UFO

UFO means unidentified flying object. It became the public word in the early 1950s, after the 1947 reports, when the Air Force needed a name that was not “flying saucer.” The point of the new name was the same as the later ones. It described an object in the air that had not been identified. It did not say what the object was.

The files used UFO for decades, including through Project Blue Book. From the 2010s the official word became UAP, unidentified anomalous phenomena, because the reports were no longer only things that flew. The Department of War still publishes the files at an address called war.gov/ufo. The address kept the older word. The statements did not.

The term you will hear now is UAP, and beside it non-human intelligence. UFO is the word people still search. It is the same record. Neither word is a finding that the object came from somewhere else.

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