Group of Lawmakers to Study Unidentified Flying Objects; Body will Determine If Anomalous Phenomena Could be Security Threats

The Yomiuri Shimbun

12:33 JST, June 7, 2024

A nonpartisan group of lawmakers established to study unidentified anomalous phenomena, including unidentified flying objects, from a national security perspective held its inaugural meeting in the Diet on Thursday.

The group is expected to call on the government to establish a specialized agency to handle the issue.

About 30 members of the upper and lower houses from the ruling and opposition parties attended the meeting, which was chaired by former Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada, who is also the chairperson of the Liberal Democratic Party’s Diet Affairs Committee. The secretary general of the roughly 80-member group is former Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi.

The group points out that UFOs and other such objects could pose a serious threat to national security if they turn out to be state-of-the-art secret weapons or unmanned spy drones from other countries.

“There are many things in this world we don’t understand. How we deal with them is very important,” Hamada said in the meeting.

The U.S. Department of Defense has a special task force in charge of investigating flying objects, according to the group. It hopes the government will share information with the United States through the specialized agency.