While the U.S. continues to struggle with baby formula shortages, record-high gas prices and inflation, lawmakers are tackling a mystery — UFOs.
The House Intelligence Committee’s Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation subcommittee will be hearing testimony about “unidentified aerial phenomena,” also known as UFOs, CNN reported.
The hearing, which is being chaired by Rep. André Carson (D.-Ind.) is expected to start at 9 a.m. and can be watched via livestream.
“The American people expect and deserve their leaders in government and intelligence to seriously evaluate and respond to any potential national security risks -- especially those we do not fully understand,” Carson said, according to CNN.
Ronald Moultrie, undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security, and Scott Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence will speak during the subcommittee hearing. Once public testimony is done, the panel will have a classified briefing.
Videos of encounters that have happened to military personnel will be shown, ABC News reported.
>>Previous coverage: Pentagon officially releases UFO videos
This is the first public hearing held by members of Congress in more than half a century and comes after the release of a report by the government’s intelligence community that disclosed investigations into flying objects that had been seen zooming through restricted military airspace over the past several decades.
Videos of the encounters have been unclassified over recent years.
The report said there have been 144 instances of “unidentified aerial phenomenon” investigated. Of those, only one was explained.
But investigators did not find any evidence of whether the objects were extraterrestrial or if they were technology developed by a country such as Russia or China, which is why the counterterrorism and counterintelligence committee is holding the hearings, since there could be devices that were created by a foreign government that the U.S. does not know about.
>>Previous coverage: Barack Obama on UFO videos: ‘We don’t know exactly what they are’
The report also did not use “alien” or “extraterrestrial” to describe the objects, ABC News reported.
The hearing comes five months after the National Defense Authorization Act required the establishment of a permanent military office to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena. The order also required a yearly report and semiannual congressional briefings, according to Space.com.
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