Talk about long haul travel. The truth is apparently out there and what’s happening in the skies above our earth with UFOs, or UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) as they’re now known, is being taken very seriously by governments, military and civilian agencies around the world. The phenomenon is nothing new but do we need this right now? Really – In 2020 – haven’t they heard of social distancing? Perhaps ET should just go home.

The matter was given high profile and mainstream legitimacy when the Pentagon, this past April, declassified three previously top secret US Navy videos. They show UAPs photographed by pilots, giving credence to the phenomena.

“The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified,”’ according to a Pentagon spokesperson.

The videos captured what Navy fighter pilots saw on their video sensors during training flights in 2004 and 2015.

“I can tell you, I think it was not from this world,” retired Cmdr. David Fravor told ABC News in 2017 of what he saw during a routine training mission on Nov. 14, 2004 off the coast of California.

In 2004, F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter pilots, and sensor instrumentation associated with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, reported unknown aerial objects. According to Fravor, a radar operator aboard the USS Princeton told him to investigate a target at 80,000 feet (24,000 m) that had apparently moved rapidly down to the sea before stopping at 20,000 feet (6,100 m).

During 2014-2015, fighter pilots associated with the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group reported unknown aerial objects. These UAPs were reported in the mainstream media and some of the involved pilots subsequently gave interviews about their experiences.

The now well known videos show encounters by jets from Nimitz and Theodore Roosevelt with unusually shaped, fast-moving aircraft. The videos feature cockpit display data and infrared imagery.

A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that the videos were made by naval aviators and that they are “part of a larger issue of an increased number of training range incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena in recent years.”

Schomberg’s Andre Milne, of Unicorn Aerospace, argues the Nimitz UAP incident is in fact not only an extremely serious threat to US national security, but to Canada’s as well.

“Speaking strictly from a military defence position, there is zero doubt the Nimitz battle group’s threat detection and response capabilities were probed by an unknown threat … with technology far superior than anything ever documented on multiple primary radar and sonar targeting systems,”?Milne said.

He’s pushing for Notices to Airmen (NOTAM) through the International Civil Aviation Organization, an agency of the United Nations. This would notify all pilots in the air when UAPs are encountered.

The sightings continue.

This past Aug. 19, Russian astronaut Ivan Vagner filmed several dots that appear to have lined up in space over the Earth. He filmed his 52-second video from the ISS and it does appear as a string of lights in an angled line.

There have been many official responses to the growing phenomenon.

This past Aug. 4, US Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist approved the establishment of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF). The Department of the Navy, under the cognizance of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, will lead the UAPTF.

The UAPTF is charged with improving its understanding of, and gaining insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs. The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to US national security.

DOD takes incursions by unauthorized aircraft in US air space very seriously.

The Department of Transport, Department of National Defence, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the National Research Council have all dealt with UFO investigations.

From Project Magnet (1950), Project Second Story (1952), through 1978, the federal government has been keeping tabs on such “visitors.”

Currently, NAV Canada, a company that owns and operates Canada’s civil air navigation service, does have a procedure for reporting sightings. Their Aviation Occurrence Reporting Procedure is used to address instances of unauthorized or unknown aircraft in NAV Canada managed airspace. A spokesperson said depending on these details, NAV Canada may send a report to the Department of National Defence (DND), the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), Transport Canada (TC) and/or the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Some 9,000 government documents, ranging from defence department memos about “flying saucers” to RCMP reports by officers who investigated UFO sightings across the country, are available on the Library and Archives Canada website.

The documents show a “fairly consistent track record of Canadian official involvement and interest in the subject, almost to the present time,” said UFO researcher Chris Rutkowski said. “People in Canada have been way ahead of the United States in the sense that we’ve had a body of evidence and a body of documentation showing official interest in UFOs.”

Rutkowski says Canadian authorities have historically been more transparent than their US counterparts and that Canadians saw UFOs more as a scientific curiosity rather than a military threat.

The issue is treated with high regard at the world’s governing body.

The United Nations has an Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) that’s responsible for promoting international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space. UNOOSA serves as the secretariat for the General Assembly’s only committee dealing exclusively with international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space: the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). Some say it’s a precursor for making first contact.

More and more governments are creating protocols and reporting mechanisms to better prepare pilots.

Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) have protocols when encountering an unidentified flying object (UFO) that could potentially pose a threat to national security. Their military is also tasked with looking into reports of UFO sightings from the public.

Looking back, most of us are familiar with the mysteries surrounding Roswell, Area 51 and Project Blue Book, which included UFO reports investigated between 1951 and 1970. The actual number of UFO reports in Blue Book files is between 12,000 and 15,000 cases.

The truth it out there, and with global, cooperative efforts, the answers may be within our grasp. As governments and agencies work together, we will be better prepared to handle potential threats.