A few times in the last two or three days I heard the term "unidentified aerial phenomena", abbreviated as "UAP", being used by the US government and media to refer to what mere mortals used to call "UFOs", or, better yet, "maybe aliens".

Is this a new term? Never heard it being used before. I don't like it more than UFO, and it doesn't sound much more technically correct to me. Sure, maybe the object is not 'flying'... but, on that same vein, is it really an 'aerial phenomenon'? Whatever that means....

Is this like a search-engine optimization type thing, where they change the term a little bit to separate their new press releases from the older literature?

So, what's up with 'UAPs'? (example article)