The US Department of Defence is continuously tracking hundreds of suspicious “anomalous phenomena” that may threaten national security, it revealed during a Senate hearing this week, including one <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/2023/02/16/was-mosul-orb-ufo-just-a-stray-us-spy-balloon/" target="_blank">unidentified object seen in the Middle East</a>. The director of the Pentagon's new All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Sean Kirkpatrick, told the Senate Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities that sightings of <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/the-americas/us-intelligence-ufo-sightings-cannot-be-explained-1.1248889" target="_blank">unidentified flying objects (UFOs)</a> were on the rise and that the office he leads is currently looking into more than 650 sightings. That number is a sharp <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/us-news/2023/01/13/us-records-hundreds-more-ufo-sightings/" target="_blank">increase from what was previously reported</a> in January. “I should also state clearly for the record that in our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity,” Mr Kirkpatrick said. He shared that a UFO was seen over Iraq in July last year, showing the committee <a href="https://www.dvidshub.net/video/880273/middle-east-object" target="_blank">declassified video</a> of the sighting. In the footage, an object can be seen moving near an MQ-9 drone, which attempts to follow the fast-moving object with its camera. The object appears to be silver in colour and metallic. Mr Kirkpatrick said the office deemed the object “not [to be] exhibiting anomalous behaviour”, though it was still classified as unidentified due to a lack of data. “It is going to be virtually impossible to fully identify that, just based off of that video,” CNN cited as Mr Kirkpatrick saying on the sighting.