Boston expert says recent flying objects shot down by US could be "adversarial"
BOSTON - In the past few weeks, the United States has shot down four unidentified flying objects, with the first believed to be a Chinese spy balloon. Aerospace experts say the latest sightings appear to be new objects.
Joshua Semeter is the director of Boston University's Center for Space Physics. He is also part of a panel researching unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). The acronym has replaced UFO.
"The term UAP came about because UFO has an inherent stigma attached to it as being extraterrestrial," smiles Semeter, "That is meant to embody all forms of unidentified objects, not just aliens."
The panel looks at UAP objects from a NASA perspective. He says pilot accounts of these most recent objects resemble UAPs seen by Navy pilots in recent years. In his opinion, they are too small to hold the amount of gas needed to be a balloon at that altitude. A report from The Associated Press claims the objects are octagonal in nature.
"Talking about an object composed of flat facets, that almost suggest to be designed to be radar stealth, leads me to think terrestrial adversarial technologies we are not aware of," explains Semeter. "All of this points to technologies on the cutting edge that we may not know about yet. It could be technologies of our adversaries or even technologies of our own government. A sort of right hand is not communicating with the left."
The work his panel is doing is not classified. They study UAPs with abnormal flight patterns or locations. In particular, they look at objects with rapid acceleration, velocity or maneuverability.
"A vast majority of these UAPs have an explanation. They are either abandoned balloons, drones, aerial space junk," lists Semeter. "Our panel is focused on the small subset of events that tends to exhibit unexpected flight characteristics. There actually are random photographs from commercial airline pilots of objects that look like the type described recently."
