112-416: The Val Johnson Incident refers to an alleged UFO encounter by Marshall County , Minnesota Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson in 1979. Johnson reported that while he was on patrol near Stephen, Minnesota about 2 AM on August 27, 1979, he saw a beam of light just above the road. According to Johnson, the beam sped towards him, his squad car was engulfed in light, and he heard glass breaking. Johnson said he
224-550: A Pew research poll found that 51% in the United States thought that UFOs reported by people in the military were likely to be evidence of intelligent life from beyond the Earth. In August 2021, Gallup , with a question not specific to military reports, only found that 41% of adults believed some UFOs involve alien spacecraft from other planets. This Gallup poll showed 44% of men and 38% of women believed this. This average of 41% in 2021
336-507: A 1969 USAF document, known as the Bolender memo, along with later government documents, revealed that non-public U.S. government UFO investigations continued after 1970. The Bolender memo first stated that "reports of unidentified flying objects that could affect national security ... are not part of the Blue Book system," indicating that more serious UFO incidents already were handled outside
448-428: A 1996 poll by Newsweek , 20% of Americans believed that UFOs were more likely to be proof of alien life than to have a natural scientific explanation. In December 2017, a new round of media attention started when The New York Times broke the story of the secret Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program that was funded from 2007 to 2012 with $ 22 million spent on the program. Following this story, along with
560-505: A UFO and reported recovered memories of their experience that became ever more elaborate as the years went by. In 1966, 5% of Americans reported to Gallup that "they had at some time seen something they thought was a 'flying saucer'", 96% said "they had heard or read about flying saucers", and 46% of these "thought they were 'something real' rather than just people's imagination". Responding to UFO enthusiasm, there have always been consistent yet less popular efforts made at debunking many of
672-502: A conventional explanation that was "boring". In a piece originally published in Newsweek , astrophysicist Adam Frank wrote, "If it's handled well, the [UAP] commission could do more than shed much-needed light on UAPs. It could also give Americans a masterclass in the most basic, most important, and unfortunately, most boring topic in science: Standards of Evidence" and that "when it comes to UAPS/UFOs there are no such standards. It's just
784-468: A daily occurrence with one particularly famous example being the Roswell incident in 1947 where remnants of a downed observation balloon were recovered by a farmer and confiscated by military personnel. UFO enthusiasts in the early 1950s started to organize local "saucer clubs" modeled after science fiction fan clubs of the 1930s and 1940s, with some growing to national and international prominence within
896-555: A decade. In 1950, three influential books were published— Donald Keyhoe 's The Flying Saucers Are Real , Frank Scully 's Behind the Flying Saucers , and Gerald Heard 's The Riddle of the Flying Saucers . Each guilelessly proposed that the extraterrestrial UFO hypothesis was the correct explanation and that the visits were in response to detonations of atomic weapons . These books also introduced Americans to, as Eghanian puts it, "the crusading whistleblower dedicated to breaking
1008-407: A familiar object." The regulation also said UFOBs were to be investigated as a "possible threat to the security of the United States" and "to determine technical aspects involved." The regulation went on to say that "it is permissible to inform news media representatives on UFOB's when the object is positively identified as a familiar object" but added: "For those objects which are not explainable, only
1120-568: A free-for-all." Journalist Keith Kloor criticized the involvement of reality TV personality Travis S. Taylor . Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough confirmed to Kloor for an article on Science Insider, the online news section of the AAAS that Taylor had a leading role on the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and was informally referred to as its chief scientist. Kloor characterized Taylor as "a researcher who believes in
1232-486: A large number of reports since its founding, many of which were from military personnel. The office and ODNI released an 11-page unclassified report on January 12, 2022, prompted by a law that says ODNI must submit a report to Congress yearly. The report covered 247 new UAP sightings going back to March 2021, as well as 119 events before that date that had not been previously examined. The report indicated that there had been "510 UAP reports as of 30 August. 2022", which
SECTION 10
#17330941688521344-427: A phenomenon could, in fact, occur". The research was "being conducted with the thought that the flying objects might be a celestial phenomenon," or that "they might be a foreign body mechanically devised and controlled." Three weeks later in a preliminary defense estimate, the air force investigation decided that, "This 'flying saucer' situation is not all imaginary or seeing too much in some natural phenomenon. Something
1456-612: A professor of philosophy and religion at the University of North Carolina, says that what is seen on a screen, "if it conforms to certain criteria, is interpreted as real, even if it is not real and even if one knows it is not real" and that "screen images embed themselves in one's brain and memories" in ways that "can determine how one views one's past and even determine one's future behaviors". The most notable cases of UFO sightings in France include: UFOs have been subject to investigations over
1568-583: A report titled "Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Volume I", which found "no empirical evidence" of alien technology. On April 12, 2021, the Pentagon confirmed the authenticity of pictures and videos gathered by the Task Force, purportedly showing "what appears to be pyramid-shaped objects" hovering above USS Russell in 2019, off
