There’s no phone number. No email address. Not even a website. More than a year since the Pentagon launched an office to investigate UFO sightings, there is still no hotline for pilots and others to report mysterious objects directly to the investigators.
Some witnesses say they’re getting frustrated and feel forced to turn to Capitol Hill or outside groups to tell their stories. Others say it discourages them from attempting to flag such incidents at all because they’re worried about recrimination if they report to the FAA or military supervisors.
“There is an immense amount of data that could be collected out there, from general aviation or commercial aviation pilots that are afraid to come forward at this point in time,” said Chris Van Voorhis, a commercial airline pilot who says he regularly sees “self-luminous” orbs high up in the atmosphere flying in strange formations.
Van Voorhis said he hasn’t reported those through any official channel because the methods for doing so are so opaque.
“I’m not even sure what they are, to tell you the truth,” he said. And even if he were to report the incidents, he believes it would “fall on deaf ears.”
The reporting issues are highlighting the tensions over gathering data on so-called unidentified anomalous phenomena. Pilots wary they won’t be taken seriously hold back from saying anything. That means information that might identify objects as benign, as foreign surveillance tools or — yes, maybe even something extraterrestrial — simply isn’t in the system and may not be for quite a while.
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