to entertain the idea of unexplained phenomena, diverting attention and preserving the secrecy of these programmes.

This logic of concealment can serve various purposes. Sometimes it aims to protect secret programmes. Other times, it masks embarrassing uncertainty or an inability to respond. In 2024, more than 350 drone incursions were recorded near sensitive military sites, according to General Gregory Guillot, commander of NORAD. These events involved Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the highly sensitive Plant 42 site in California, the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, and several facilities in the United Kingdom and Germany. These objects, described as drones but whose capabilities raise questions about their true nature, have sometimes forced the authorities to temporarily close the airspace above Air Force bases, notably that of Wright-Patterson in December 2024, and that of Langley a year earlier, in December 2023.

During a joint hearing in Congress on 10 December 2024, representatives from the FBI, the DOJ (Department of Justice) and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) acknowledged that they did not know the exact origin of these devices, while calling for a strengthening of the legislative framework to better respond to them. However, in January 2025, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt stated at a press conference:

“After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorised to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons. Many of these drones were also hobbyists, recreational and private individuals who enjoy flying drones. In time, it got worse due to curiosity. This was not the enemy. “

However, this statement contradicts the admission of uncertainty made a month earlier before Congress.

Added to this is another form of dissonance. Before his re-election, Donald Trump had promised to disclose information about these incursions in the early days of his term. However, once in power, no revelations were made. The promised transparency turned into silence, reinforcing the idea of a political and strategic cover-up surrounding these intrusions.

In this climate, one hypothesis is gaining plausibility: what if these drones were in fact observation, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms of foreign origin, Chinese or Russian? Such a possibility immediately brings to mind the case of the Chinese spy balloon in 2023, which had already highlighted the United States’ inability to quickly detect and neutralise certain devices crossing its territory. But to admit today that geopolitical adversaries have sufficiently advanced technology to fly over such sensitive sites as the Picatinny Arsenal or Air Force bases with impunity would be tantamount to acknowledging a loss of control of US airspace.

This phenomenon is not new. Since the 1960s, unauthorised incursions have been reported near some of the most sensitive sites in the country, particularly those related to nuclear weapons. Even more troubling is that these objects do not appear to be merely observing. In several cases, they seem to have interacted directly with deterrent systems.

Researcher Robert Hastings, who has collected more than 160 first-hand accounts from former US military personnel, has highlighted the presence of unidentified objects near strategic nuclear sites.

In 1964, in Big Sur, California, a test ballistic missile equipped with a dummy warhead was reportedly intercepted and neutralised by an unidentified object, according to joint testimonies by Dr Robert Jacobs and his superior, Major Florenz Mansmann, the latter having attested in writing to the veracity of the incident.

In 1967, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, ten Minuteman nuclear missiles were simultaneously deactivated while a luminous object was observed above the site.

Furthermore, similar cases have been reported in Russia, confirming the global and worrying nature of these incursions.

Such episodes, documented and reported by direct witnesses, go far beyond the scope of a simple technological anomaly or academic debate. They reveal a worrying vulnerability in our most sensitive infrastructure, which has existed for decades. The UAP therefore not only threatens our scientific and philosophical certainties, but also directly calls into question the reliability of our nuclear deterrent systems. This makes it easier to understand why public recognition of such realities remains an absolute taboo for some countries.

Finally, the subject of abductions, as controversial as it is disturbing, raises a major concern: how could a government publicly acknowledge such a reality if it is unable to protect its citizens?

God, the Nommo and the Martians

The idea of non-human intelligences is not foreign to many cultures around the world. In some traditions, it is even ancient, central, and fully integrated into the vision of the cosmos. Among the Dogon people of Mali, traditional cosmology describes a universe populated by active non-human entities. The founding narrative evokes the Nommo, beings who came from the sky, bearers of knowledge and fundamental symbolic orders. These entities actively participate in the organisation of the human world. They are presented as the origin of speech, cosmic rhythms, and social structures. In this worldview, humans are not alone in thinking, transmitting, or ordering. The presence of non-human intelligences of celestial origin is conceived as natural and integrated.

