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The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Government16 Jun 2021
Days before the ODNI preliminary UAP report, House Intelligence Committee members received a closed briefing from Navy and FBI officials. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney said members wanted to know what they were dealing with; Rep. Andre Carson said he hoped for a public hearing.
Photo: Architect of the Capitol, Public domain
Media3 Jun 2021
Three weeks before the ODNI preliminary assessment, senior officials told the New York Times the report found no evidence that objects seen by military pilots were alien craft, nor that they were secret U.S. technology, while most incidents stayed unexplained.
Photo: DNI, Public domain
SightingsJun 2021
The SIGMA2 commission of France's aeronautics and astronautics association 3AF, drawing on former CNES, ESA, DGA and ONERA staff, released a progress report on unidentified aerospace phenomena days before the US intelligence report on UAP.
MilitaryJun 2021
The South China Morning Post reported that Chinese military researchers, including Chen Li of the Air Force Early Warning Academy, proposed using AI to analyze a growing volume of unidentified aerial object reports from radar, pilots and observatories.
Media30 May 2021
University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank, who searches for signs of alien technology, argued in a New York Times guest essay that the UFO reports then in the news were poor evidence of extraterrestrial visitors, while saying the sightings deserve scientific study.
Photo: DanielPenfield, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media16 May 2021
CBS's 60 Minutes aired Bill Whitaker's report in which former Navy pilot Ryan Graves said his squadron saw unidentified objects over restricted airspace off Virginia for years, and Navy aviators David Fravor and Alex Dietrich described the 2004 Nimitz encounter, weeks before the ODNI report.
Photo: U.S. House Committee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, Public domain
Government3 May 2021
The Defense Department inspector general announced an evaluation of the extent to which the department had taken actions on UAP, covering the services, combatant commands and defense agencies. It was described as a policy review, not a criminal or misconduct investigation.
Photo: United States Department of Defense, Public domain
Whistleblowers3 May 2021
Former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo filed a 64-page complaint with the Defense Department inspector general alleging officials tried to discredit him over his UAP work, including a threat to call him crazy. The allegations were his; the inspector general did not publicly rule on them.
Photo: Freedom of Information act document publicly provided by John Greenewald, Jr., Public domain
MilitaryMay 2021
Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell released footage he said was filmed in the USS Omaha's combat information center in July 2019, showing a round object over water that appears to drop into the sea. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed Navy personnel took the video and said the UAP Task Force was reviewing it.
Photo: US Navy, Public domain
MediaMay 2021
In May 2021, former President Barack Obama said officials could not explain how some objects seen in the sky moved or what their trajectories were. The remarks drew wide attention weeks before the ODNI preliminary UAP assessment.
Photo: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza, Public domain
Whistleblowers30 Apr 2021
Former Senate majority leader Harry Reid told The New Yorker he had been told for decades that Lockheed held retrieved materials and that the Pentagon refused his request for clearance to see them. He did not claim to have seen any himself.
Photo: CIA, Public domain
Media30 Apr 2021
Gideon Lewis-Kraus published a long New Yorker account of how UFOs moved from punch line to Pentagon concern, centered on journalist Leslie Kean and the 2017 AATIP story. It ran online weeks before a promised intelligence report on UAP was due to Congress.
MediaApr 2021
Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell released night-vision video of blinking 'pyramid' shapes he said was filmed from USS Russell off San Diego in July 2019. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed Navy personnel took the imagery and that the UAP Task Force was examining it, without saying what it showed.
Photo: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Michael K. McNabb, Public domain
Media15 Mar 2021
Former New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal published the first biography of Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, who studied people reporting alien abductions. The book drew mixed reviews, including criticism that it was uncritical of Mack's conclusions.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
GovernmentMar 2021
In a March 2021 Fox News interview, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said the intelligence community knew of many UAP incidents around the world, only some of which had been declassified.
Photo: Office of the Director of Intelligence, Public domain
Sightings28 Feb 2021
A fireball seen across the UK at about 9:54 pm was recorded by fireball networks and residents' dashboard and doorbell cameras. The tracked path led to fragments on a Winchcombe driveway, the first carbonaceous chondrite found in the UK and the first UK meteorite fall recovered in 30 years.
Photo: Matt Brown, CC BY 2.0
Sightings21 Feb 2021
A pilot on American Airlines Flight 2292 from Cincinnati to Phoenix radioed that a long cylindrical object had passed rapidly over the plane. The airline confirmed the call, the FBI said it was looking into it, and the FAA said controllers saw nothing on radar.
Photo: Colin Brown from St Ann, MO, USA, CC BY 2.0
Military1 Feb 2021
Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division told The War Zone that tests tied to Salvatore Pais's patent claims ran from 2016 to 2019, cost about $508,000, and ended without proving the claimed 'Pais Effect'. Related FOIA records showed a patent did not mean working technology.
Photo: NASA astronaut, Public domain
Media27 Jan 2021
Syfy premiered Resident Alien, adapted by Chris Sheridan from a Dark Horse comic, starring Alan Tudyk as an alien who crash-lands near the small Colorado town of Patience and poses as a local doctor while hiding a mission to wipe out humanity.
Photo: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media26 Jan 2021
Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb's book argued that the interstellar object 'Oumuamua could be an artifact of another civilization. Reviewers called it provocative, but many scientists were unconvinced, noting the object can no longer be observed to test the idea.
Photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0