1680-467: A series of sensationalized Pentagon UFO videos leaked by members of the program who became convinced that UFOs were genuine mysteries worth investigating, there was an increase in mainstream attention to UFO stories. In July 2021, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb announced the creation of his Galileo Project which intended to use high-tech astronomical equipment to seek evidence of extraterrestrial artifacts in space and possibly within Earth's atmosphere. This
1792-537: A small number remain unexplained. While unusual sightings have been reported in the sky throughout history, UFOs became culturally prominent after World War II , escalating during the Space Age . Studies and investigations into UFO reports conducted by governments (such as Project Blue Book in the United States and Project Condign in the United Kingdom ), as well as by organisations and individuals have occurred over
1904-442: A threat to national security. Officials were concerned about the "risk of false alerts", of "falsely identifying the real as phantom", and of mass hysteria caused by sightings. In 1947, Brigadier General George F. Schulgen of Army Air Corps Intelligence, warned "the first reported sightings might have been by individuals of Communist sympathies with the view to causing hysteria and fear of a secret Russian weapon." In November 2011,
2016-476: A trail, occasional formation flying, and "evasive" behavior "when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar", suggesting a controlled craft. It was therefore recommended in late September 1947 that an official Air Force investigation be set up. It was also recommended that other government agencies should assist in the investigation. Project Sign's final report, published in early 1949, stated that while some UFOs appeared to represent actual aircraft, there
2128-529: Is Halley's Comet : first recorded by Chinese astronomers in 240 BC and possibly as early as 467 BC as a strange and unknown "guest light" in the sky. As a bright comet that visits the inner solar system every 76 years, it was often identified as a unique isolated event in ancient historical documents whose authors were unaware that it was a repeating phenomenon. Such accounts in history often were treated as supernatural portents, angels , or other religious omens . While UFO enthusiasts have sometimes commented on
2240-432: Is LESS to these stories than meets the eye". People have always observed the sky and have sometimes seen what, to some, appeared to be unusual sights including phenomena as varied as comets , bright meteors , one or more of the five planets that can be readily seen with the naked eye , planetary conjunctions , and atmospheric optical phenomena such as parhelia and lenticular clouds . One particularly famous example
2352-515: Is certainly familiar to historians of religion, a domain of human existence marked by deep divisions over interpretations of belief", and science too has found itself engaged increasing amounts of "boundary work" (which is "asserting and reasserting the borders between legitimate and illegitimate scientific research and ideas, between what may and what may not refer to itself as science") with regard to UFO questions. Eghigian points out our current "stark divide did not happen overnight, and its roots lie in
SECTION 20
#17330941688522464-511: Is really flying around." A further review by the intelligence and technical divisions of the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field reached the same conclusion. It reported that "the phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious," and there were disc-shaped objects, metallic in appearance, as big as man-made aircraft. They were characterized by "extreme rates of climb [and] maneuverability", general lack of noise, absence of
2576-637: Is that they cannot discard the possibility that some fraction of the very strange 22% of unexplained cases might be due to distant and advanced civilizations. All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office ( AARO ) is an office within the United States Office of the Secretary of Defense that investigates unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and other phenomena in
2688-594: Is the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. The UAPTF is disestablished, with its resources transferred to AARO. 50 U.S.C. § 3373a ( IAA 2022 ) requires quarterly classified reporting to Congress beginning no later than June 2022. On August 30, 2023, the AARO's public website was launched, without an email address or phone number for military and civilian UAP reports, as previously mandated by NDAA legislation. On November 7, 2023, it
2800-521: Is the only location of a life form that is civilized and organized like ours?". Politico reported on August 10, 2023, that "AARO is required by law to launch a public-facing website where witnesses can directly report potential UFO sightings" but that this "website is tied up in Pentagon red tape". A public website was launched for AARO on August 31, 2023. Writing for Politico , Bryan Bender quoted Christopher Mellon , former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and an advisor to
2912-534: The AAAS , James E. McDonald said he believed science had failed to mount adequate studies of the problem and criticized the Condon Report and earlier studies by the USAF as scientifically deficient. He also questioned the basis for Condon's conclusions and argued that the reports of UFOs have been "laughed out of scientific court". J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer who worked as a USAF consultant from 1948, sharply criticized
3024-611: The Brazilian Air Force 's 1977 Operação Prato (Operation Saucer). France has had an ongoing investigation (GEPAN/SEPRA/ GEIPAN ) within its space agency Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) since 1977; the government of Uruguay has had a similar investigation since 1989. On October 31, 2008, the National Archives of Brazil began receiving from the Aeronautical Documentation and History Center part of
3136-840: The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), FBI , CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), as well as military intelligence agencies of the Army and U.S. Navy , in addition to the Air Force. Following the large U.S. surge in sightings in June and early July 1947, on July 9, 1947, United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) intelligence, in cooperation with the FBI, began a formal investigation into selected sightings with characteristics that could not be immediately rationalized, such as Kenneth Arnold's. The USAAF used "all of its top scientists" to determine whether "such
