The Altitude

The Department of War released classified files on Tuesday confirming that the United States Air Force shot down at least one unidentified aerial object.

For approximately eighty years, the phrase "shot down" was the official federal response to any claim involving unidentified aerial phenomena. Reports were shot down in briefings. Sightings were shot down in committee hearings. Personnel accounts were shot down in press releases. The government shot down UFO claims the way other agencies issue parking tickets: routinely, without making eye contact.

(The phrase was accurate the entire time. This was not, until Tuesday, considered relevant.)

The files, authorized for release by Pete Hegseth, include reports of recovered craft, eyewitness accounts from military personnel, and materials that Congress has described as containing information that remains classified. The Air Force apparently decided that some things still needed to remain shot down.

The phrase has now been used in two distinct ways in the same document, in reference to the same objects, across the same eighty years. One usage dismissed the objects. The other one did not.

The investigation is ongoing. The investigators are the same people.