Japan lawmakers probe UFO security 'threat'

The non-partisan group, which counts former defence ministers among its 80-plus members, will urge Japan to ramp up abilities to detect and analyse unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), more commonly known as UFOs.
Although the phenomenon is often associated with little green men in the popular imagination, it has become a hot political topic in the United States, reports BSS.
Washington said last year it was examining 510 UFO reports -- more than triple the number in its 2021 file -- and NASA in September said it wants to shift the conversation "from sensationalism to science".
The Japanese parliamentarians hope to bring the domestic perception of UAP sin line with its ally's following several scares related to suspected surveillance operations.
"It is extremely irresponsible of us to be resigned to the fact thatsomething is unknowable, and to keep turning a blind eye to theunidentified," group member and former defence minister Yasukazu Hamada saidbefore the launch.
In an embarrassment for Japan's defence ministry, unauthorised footage of adocked helicopter destroyer recently proliferated on Chinese social mediaafter an apparent drone intrusion into a military facility.
And last year the ministry said it "strongly presumes" that flying objectssighted in Japanese skies in recent years were surveillance balloons sent byChina.
In Japan, UFOs have long been seen as "an occult matter that has nothing todo with politics", opposition lawmaker Yoshiharu Asakawa, a pivotal member ofthe group, has said.
But if they turn out to be "cutting-edge secret weapons or spying drones indisguise, they can pose a significant threat to our nation's security".
The US Defence Department in 2022 established the All-Domain AnomalyResolution Office (AARO) to investigate UAPs.
An AARO report last year designated the region stretching from western Japanto China as a "hotspot" for UAP sightings, based on trends between 1996 and2023.
It later concluded in a congressionally ordered 60-page review that there wasno evidence of alien technology, or attempts by the US government to hide itfrom the public.
The Japanese lawmakers will push for the country to create an equivalent tothe Pentagon's AARO and to further boost intelligence cooperation with theUnited States.
Christopher Mellon, a UAP expert and former US intelligence official, willgive an online talk to the group on Thursday.