3248-753: The Falcon Lake incident in Manitoba and the Shag Harbour UFO incident in Nova Scotia. Early Canadian studies included Project Magnet (1950–1954) and Project Second Storey (1952–1954), supported by the Defence Research Board . U.S. investigations into UFOs include: In addition to these, thousands of documents released under FOIA also indicate that many U.S. intelligence agencies collected (and still collect) information on UFOs. These agencies include
3360-556: The Kenneth Arnold incident . "Unidentified flying object" (UFO) has been in-use since 1947. The acronym, "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt , for the USAF. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO". The term UFO became widespread during
3472-542: The Office of Naval Intelligence used to "standardize collection and reporting" of sightings of UFOs. UAPTF was detailed in a June 2020 hearing of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence . The UAPTF issued a preliminary report in June 2021. NASA 's UAP independent study team held a public meeting in June 2023 showing further UAP footage released by AARO. In March 2024, AARO released
Val Johnson incident - Misplaced Pages Continue
3584-732: The Office of Naval Intelligence . After the June 2020 Senate hearing, Senator Marco Rubio requested the release of video footage of unexplained aerial vehicles collected by the United States Navy , including the Pentagon UFO videos . On June 24, 2020, the Intelligence Committee voted to require United States Intelligence Community and the United States Department of Defense to publicly track and analyze data collected on unexplained aerial vehicles. A report from
3696-488: The White House released an official response to two petitions asking the U.S. government to acknowledge formally that aliens have visited this planet and to disclose any intentional withholding of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings. According to the response: The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of
3808-402: The combat information center of USS Omaha , purportedly shows a spherical object flying over the ocean as seen through an infrared (IR) camera at night, moving across the screen before stopping and easing down into the water. Science writer Mick West has argued that the pyramid images in the video were most likely an airplane, Jupiter , and stars that were distorted when the lens
3920-443: The '80s and '90s "the floodgates opened, and with them a new generation of UFO advocates". Leaders among them were the artist Budd Hopkins , horror writer Whitley Strieber , historian David Jacobs , and Harvard psychiatrist John Mack . They all defended the "veracity of those claiming to have been kidnapped, examined, and experimented upon by beings from another world", writes Eghigian, as "new missionaries who simultaneously played
4032-409: The 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. Unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAP) first appeared in the late 1960s. UAP has seen increasing usage in the 21st century due to negative cultural associations with "UFO". UAP is sometimes expanded as "unidentified anomalous phenomenon". While technically a UFO refers to any unidentified flying object, in modern popular culture
4144-554: The 1980s and 1990s, UFO stories featured in such pulp "true crime" serials as Unsolved Mysteries while the 33 Volume Time-Life series Mysteries of the Unknown which featured UFO stories sold some 700,000 copies. Kloor writes that by the late 1990s, "other big UFO subthemes had been prominently introduced into pop culture, such as the abduction phenomenon and government conspiracy narrative , via best-selling books and, of course, The X-Files ". Eghigian notes that, by this point,
4256-503: The Air Force issued a statement to the effect that the book was outdated and cadets instead were being informed of the Condon Report 's negative conclusion. Controversy surrounded the report, both before and after its release. It has been observed that the report was "harshly criticized by numerous scientists, particularly at the powerful AIAA ... [which] recommended moderate, but continuous scientific work on UFOs." In an address to
4368-639: The Airborne Object Identification and Management Executive Council (AOIMEXEC). The AOIMEXEC was to be co-chaired by the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security ( USD(I&S) ) and the Director of Operations, Joint Staff , and was to designate an acting director for the AOIMSG. In July 2022, DoD announced the successors to AOIMSG and AOIMEXEC to be AARO and AAROEXEC, respectively. AARO
4480-631: The Arnold incident, reported that over 25% of the U.S. public "believed unidentified flying objects could be from outer space". The cultural phenomenon showed up within some intellectual works such as the 1959 publication of Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky by Carl Jung , a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Starting in 1947, the U.S. Air Force began to record and investigated UFO reports with Project Sign looking into "more than 250 cases" from 1947 to 1949. It
4592-525: The CIA Director (DCI) in December read that "the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention ... Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such a nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or any known types of aerial vehicles." The matter
Val Johnson incident - Misplaced Pages Continue
4704-896: The Chilean Committee for the Study of Unidentified Space Phenomena, supported even by the Chilean Scientific Society. Currently, the organization changed its denomination to SEFAA and its a department of the DGAC (Chile) which in turn depends on the Chilean Air Force . In Canada, the Department of National Defence has dealt with reports, sightings and investigations of UFOs across Canada. In addition to conducting investigations into crop circles in Duhamel, Alberta , it still considers "unsolved"
