US intelligence office tracking aviation adds then removes UFO from logo

A UFO was added and then removed from the logo of a US intelligence agency.

The temporary logo, which the agency said was posted in error, also seemed to include a Russian fighter jet, leading to many thinking it was a joke, CyberScoop reported this week.

A spokesperson for the National Intelligence Manager for the Air Domain, an office under the Director of National Intelligence tracking aviation, told CyberScoop that the office, also known as NIM-Aviation, “erroneously posted an unofficial and incorrect logo”.

The office is the main adviser for the director on air domain matters. The office locates and analyses intelligence concerning threats in the sky.

In June of last year, the office was a co-author on a report given to Congress detailing unidentified aerial phenomena.

It remains unclear when the logo was first posted, but documentarian and UFO aficionado Jeremy Corbell tweeted the logo on Saturday night.

“Not a bad new logo for the National Intelligence Manager for Aviation. A Lazar UFO in the official seal? Hahahhahaha. Radical. I still can’t believe they did this,” he wrote.

On the military community site Sandboxx, one user wrote that “it’s not uncommon for government agencies (from all over the world) to accidentally include depictions of foreign aircraft in official graphics, but it seems extremely unlikely that an intelligence organization specializing in aviation would make such a mistake”.

The author noted that the jet in the logo was similar to a Russian Sukhoi Su-57 Felon while some Twitter users also noted that it looked like an Adobe stock image.

The US Navy confirmed in 2019 that leaked footage revealing unidentified objects tracked by pilots was real but not for the public to view.

One object, referred to as the Tic Tac because of its resemblance to the candy, was filmed as it dropped from 60,000 feet (18,2 km) to 50 feet (15 metres) in just seconds in California in 2004.

Pilot Chad Underwood told New York Magazine in 2019 that “the part that drew our attention was how it wasn’t behaving within the normal laws of physics”.

The word typically used for these things by the public, UFOs or Unidentified Flying Objects, is not used by the military which calls them UAPs – Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.