This openness is also found in Mesoamerican traditions. Among the Nahuas and Mayas, mythological narratives do not strictly separate the sky, the earth and the invisible. Indeed, gods, forces, stars and beings from “above” form a relational fabric. The sky is not empty or silent, it is populated.

Similarly, among many indigenous peoples of the Amazon and Southeast Asia, founding narratives include non-human life forms endowed with intention and speech. These animistic or relational cosmologies do not consider non-human otherness to be an impossibility or a myth, but rather an integral part of life, with which it is natural to form relationships.

Conversely, modern Western cultures struggle to conceive of autonomous non-human otherness. This closed-mindedness can be explained by a threefold heritage: first, Christian monotheism, which accords humans a special place among living beings, as beings endowed with an immortal soul and invested with an exclusive bond with God. Second, Enlightenment rationalism, which values proof and reproducible observation and tends to dismiss unverifiable narratives. Finally, modern humanism, which makes humans the driving force of progress and the central subject of knowledge. These three pillars have shaped a relationship with reality in which any non-human entity endowed with intelligence is perceived as a challenge to the established order, not through hostility, but through excessive otherness. However, the aim here is not to question the achievements of modern science, nor to promote dubious ideas or reject Western cultural heritage, but to remind us that the possibility of non-human otherness is present in several cosmologies.

Yet even within the Christian world, the lines are shifting. In 2008, Father José Gabriel Funes, then director of the Vatican Observatory, stated in an interview with L’Osservatore Romano:

“Just as there are a multitude of creatures on Earth, there could be other beings, even intelligent ones, created by God. This does not contradict our faith, because we cannot set limits on God’s creative freedom. [...] If we consider earthly creatures as “brothers” and “sisters”, why couldn’t we also speak of an “extraterrestrial brother”? “

This position opens up the possibility of integrating the non-human hypothesis into a broader theology of Creation. A few years later, in 2014, Pope Francis himself alluded to this question in a homily devoted to universal welcome. He humorously evoked a possible request for baptism from non-human beings:

‘If, for example, tomorrow an expedition of Martians arrived, and some of them came to us, here... Martians, right? Green, with long noses and big ears, as children draw them... And one of them said, “I want to be baptised!” What would happen?’

(Pope Francis, homily of 12 May 2014, TIME)

Although stated in a figurative manner, this remark shows a symbolic openness. Radical otherness would not necessarily be excluded from the human or spiritual community. Such a stance does not validate the INH hypothesis, but it does create a space for welcoming what is perceived elsewhere as a rupture.

What some cosmologies accept spontaneously, others must slowly come to terms with. The rejection of otherness is not universal, it is cultural.

A presence that is difficult to conceive

For seventy-five years, the phenomenon of UAPs has been denied, studied, ridiculed, and then timidly reintegrated into institutional spheres. It seems to oscillate between technical recognition and symbolic repression. For it is not only an object of investigation, it is an otherness, a possible presence, which our conceptual, political, and cultural tools still struggle to accommodate.

History shows that humanity has already been confronted with the reality of a form of life that remained unknown for a long time. Despite a biomass estimated at 12 gigatons of carbon, mycelium lives underground, hidden from our view, but very much present.

A phenomenon can be observed, described and reported without necessarily existing socially or politically. Data that lacks a shared framework for validation may remain invisible or be deliberately dismissed. Meteorites offer a striking example of this. Long relegated to the realm of peasant fables, they nevertheless had no shortage of witnesses. But no theory at the time allowed for their existence. It was not until 1803 that science finally granted them real status, following the fall of L’Aigle and the work of Ernst Chladni.

All recognition rests on a fragile line between what we accept as true and what we dismiss as uncertain.

In such a context, one question becomes central: what would constitute proof? How can we define what is considered irrefutable proof today? Who would have the authority to validate it? According to what collective criteria of truth? We will devote our next article to this delicate reflection, at the crossroads of epistemology, neuroscience, law and social norms.

Review and translation by K.