4816-520: The Condon Committee Report and later wrote two nontechnical books that set forth the case for continuing to investigate UFO reports. Ruppelt recounted his experiences with Project Blue Book, a USAF investigation that preceded Condon's. According to a 1979 New York Times report, "records from the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and other Federal agencies" ("about 900 documents—nearly 900 pages of memos, reports and correspondence") obtained in 1978 through
4928-524: The DOD cleared for publication the AARO "Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Volume 1", which according to the Washington Post, "covered all official U.S. investigatory efforts from 1945 to the present and examined classified and unclassified government archives." The report noted a “proliferation of television programmes, books, movies, and
5040-456: The DoD's special use airspace (SUA), as well as the collection and reporting of anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged, and transmedia objects. AARO is to identify and reduce gaps in operational, intelligence, and counterintelligence capability and to recommend policy changes, whether regulatory or statutory, to reduce those gaps. The organization also aims to increase communication between
5152-548: The Freedom of Information Act request, indicate that "despite official pronouncements for decades that U.F.O.'s were nothing more than misidentified aerial objects and as such were no cause for alarm ... the phenomenon has aroused much serious behind‐the‐scenes concern" in the US government. In particular, officials were concerned over the "approximately 10%" of UFO sightings which remained unexplained, and whether they might be Soviet aircraft and
5264-494: The Harvard Medical School initiated a review of his position which allowed him to retain tenure. However, after this review, as the review board chairman Arnold Relman later put it, Mack was "not taken seriously by his colleagues anymore". Claims of alien abduction have continued, but no other clinicians would continue to speak of them as real in any sense. Nonetheless, these ideas persisted in popular opinion. According to
5376-690: The Navy and Intelligence Services continued its work. In December 2017, the United States Department of Defense confirmed the existence of a defense program used to collect data on military UFO sightings, despite the disbandment of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program in 2012. Like its predecessor program, the UAP Task Force is managed by the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in collaboration with
5488-497: The Program Budget Review process (PBR); USD(I&S) is to invite the participation of Principals from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence . AARO has opened hundreds of investigations since its founding in 2022. Half of these have been resolved with mundane explanations, for instance, weather balloons. The other half remain unexplained, with insufficient data to reach any conclusion. The Office received
5600-457: The UFO problem had become "far more interesting to ponder than to actually solve." Interest was particularly fevered in the 1990s with the publicity surrounding the television broadcast of an Alien autopsy video marketed as "real footage" but later admitted to be a staged "re-enactment". Eghigian writes that "there had always been outlier abduction reports dating back to the '50s and '60s" but that in
5712-476: The US in over 50 years. Another Congressional hearing took place on July 26, 2023, featuring the whistleblower claims of former U.S. Air Force (USAF) officer and intelligence official David Grusch. A Harris Poll in 2009 found that 32% of Americans "believe in UFOs". A National Geographic study in June 2012 found that 36% of Americans believe UFOs exist and that 10% thought that they had spotted one. In June 2021
SECTION 50
#17330941688525824-442: The accuracy of the interpretation of sensor data, and that a select number of reports submitted may relate to irregularities of the operator or the equipment. Out of the 366 reports, 171 remained uncharacterized. The report noted that some of these uncharacterized UAPs appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities and that these reported incidents required further analysis. Input for
5936-429: The air, sea, and/or space and/or on land: sometimes referred to as "unidentified aerial phenomena" or "unidentified anomalous phenomena" (UAP). Its first director was physicist Sean Kirkpatrick , and its current director is Jon T. Kosloski who reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks . Established in 2022, AARO was preceded by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), a 2020 to 2021 program within
6048-534: The best known government studies are the ghost rockets investigation by the Swedish military (1946–1947), Project Blue Book, previously Project Sign and Project Grudge , conducted by the USAF from 1947 until 1969, the secret U.S. Army/Air Force Project Twinkle investigation into green fireballs (1948–1951), the secret USAF Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 by the Battelle Memorial Institute , and
6160-490: The cases could be as a result of sensors not working correctly. In 2007, the United States Defense Intelligence Agency set up an unclassified but low-profile program titled the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). This was in response to several reports of unidentified craft identified by the US military. The program was closed in 2012, following its cessation of funding, and
6272-465: The century. By most accounts, the popular UFO craze in the US began with a media frenzy surrounding the reports on June 24, 1947, of a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold who described seeing "a group of bat-like aircraft flying in formation at high speeds" near Mount Rainier that he said were "moving like a saucer would if skipped across water" which led to headlines about "flying saucers" and "flying discs". Only weeks after Arnold's story
6384-444: The claims, and at times the media was enlisted including a 1966 TV special, "UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?", in which Walter Cronkite "patiently" explained to viewers that UFOs were fantasy. Cronkite enlisted Carl Sagan and J. Allen Hynek , who told Cronkite, "To this time, there is no valid scientific proof that we have been visited by spaceships". Such attempts to disenchant the zeitgeist were not very successful at tamping down
