By Tim Binnall
On the heels of the news that the United States Navy plans to draft new guidelines for pilots to report UFOs, a spokesman for the service says that it is unlikely that any of the information will wind up in the hands of the public. The dispiriting but not-altogether-surprising clarification came by way of a statement made to the Washington Post by Joe Gradisher who was speaking on behalf of the office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare.
He explained that "military aviation safety organizations always retain reporting of hazards to aviation as privileged information in order to preserve the free and honest prioritization and discussion of safety among aircrew." Beyond that Gradisher noted that "any report generated as a result of these investigations will, by necessity, include classified information on military operations." With these factors in play, he flatly stated: "no release of information to the general public is expected."
UFO enthusiasts will no doubt view this development in a disappointing light, but there remains the possibility that insights from these encounters could eventually see the light of day by way of some kind of sanitized report which strips out the classified information. While this may not satisfy everyone in the infamously fractured UFO research community, it would certainly be a refreshing move on the part of the government, which has long kept details about the enigmatic phenomenon close to its proverbial vest.
At the very least, considering the revelation that Congress members and their respective staffs recently received briefings on these enigmatic encounters, it would seem likely that there would be a future meeting to discuss what has been gleaned from these new reporting guidelines. And so, as has been the case with the UFO phenomenon seemingly from the beginning, those hoping for an answer to the grand mystery of it all are left to wait and see what happens.