Decade
UAP history in the 1990s: 12 entries in date order, each with public sources. By track: Skinwalker Ranch (3), Military (2), Sightings (2), Government (2), Experiencers (2), Media (1).
On March 30-31, 1990, two Belgian F-16s were scrambled after ground radar contacts that matched visual reports; pilots saw nothing but recorded brief radar locks. The Air Force said it could not identify the phenomena; skeptics trace the locks to the other F-16 and false echoes.
Two men photographed a large diamond-shaped object with a jet nearby near Calvine in the Scottish Highlands. The Daily Record passed the pictures to the Ministry of Defence, which kept them. A surviving print held by a retired RAF press officer was made public by researcher David Clarke in 2022.
Fox premiered Chris Carter's drama The X-Files, in which a skeptic and a believer investigate unexplained phenomena. It ran to 2002, and its 1996 Peabody citation said it prompted viewers to discuss unexplained phenomena and the motives of government officials.
Terry and Gwen Sherman bought a 480-acre cattle ranch south of Fort Duchesne, Utah. In a June 1996 Deseret News story they reported odd lights and craft, voices, and missing or dead cattle; the property later became known as Skinwalker Ranch.
Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall released a records search, prompted by a GAO inquiry requested by Rep. Steven Schiff, concluding the 1947 Roswell debris most likely came from Project Mogul, a then-secret balloon program to detect Soviet nuclear tests. It found no evidence of a crashed spacecraft.
About 60 children at the Ariel School outside Harare said they saw a craft land near the playground and figures beside it. A BBC crew filmed interviews days later, and Harvard psychiatrist John Mack interviewed pupils. Skeptics cite mass suggestion after a rocket re-entry fireball days earlier.
Las Vegas real estate developer Robert Bigelow founded the National Institute for Discovery Science, a privately funded nonprofit that studied UFO reports, animal mutilations and survival of consciousness. It disbanded in 2004.
Weeks after the Shermans went public, Robert Bigelow offered about $200,000 for the ranch and the sale closed in September 1996. His NIDS team set up an observation post; a spokesman said in 1997 that researchers had seen no flying craft.
Historian Gerald K. Haines's study in the CIA journal Studies in Intelligence said agency officials estimated that U-2 and later OXCART flights accounted for over half of UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s, and that the Air Force made misleading statements to protect them.
Many people across Arizona reported and videotaped bright lights in the night sky. In July 1997 the Maryland Air National Guard said its A-10 jets had dropped flares over a range southwest of Phoenix, though that does not account for every report. Former Gov. Fife Symington said in 2007 he saw it.
Nine physical scientists in a review directed by Stanford's Peter Sturrock heard eight UFO investigators present their strongest physical-evidence cases at a 1997 workshop. Their 1998 report found no proof of unknown physics or alien origin but said some cases deserve careful study.
A French working group of about a dozen specialists led by retired Air Force General Denis Letty issued a report on UFOs and defense and took it to Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. It cautiously raised an extraterrestrial explanation; it was a private effort, not a government study.