6496-403: The coast of California , with spokeswoman Susan Gough saying "I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by US Navy personnel. The UAPTF has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations." The following month, Gough further confirmed a second video had been recorded by Navy personnel and was under review by the Task Force. The video, recorded on July 15, 2019, in
6608-560: The company To the Stars , as saying "It further legitimizes the issue", adding "That in itself is extremely important. People can talk about it without fear of embarrassment." Mellon also said, "We are talking dozens of incidents in restricted military airspace over years." In July 2020, United States Senator Marco Rubio stated that he was worried that an adversary country had achieved "some technological leap" that "allows them to conduct this sort of activity", while also saying that there might be
6720-609: The distances involved." On June 25, 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on UAPs. The report found that the UAPTF was unable to identify 143 objects spotted between 2004 and 2021. The report said that 18 of these featured unusual movement patterns or flight characteristics, adding that more analysis was needed to determine if those sightings represented "breakthrough" technology. The report said that "some of these steps are resource-intensive and would require additional investment." The report did not link
6832-585: The documentation of the Brazilian Air Force regarding the investigation of the appearance of UFOs in Brazil . Currently, this collection gathers cases between 1952 and 2016. In 1968, the SEFAA (previously CEFAA) began receiving case reports of the general public, civil aviators and the Chilean Air Force regarding the sightings or the appearance of UFOs in Chile , the initial work was an initiative of Sergio Bravo Flores who led
SECTION 60
#17330941688526944-547: The entire event was a hoax , and that Johnson had deliberately damaged his own patrol car. 48°26′13″N 97°06′27″W / 48.43694°N 97.10750°W / 48.43694; -97.10750 Unidentified flying object An unidentified flying object ( UFO ), or unidentified anomalous phenomenon ( UAP ), is any perceived airborne, submerged or transmedium phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. Upon investigation, most UFOs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while
7056-518: The existential terror of nuclear war to foreign enslavement to loss of bodily control". American entertainment has explored both "hostile aliens" as well as the "benevolent, world-expanding encounters" seen in films such as Steven Spielberg 's Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial . In her research on the relationship of media to UFO beliefs, Diana Walsh Pasulka ,
7168-498: The fact that ATIC [Air Technical Intelligence Center] will analyze the data is worthy of release, due to many unknowns involved." A public research effort conducted by the Condon Committee for the USAF and published as the Condon Report arrived at a negative conclusion in 1968. Blue Book closed down in 1970, using the Condon Committee's negative conclusion as a rationale, thus ending official Air Force UFO investigations. However,
7280-490: The first time that elements within the US government had proposed to create a Special Access Program under the Department of Homeland Security, to be named "Kona Blue", to reverse engineer any extraterrestrial craft that came into its possession. Advocates of the proposal "were convinced that the U.S. government was hiding UAP technologies", but DHS leaders rejected the proposal as "without merit"; AARO's report similarly rejected
7392-467: The human race...no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye.... The response further noted that efforts, like SETI and NASA's Kepler space telescope and Mars Science Laboratory , continue looking for signs of life . The response noted "odds are pretty high" that there may be life on other planets but "the odds of us making contact with any of them—especially any intelligent ones —are extremely small, given
7504-437: The hypothesis that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft and responded to the "onslaught of credulous coverage" in books, films and entertainment by teaching his students to apply critical thinking to such claims, advising them that "being a good scientist is not unlike being a good detective". According to Fraknoi, UFO reports "might at first seem mysterious", but "the more you investigate, the more likely you are to find that there
7616-463: The kind of evidence required to solidly support such claims has not been forthcoming. Scientists and skeptic organizations such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry have provided prosaic explanations for UFOs, namely that they are caused by natural phenomena, human technology, delusions, and hoaxes. Beliefs surrounding UFOs have inspired parts of new religions even as social scientists have identified
7728-505: The last fifty years, the mutual antagonism between paranormal believers and skeptics has largely framed discussion about unidentified flying objects" and that "it often gets personal" with those taking seriously the prospect that UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin dismissing those who consider UFOs to be worth studying as "narrow-minded, biased, obstinate, and cruel" while the skeptics brushed off "devotees" as "naïve, ignorant, gullible, and downright dangerous". Such "mudslinging over convictions
7840-493: The longest ongoing government-sponsored investigation. About 22% of the 6,000 cases studied remain unexplained. The official opinion of GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN has been neutral, stating on their FAQ page that their mission is fact-finding for the scientific community, not rendering an opinion. They add they can neither prove nor disprove the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), but their Steering Committee's clear position
7952-537: The mania. Keith Kloor notes that the "allure of flying saucers" remained popular with the public into the 1970s, spurring production of such sci-fi films, as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien , which "continued to stoke public fascination". Meanwhile, Leonard Nimoy narrated a popular occult and mystery TV series In Search of... while daytime talk shows of Mike Douglas , Merv Griffin , and Phil Donahue featured interviews with alien abductees and people who credulously reported stories about UFOs . In
