Unidentified: What are UAPs and why did we ditch the term 'UFOs'?

People have come up with an overwhelming list of questions after the recent hearing on Wednesday involving former US military officials who claimed that the government is trying to cover up a project involving Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) as they are now known, which left people scratching their heads.

According to Geo News, one of the three former US military officers, who testified Wednesday before a House Oversight Subcommittee, asserted that the US was trying to cover up a project that "recovers and reverse-engineers unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

The hearing was called on as the lawmakers are urging the government to become more open about UFOs.

Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot, David Fravor, a retired US Navy commander, and David Grusch, a former Air Force intelligence officer, claimed at the hearing that they had witnessed or encountered UFOs or UAPs which the government has not revealed to the people.

Despite this information being potential proof of aliens' existence, many people have been more curious about the term "UAP" that has been used to address "UFOs".

What are UAPs? What does the acronym stand for?

The acronym UAP stands for "unidentified anomalous phenomena," a catch-all term for objects detected in the air, sea and space that defy easy explanation.

Previously, the acronym stood for "unidentified aerial phenomena" until the Pentagon updated its terminology in December 2022 to include "submerged and trans-medium objects," followed by Nasa and other agencies.

Unidentified anomalous phenomena are defined as unidentified objects spotted by pilots or detected by sensors that cannot be immediately explained.

Hundreds of military and commercial pilots have reported UAP encounters, with some being explained as weather balloons, drones, or small aircraft.

David Grusch, an ex-intelligence officer, revealed that the government has been working on a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program. However, the Pentagon has no evidence of such a program, according to a spokesperson.

Meanwhile, David Fravor and Ryan Graves shared their firsthand experiences with mysterious objects while piloting military aircraft, stating that the incidents are not rare or isolated and that the American people "deserve to know what is happening in their skies."

Why isn't "UFO" used anymore?

UAPs, originally known as unidentified flying objects (UFOs), were first reported by Kenneth Arnold in 1947. The Air Force coined the term "UFO" in 1952, following a craze about flying discs and saucers.

A flying disc supposedly crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, which the military claimed it was part of a weather balloon system. The term remains widely used today.

UFOs gained cultural prominence in the 1990s and early 2000s, with science fiction books, movies, and TV shows featuring alien creatures and spacecraft, such as "The X-Files".

The term "unidentified aerial phenomena" has been used by UFO researchers since 1987, when the International Symposium on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena — a gathering of self-described UFOlogists marking the 40-year anniversary of the Roswell incident — was covered by outlets.

However, the official shift from "UFO" to "UAP" began in 2020 when the Pentagon established the Navy-led "UAP Task Force" to investigate reports, predecessor to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

UFOs were associated with conspiratorial and paranoid thinking, discouraging pilots from sharing their experiences, fearing negative consequences on their careers or reputations. Graves, another fighter pilot, emphasized the stigma attached to UAP, which challenges national security, CBS News reported.

"It silences commercial pilots who fear professional repercussions, discourages witnesses, and is only compounded by recent government claims questioning the credibility of eyewitness testimony," he said.

Experts' opinion on UAP sightings

Nasa has conducted a panel of experts to examine the government's data-collection efforts on UAPs to better understand their potential and found "absolutely no convincing evidence" of extraterrestrial activity in sightings.

Although they did not dismiss the possibility out of hand and a report is set to be issued soon, the panel believes there is no explicit data suggesting a connection between UAPs and extraterrestrial life.

In the meantime, Nasa focuses on unclassified material to improve coordination and collect better information about UAPs, aiming to improve understanding of their potential.

They emphasize the need for higher-quality data to better understand these unknown entities.

David Spergel, a cosmologist and panel chairman, believes that using multiple cellphones with good timestamp data can infer the location and velocity of an object, and high-quality, uniformly selected data could be used to identify novel objects.