The Pentagon and the Director of National Intelligence have released the annual report on UFO sightings, revealing a mix of explained and unexplained incidents. While the report doesn't confirm any extraterrestrial origin for over 700 new reports received last year, about two dozen cases have sparked significant curiosity.
The Pentagon and the surrounding area is seen in this aerial view in Washington, D.C., Jan. 26, 2020.
Understanding UAP
UAP, or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, is the term used by the Pentagon and the intelligence community to describe UFOs. The agency responsible for reviewing new incidents reported by military personnel and additional federal agencies is the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
Increase in Reported Incidents
From May 2023 to June 2024, AARO received 757 new incident reports. Of these, 485 occurred during that time, while 272 were from 2021 and 2022 but had not been previously submitted. This marks a substantial increase from prior reports; for instance, last year’s report cited 281 new reports during its review period. Pentagon officials attribute this rise to greater awareness about reporting UAP incidents rather than an actual increase in frequency.
Overall, the total number of cases reviewed by AARO since its founding is now 1,652.
Key Findings of the Report
According to this year's report, AARO has "discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology." A small number of reports had terrestrial explanations, and many will undergo further review. What they haven't found is that some of the reports are attributable to a "breakthrough" technology.
During a press briefing, the head of AARO acknowledged that there are 21 reports over the last year and a half that he can't really explain. According to Dr. Jon Kosloski, the new director of AARO, "There are interesting cases that with my physics and engineering background and time in the I.C. I do not understand, and I don't know anybody else understands them." Kosloski noted that the 21 incidents occurred near national security sites and were recorded on video, had multiple eyewitnesses, or were captured by other sensors.
The Pentagon’s latest report on UFOs has revealed hundreds of new sightings of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena but no indications suggesting an extraterrestrial origin.
The review includes hundreds of cases of misidentified balloons, birds and satellites as well as some that defy easy explanation, such as a near-miss between a commercial airliner and a mysterious object off the coast of New York.
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Federal efforts to study and identify UAPs have focused on potential threats to national security or air safety and not their science fiction aspects. Officials at the Pentagon office created in 2022 to track UAPs, known as the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, have said there is no indication that any of the cases they looked into have unearthly origins.
“It is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology,” the authors of the report wrote.
The Pentagon’s review covered 757 cases from around the world that were reported to US authorities from 1 May 2023 to 1 June 2024. The total includes 272 incidents that occurred before that time period but had not been previously reported.
Michael Gold, a former Nasa official, testifies during a House hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena in Washington DC on 13 November 2024.
The great majority of the reported incidents occurred in airspace, but 49 occurred at altitudes estimated to be at least 62 miles, which is considered space. None occurred underwater. Reporting witnesses included commercial and military pilots as well as ground-based observers.
Investigators found explanations for nearly 300 of the incidents. In many of them, the unknown objects were found to be balloons, birds, aircraft, drones or satellites. According to the report, Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system is one increasingly common source as people mistake chains of satellites for UFOs.
Hundreds of other cases remain unexplained, though the report’s authors stressed that is often because there is not enough information to draw firm conclusions.
No injuries or crashes were reported in any of the incidents, though a commercial flight crew reported one near miss with a “cylindrical object” while flying over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New York.
The Pentagon's Use of UFO Myths
In the shadow of the Cold War, the military deliberately spread UFO rumors-including staged photos and false briefings-to protect classified weapons programs. The practice wasn’t just passive denial or silence. In some cases, it was policy. One such incident, first uncovered by the Wall Street Journal, involves an Air Force colonel who, in the 1980s, handed fake photos of flying saucers to a bar owner near the top-secret Area 51 base in Nevada.
The colonel, now retired, later admitted to investigators that he was acting under official orders to deflect attention away from the then-classified F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter.
Backstory and Findings
The findings stem from a 2024 report by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), a unit created in 2022 to sift through decades of military records and claims of unidentified aerial phenomena. While the office was originally intended to investigate possible extraterrestrial sightings, much of what it uncovered pointed back at the government itself.
According to the report, several UFO legends were intentionally stoked to mislead the public and foreign adversaries about advanced weapons programs. One example is the use of fabricated photos and stories placed in local communities near sensitive testing sites like Area 51.