8064-687: The material and the mental dimensions [of UFOs] are incredibly important to get a sense of the full picture". As Adrian Horton writes "from The X-Files to Men in Black , Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Star Wars to Marvel , Hollywood has for decades provided an engrossing feedback loop for interest in the extraterrestrial: a reflection of our fears and capaciousness, whose ubiquitous popularity has in turn fueled more interest in UFOs as perennially compelling entertainment tropes not to be taken seriously". Horton observes that these "alien movies have generally reflected shifting cultural anxieties, from
8176-547: The military and IC over unidentified marine and aerial craft that could threaten U.S. forces and military bases or spy on sensitive facilities. The establishing legislation empowers the office to review records as far back as 1945 to determine if federal government or contractor UFO programs were in existence that may have shielded information from either the White House or the US Congress. Resourcing for AARO will be visible at
8288-607: The narrative similarities between certain religious symbols in medieval paintings and UFO reports, the canonical and symbolic character of such images is documented by art historians placing more conventional religious interpretations on such images. Some examples of pre-contemporary reports about unusual aerial phenomena include: In the Pacific and European theatres during World War II , round, glowing fireballs known as " foo fighters " were reported by Allied and Axis pilots. Some explanations for these sightings included St. Elmo's fire ,
8400-501: The new moniker "unexplained aerial phenomenon" (UAP) to avoid associations with past sensationalism . On 17 May 2022, members of the United States House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation held congressional hearings with top military officials to discuss military reports of UAPs. It was the first public congressional hearing into UFO sightings in
8512-444: The objects we have seen are of alien origin," and that many of the reported objects may be "balloons and things like UAVs that are operated for purposes other than surveillance or intelligence collection." When asked about the 143 out of 144 military encounters with mysterious flying objects – including several which appeared to demonstrate extraordinary technology – director of national intelligence Avril Haines said, "There's always
8624-543: The ongoing interest and storytelling surrounding UFOs as a modern example of folklore and mythology understandable with psychosocial explanations . The U.S. government currently has two entities dedicated to UFO data collection and analysis: NASA's UAP independent study team and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office . During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often called " flying saucers " or "flying discs" based on reporting of
8736-518: The phenomenon include the MUFON , a grassroots organization whose investigator's handbooks go into great detail on the documentation of alleged UFO sightings. Air Force Regulation 200-2 , issued in 1953 and 1954, defined an Unidentified Flying Object ("UFOB") as "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as
8848-483: The planet Venus , hallucinations from oxygen deprivation , and German secret weapons (specifically rockets ). In 1946, more than 2,000 reports were collected, primarily by the Swedish military, of unidentified aerial objects over the Scandinavian nations, along with isolated reports from France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece. The objects were referred to as "Russian hail" (and later as " ghost rockets ") because it
8960-420: The postwar decades, in a series of events that—with their news coverage, grainy images, celebrity crusaders, exasperated skeptics, unsatisfying military statements, and accusations of a government cover-up—foreshadow our present moment". UFOs have been taken up by religious studies scholars in various scholarly books. Jeffrey Kripal, chair of the Department of Religion at Rice University , has said that "both
9072-484: The public Blue Book investigation. The memo then added, "reports of UFOs which could affect national security would continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedures designed for this purpose." In the late 1960s, a chapter on UFOs in the Space Sciences course at the U.S. Air Force Academy gave serious consideration to possible extraterrestrial origins. When word of the curriculum became public, in 1970,
9184-439: The question of 'is there something else that we simply do not understand, that might come extraterrestrially". After speaking with several of the naval aviators who observed one of the unknown crafts, Administrator of NASA Bill Nelson said he is convinced that the pilots "saw something, and their radars locked onto it." When asked to speculate about the nature of the phenomena, Nelson responded, "Who am I to say that planet Earth
9296-537: The report was sought or supplied from various bodies, including NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration , the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration , and the Department of Energy . The report notes that most of the sightings were made to the office by U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force personnel, reporting them through their official channels. The report also noted that some of
9408-415: The role of investigator, therapist, and advocate to their vulnerable charges". Eghigian says that Mack "signaled both the culmination and end of the headiest days of alien abduction". When Mack began working with and publishing accounts of abductees—or "experiencers", as he called them—in the early 1990s, he brought a sense of legitimacy to "the study of extraterrestrial captivity". By the late 1990s, however,
9520-504: The sightings to extraterrestrial life. The Uruguayan Air Force has conducted UFO investigations since 1989 and reportedly analyzed 2,100 cases of which they regard approximately 2% as lacking explanation. In March 2007, the French space agency CNES published an archive of UFO sightings and other phenomena online. French studies include GEPAN/SEPRA/ GEIPAN within CNES (French space agency),
