SAN ANTONIO — One San Antonio-based UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) researcher is keenly anticipating the late-June release of a federal UFO report which may reveal more on what the government knows about a decades-long phenomenon.
“With this particular report, we’re a little bit more optimistic on this one because of the interest UFO phenomena has had in especially the last three years,” said Ken Jordan, who leads the San Antonio chapter of Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). “We are the oldest UFO research investigative organization in the world.”
UFOs and the prospect of life existing in the vastness of space have long been engrained in pop culture.
The resurgence in public interest in the UFO phenomena, however, began with a 2017 New York Times report detailed U.S. Navy pilots’ witness accounts of unusually fast-moving objects mid-flight.
Jordan, who served in the U.S. Army, believes the government knows more than it's willing to release.
The San Antonio native admits there was a time when he didn’t care much for UFOs.
“I was a skeptic. I didn’t really believe in UFOs that much,” Jordan said.
But that belief has since changed, resulting in Jordan performing more than 300 investigations into UFO sightings over the past decade.
“We do have a lot of sightings in Texas. We have a lot in San Antonio and that could be because of the high military presence that we have here,” Jordan said.
The U.S. Department of Defense’s impending report, set to be presented to Congress by June 29, may highlight UFOs seeing by Navy pilots in the early 2000s and delve deeper into the Pentagon program that’s been tracking UFOs for the past 14 years.
Jordan said while not all sightings are credible, there are plenty incidents that can’t be explained by claiming weather anomalies, drone or plane in the sky.
“We’re hoping they’re going to come out and lay down some kind of a path toward disclosure. It’s not a point of trying to find Mr. ET, it’s what Mr. ET can do for our planet.”