Decade
UAP history in the 1980s: 9 entries in date order, each with public sources. By track: Sightings (4), Military (3), Government (1), Whistleblowers (1).
A U.S. defense attache cable from Lima reported that Peruvian Air Force officers saw a round object hovering near Mariano Melgar air base at La Joya, and that an Su-22 fired on it without effect. Pilot Oscar Santa Maria Huertas later gave his own account. The object was never identified.
U.S. Air Force personnel at RAF Woodbridge reported unexplained lights in Rendlesham Forest on two nights, including an object seen near the base's back gate. Deputy base commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt reported the events to the UK Ministry of Defence in a January 1981 memo.
Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Landrum's grandson said a fiery object hovered over their road near Houston and was then escorted by more than 20 helicopters, and later blamed illnesses on it. Their lawsuit against the U.S. was dismissed in 1986 after agencies said they had no such aircraft.
A man near Trans-en-Provence in southern France told gendarmes a craft had landed briefly on his property and left marks on the ground. Gendarmes took samples, and GEPAN analyzed the soil and plants in a 1983 technical note. It remains one of France's most discussed cases.
Residents of Norway's Hessdalen valley began reporting strange lights in December 1981, up to about 20 a week into 1984. Project Hessdalen ran an instrumented field study in 1984, and Ostfold University College set up an automatic measuring station in 1998. Their cause is still debated.
Air Force radar and civilian and military witnesses reported about 21 unidentified objects over four Brazilian states, and five fighter jets were sent to intercept them. The air minister said days later there was no technical explanation; an Air Force report on the night was released in 2009.
The crew of a Japan Air Lines 747 cargo flight bound for Anchorage reported lights and a large object pacing their aircraft over interior Alaska. The FAA interviewed the crew and reviewed the radar data.
Las Vegas station KLAS aired George Knapp's live interview with a man called 'Dennis', who said alien technology was being tested at a hidden site near Area 51. Months later he went public as Bob Lazar. His account and background have never been independently verified.
Gendarme patrols near Eupen reported large, silent triangular objects with bright lights, starting months of similar reports across Belgium. On the night of 30-31 March 1990 the Belgian Air Force scrambled two F-16s after a radar contact; the pilots saw nothing and the object was never identified.