9632-552: The silence over the alien origins of unidentified flying objects". Media accounts and speculation ran rampant in the U.S., especially in connection to the 1952 UFO scare in Washington, D.C. so that, by 1953, the intelligence officials ( Robertson Panel ) worried that "genuine incursions" by enemy aircraft "over U.S. territory could be lost in a maelstrom of kooky hallucination" of UFO reports. A Trendex survey in August 1957, ten years after
9744-530: The story received national publicity, Johnson told reporters the sudden attention had caused him and his family a great deal of emotional strain. On September 11, 1979, Johnson appeared as a guest on ABC 's Good Morning America program. Ufologists , including Allan Hendry and Jerome Clark , consider the incident significant, with Clark claiming that Johnson refused to take a polygraph test because Johnson believed it "would only [serve to] satisfy people's morbid curiosity". UFO skeptic Philip Klass argued that
9856-402: The study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge" and that further time investigating UFO reports "cannot be justified". From the 1960s to 1990s, UFOs were part of American popular culture's obsession with the supernatural and paranormal . In 1961, the first alien abduction account was sensationalized when Barney and Betty Hill underwent hypnosis after seeing
9968-409: The supernatural". Kloor wrote, "Critics are simply astonished by what they call his antiscientific embrace of the supernatural — and the Pentagon's willingness to work with him". According to skeptic and science writer Robert Sheaffer , "I'm starting to see why [the government's] task force was so unsuccessful in identifying its UAPs!". AARO's Executive Council is AAROEXEC. The first director of AARO
10080-549: The task force will be issued to the Intelligence Committee 180 days after the passage of the intelligence authorization act. The program was officially approved on August 4, 2020, by the Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist and announced on August 14, 2020. "The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security." Brennan McKernan
10192-962: The term UFO has generally become synonymous with alien spacecraft . The term "extra-terrestrial vehicle" (ETV) is sometimes used to separate this explanation of UFOs from totally earthbound explanations. Studies show that after careful investigation, the majority of UFOs can be identified as ordinary objects or phenomena. The 1952–1955 study for the USAF used the following categories: "Balloon; Astronomical; Aircraft; Light phenomenon; Birds, Clouds, dust, etc.; Insufficient information; Psychological manifestations; Unknown; and Other". The most commonly found identified sources of UFO reports are: An individual 1979 study by CUFOS researcher Allan Hendry found, as did other investigations, that fewer than one percent of cases he investigated were hoaxes and most sightings were actually honest misidentifications of prosaic phenomena. Hendry attributed most of these to inexperience or misperception. Astronomer Andrew Fraknoi rejected
10304-577: The vast amount of internet and social media content centred on UAP-related topics“ but concluded that official investigations had not found any empirical evidence that reported sightings represented “off--world technology” or any classified program that had not been reported to Congress, hidden alien technology or extraterrestrial artifacts. The report detailed 20th-century UAP investigations, including Projects Saucer, Sign , Grudge , Twinkle, and Blue Book ; more recent investigations included AAWSAP , AATIP , UAPTF, and AARO itself. The report revealed for
10416-605: The years that varied widely in scope and scientific rigor. Governments or independent academics in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Peru, France, Belgium, Sweden, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Spain, and the Soviet Union are known to have investigated UFO reports at various times. No official government investigation has ever publicly concluded that UFOs are indisputably real, physical objects, extraterrestrial in origin, or of concern to national defense. Among
10528-410: The years without confirmation of the fantastical claims of small but vocal groups of ufologists who favour unconventional or pseudoscientific hypotheses, often claiming that UFOs are evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence , technologically advanced cryptids , demons , interdimensional contact or future time travelers . After decades of promotion of such ideas by believers and in popular media,
10640-408: Was Sean M. Kirkpatrick , reporting to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks . Hicks announced on August 30, 2023 that AARO would operate under her office and that director Kirkpatrick would report directly to her. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand helped found the organization. AARO will focus on It is to continue the collection and reporting of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) incidents across
10752-486: Was an increase on the previous number of encounters referred to the office. The report indicated there had been no evidence of aliens. The report noted that out of the 366 new reports submitted, after initial analysis, about half were found to have common explanations, e.g., uncrewed aircraft, balloons, and clutter. The report indicated that there should be assumptions made about multiple factors that could affect observations of UAPs, including illumination, weather and
10864-595: Was called off after the Robertson Panel's negative conclusions in January 1953. Project Sign was dismantled and became Project Grudge at the end of 1948. Angered by the low quality of investigations by Grudge, the Air Force Director of Intelligence reorganized it as Project Blue Book in late 1951, placing Ruppelt in charge. J. Allen Hynek , a trained astronomer who served as a scientific advisor for Project Blue Book,
10976-508: Was considered so urgent that OS/I drafted a memorandum from the DCI to the NSC proposing that the NSC establish an investigation of UFOs as a priority project throughout the intelligence and the defense research and development community. It also urged the DCI to establish an external research project of top-level scientists, now known as the Robertson Panel to analyze the problem of UFOs. The OS/I investigation
