UFO sightings: Aviation expert says it's 'ridiculous' to think we're alone

A US government report into UFO sightings is raising questions of life outside Earth, with one American aviation expert saying with the many billions of stars, it's "ridiculous" to think we are alone in the universe.

For the first time, the United States Government released an unclassified report at the weekend detailing dozens of incidents over the past two decades in which US military have encountered UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), also known as UFOs (unidentified flying objects).

Extraordinary footage has also been released by the US Pentagon showing the mysterious movements of UPEs.

John Nance - a former US Airforce pilot, author and acclaimed aviation expert - this morning told Breakfast there had been at least 144 credible sightings of UAPs, including from US government people or Navy pilots.

"This is really fascinating and it is a milestone even though the report was a little bit watered down, the one that's released to the public," he said.

The nine-page report does not confirm nor deny the existence of aliens. 

"Whether they are extra-terrestrial or not is of course the open question that nobody actually put imprimatur on, but I'll tell you this, I have no other explanation for them," Nance said.

He added that in the past UFOs were considered "an eye rolling joke" but that we hadn't had this hard evidence before.

"I think we have to put everything aside and say two things, number one, there are so many billions of stars out there that it would be ridiculous, as [American astronomer] Carl Sagen said once before he died, to think to think that we're are alone.

"Secondly, if somebody has created inter-stellar space travel they're probably not coming here to harm us and probably have been here for a very long time because it's just like dealing in geology, you're dealing in a different time base.

"I think we can say that if things are what they appear to be and that the explanation is not from this planet then one thing we can say is they've demonstrated no hostile intent whatsoever and that I think is important."

But could they be man-made?

Nance said he has never seen an aircraft move in the same manner as the UAP in the footage.

"If they were built by Russia or China, yes they would be a threat, but I think that is close to getting ruled out by the flight dynamics."

The video released alongside the report shows an object which is either a solid object or has the characteristics of a solid object, Nance said.

"I can't explain it, there's simply no terrestrial explanation I know to something that is obviously possessed of its own gravitational field and is capable of making a 90 degree turn that would crush an insect, let alone a human.

"We know that this wasn't a visual trick of some sort or maybe inter-dimensional trick, it actually, whatever it is, exists and was in our atmosphere for that period of time."