The Air Force colonel’s fake UFO photos helped launch decades of speculation around Area 51. The military saw the spread of alien rumors as a form of "camouflage," a Pentagon official said. The disinformation helped obscure the testing of advanced technologies like stealth jets. AARO found multiple examples of fabricated narratives designed to deflect attention from classified work.
At least a dozen personnel were reportedly introduced to a fictional alien-investigation program called "Yankee Blue" as part of a hazing ritual. The practice began in the 1980s and reportedly continued until 2023. The Pentagon formally banned the practice after AARO flagged it during its review.
"These episodes reveal how secrecy and misinformation, even when well-intentioned, can spiral into myth," said Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO’s first director.
Kirkpatrick added that not all findings from the review have been made public, but promised more details in a forthcoming report.
Future Developments
The Pentagon says it will publish a follow-up to the Historical Record Report later in 2025, which will include more details on the disinformation programs, hazing rituals, and instances of "inauthentic materials" being used as deception tools.
Earlier Assessments and Explanations
The report was supposed to give "detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence" that had been compiled by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) and the FBI. The report identified national security and pilot safety concerns related with UAPs.
Senator Marco Rubio, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated that he had asked the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines for additional information in advance of the report's release, terming his request a "pre-briefing." Rubio stated, regarding the nature of the unknown objects, "There's stuff flying in our airspace and we don't know who it is and it's not ours.
The mandate came after articles published by The New York Times and Politico confirmed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a Department of Defense program that began in 2007 to investigate unidentified phenomena, which officially ended in 2012. On August 14, 2020, a successor of this program, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, was established in the Office of Naval Intelligence.
The report found that the UAPTF was unable to identify causes of the observations found in 143 reports.
Possible Explanations for UAP Sightings
According to The Washington Post, the first category includes "junk - man-made objects cluttering the air, such as balloons or even plastic bags, that are mistaken for craft". The second category includes such things as "ice crystals, moisture or heat fluctuations could register as a flying object to cameras and sensors on aircraft or aboard ships at sea".
The fourth category describes aircraft designed by a foreign adversary, such as China and Russia, which the Post noted "are making strides in hypersonic technology and directed energy, areas of increasing focus at the Pentagon", and the report stated that the agency "lacked the data" to confirm if the objects reported were deployed by foreign adversary.
Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks, issued a memo following the report's release, saying that it highlights the problem of flight hazards near military training ranges.
Following the preliminary report, the US House Intelligence Committee held public hearings on UAPs in May 2022, the first since 1969.
According to Wired writer Adam Mann, "the current craze over UFOs is in many ways traceable back to To the Stars". In 2017, the company made the Pentagon UFO videos available to the New York Times, and subsequent publicity eventually prompted confirmation of the videos' origin from the US military.
Skeptic and science writer Mick West noted that "advocates of alien disclosure are encroaching on these real issues of UAPs...these believers take mundane videos of incidents that are simply unidentified, then reframe them as evidence of extraordinary technology - which, of course, is intended to mean 'aliens,' even if enthusiasts for that hypothesis will not explicitly say so. This cultivates credulous media attention, which in turn creates a feedback loop of public interest, more media and then pressure on politicians to 'do something'".
West noted that "there have been many reports of drones above or near restricted areas", and that pilots may misidentify such objects. According to West, "If something there is hard to identify - like a novel drone - then we need to figure out how to identify it. If the pilots are making mistakes, then we need to figure out why".
West contends that the report has been mischaracterized in the media and by UFO enthusiasts, saying "UAPs are unidentified because of limited data; that's what makes the cases difficult to explain," adding that "The report suggests the majority of cases, if solved, would turn out to be a variety of things like airborne clutter or natural atmospheric phenomenon.
According to Kopparapu, "The report would be immensely helpful if the data that informed it are made publicly available so that more experts and scientists can look at it and hopefully reach a scientific consensus on the nature of some of the unexplained events.
According to Dorsch, "God love the US Air Force, but answering fundamental epistemological questions is not super high on their to-do list. This is why the military has always struggled with this UFO question.
According to New York Magazine writer for the Digital Intelligencer, Jeff Wise, advanced electronic warfare (EW) techniques similar to early "radar spoofing" used by the US military could deceive sensors to give false velocity and position information. Wise worries that US adversaries have developed EW capabilities that exploit weaknesses in US systems that allow information to be missed or created erroneously.