11088-432: Was followed closely by the publication of Loeb's book Extraterrestrial , in which he argued that the first interstellar comet ever observed, 'Oumuamua , might be an artificial light sail made by an alien civilization. Two government sponsored programs, NASA's UAP independent study team and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office were charged in part by Congressional fiat to investigate UFO claims more fully, adopting
11200-418: Was initially skeptical of UFO reports, but eventually came to the conclusion that many of them could not be satisfactorily explained and was highly critical of what he described as "the cavalier disregard by Project Blue Book of the principles of scientific investigation". Leaving government work, he founded the privately funded CUFOS , to whose work he devoted the rest of his life. Other private groups studying
11312-583: Was needed to determine if those sightings represented breakthrough technology. The report noted that some of those steps were resource-intensive and required additional investment. The report did not link the sightings to extraterrestrial life, with officials saying, "We have no clear indications that there is any nonterrestrial explanation for them — but we will go wherever the data takes us". In December 2022, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie said that "[w]e have not seen anything that would lead us [...] to believe that any of
11424-470: Was not enough data to determine their origin. The Air Force's Project Sign was created at the end of 1947, and was one of the earliest government studies to come to a secret extraterrestrial conclusion. In August 1948, Sign investigators wrote a top-secret intelligence estimate to that effect, but the Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg ordered it destroyed. The existence of this suppressed report
11536-464: Was not universal in the CIA, however, as fellow NICAP official Donald E. Keyhoe wrote that Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter , the first director of the CIA, "wanted public disclosure of UFO evidence". Official U.S. Air Force interest in UFO reports went on hiatus in 1969 after a study by the University of Colorado led by Edward U. Condon and known as the Condon Report concluded "that nothing has come from
11648-593: Was out of focus. West said the Navy video is an example of a photographic effect called bokeh , and demonstrated the effect by recreating similar pyramid images on video. On June 25, 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on UAPs, commonly known as the Pentagon UFO Report . The report found that the UAPTF was unable to identify 143 of 144 objects spotted between 2004 and 2021. The report said that 18 featured unusual movement patterns or flight characteristics, and more analysis
11760-407: Was replaced by Project Grudge up through 1951. In the third U.S. Air Force program, from March 1952 to its termination in December 1969, "the U.S. Air Force cataloged 12,618 sightings of UFOs as part of what is now known as Project Blue Book ". In the late 1950s, public pressure mounted for a full declassification of all UFO records, but the CIA played a role in refusing to allow this. This sense
11872-515: Was reported in 1947, Gallup published a poll asking people in the United States what the "flying saucers" might be. Already, 90% had heard of the new term. However, as reported by historian Greg Eghanian, "a majority either had no idea what they could be or thought that witnesses were mistaken" while "visitors from space were not initially among the options that anyone had in mind, and Gallup didn't even mention if anyone surveyed brought up aliens. Within weeks, reports of flying saucer sightings became
11984-487: Was reported that Sean M. Kirkpatrick will step down as director of AARO effective December 2023. Timothy A. Phillips, on assignment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence , is the Deputy Director. Sean Kirkpatrick left the position of AARO Director on 1 December 2023. On August 26, 2024, Jon T. Kosloski was named the director of AARO, replacing acting director Timothy Phillips. On March 6, 2024,
12096-561: Was revealed by several insiders who had read it, such as astronomer and USAF consultant J. Allen Hynek and Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, the first head of the USAF's Project Blue Book. Another highly classified U.S. study was conducted by the CIA's Office of Scientific Investigation (OS/I) in the latter half of 1952 in response to orders from the National Security Council (NSC). This study concluded UFOs were real physical objects of potential threat to national security. One OS/I memo to
12208-497: Was the director of the UAPTF. 50 U.S.C. § 3373 ( NDAA 2022 and NDAA 2023 ) directs the Secretary and DNI to establish an office to carry out the duties of the UAPTF. The successor to the UAPTF was established on November 23, 2021, as the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG). Oversight and direction of the AOIMSG was to be an Executive Council, formerly
12320-427: Was thought the mysterious objects were possibly Russian tests of captured German V1 or V2 rockets , but most were identified as natural phenomena as meteors. Many scholars, especially those arguing for the psychosocial UFO hypothesis , have noted that UFO characteristics reported after the first widely publicized modern sighting by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 resembled a host of science fiction tropes from earlier in
12432-420: Was unconscious for 39 minutes and when he awoke he realized his wristwatch and the vehicle's clock had stopped for 14 minutes. The windshield was shattered, a headlight and red emergency light was damaged and a thin radio aerial bent. Deputies responding to Johnson's call for help found the squad car sideways on the road. Johnson suffered bruises and eye irritation that a physician compared to "welder's burns". When
12544-433: Was up from 33% in a 2019 Gallup poll with the same question. Gallup further found that college graduates went in 2019 from being the least likely educational group to believe this to being on par in 2021 with adults who have no college education. An October 2022 poll by YouGov only found that 34% of Americans believe that UFOs are likely to involve alien life forms. Historian Greg Eghigian wrote in August 2021 that "over
#851148