The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released its highly anticipated UFO report, but what it had to say left many with more questions than answers. 

Officially titled “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP), the nine-page account concludes that all but one of the 144 flying object sightings recorded by the Pentagon since 2004 are “literally unidentifiable,” according to Politico. Among those 143 of unknown origin, 18 demonstrated a level of technological sophistication beyond U.S. military comprehension. 

“[UFOs] pose a hazard to safety of flight and could pose a broader danger if some instances represent sophisticated collection against U.S. military activities by a foreign government or demonstrate a breakthrough aerospace technology by a potential adversary,” the report states. Those documented “demonstrate an array of aerial behaviors.” Some “appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion.” Others “have been detected near military facilities or by aircraft carrying the [U.S. government’s] most advanced sensor systems.”

While the assessment holds that there is more than just “one single explanation for UAP,” it does not offer any hypotheses to account for the existence of apparent aerial phenomena that disprove the rules of aerodynamics as we know them. 

Essentially, the report amounts to little more than a long-winded way of saying “we know nothing,” according to Vox. The findings are anticlimactic for UFO believers, whose hope for advancements in the area was rekindled following 2017 New York Times coverage of a little-known Pentagon project detailing military pilots’ UAP sightings.

Government officials continue to acknowledge the possibility of extraterrestrial life, but maintain the need for more advanced technology to confirm any definitive “non-terrestrial explanation[s]” for the mystifying aerial observations to date.