17 articles
A future U.S. president and about ten others watched a bright, color-shifting light over Leary, Georgia. Two ordinary explanations fit the record - the planet Venus, or a NASA rocket's glowing cloud - yet Carter, an amateur astronomer, rejected both.
Less than three months after Pearl Harbor, radar flagged something off the California coast and the guns opened up for an hour over a blacked-out city. The Army said 15 planes were up; the Navy said none. Decades later, the leading suspect was a stray weather balloon.
In late 1948, glowing green objects began streaking over Los Alamos and Sandia. Air Force meteor consultant Lincoln LaPaz triangulated their paths, ruled out ordinary meteors, and told the military the fireballs were probably man-made.
On January 8, 2008, dozens in Stephenville, Texas described a huge, silent craft. A later analysis of FAA radar records logged an unknown, transponder-less object - and the Air Force's account of that night changed twice.
Captain Thomas Mantell radioed that a 'metallic object of tremendous size' hung above his fighter, then blacked out from lack of oxygen and crashed. The Air Force first blamed the planet Venus, then a classified Navy balloon he had no way of knowing existed.
The phrase came from a Hollywood blockbuster, but the system behind it was built by J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer the Air Force hired to explain UFOs away. His six rungs still shape how sightings get sorted, and show what the Pentagon's new files leave behind.
As the Pentagon posts batch after batch of declassified UFO files in 2026, it is worth recalling that Washington's first serious UFO review did the opposite - a CIA-convened panel of top scientists urged a public 'debunking' campaign and surveillance of civilian UFO groups.
Sergeant Lonnie Zamora reported an egg-shaped object, two figures and a roaring flame near Socorro. Then investigators photographed four fresh landing marks and scorched brush - and the Air Force's own study left the case among its rare 'unknowns.'
The Pentagon's UAP office resolves nearly every case it can actually analyze to balloons, satellites, drones and birds. The reason its pile of 'unexplained' files stays large is not exotic physics - it is a chronic shortage of usable sensor data, the office says.
The astronomer who became science's most famous skeptic was one of six members of the 1966 O'Brien Committee, which judged Project Blue Book scientifically hollow and urged universities to investigate. The study it set off ended official UFO research instead.
Two days after Christmas, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and her 7-year-old grandson watched a flame-spewing object hover over a road near Houston as military helicopters swarmed it. Within hours they were vomiting and blistering. They sued the U.S. government - and lost.
Frederick Valentich, 20, was flying a rented Cessna to King Island when he told air traffic control a metallic craft was circling above him. His last transmission ended in 17 seconds of scraping static. Australia's official inquiry never determined what happened.
Established in 2022, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is the U.S. government's primary body for detecting, identifying, and analyzing unidentified anomalous phenomena - here is how it works and what it has found.
In December 1980, US Air Force personnel at twin NATO bases in Suffolk reported three nights of anomalous lights, physical ground traces, and radiation readings in the forest - producing the most detailed official record of any UAP event in British history.
The 'Tic Tac' case remains the most documented UAP incident in U.S. military history. Here is a careful account of what pilots reported, what sensors recorded, and where the evidence stops.
The Department of War launched war.gov/ufo in May 2026 and published two tranches of declassified UAP records. Here is a clear-eyed account of what was released, what it shows, and what it does not.
From flying saucers to UAP - how the U.S. government changed what it calls unexplained aerial sightings, and why the language shift matters for science and policy.
