Place
United States
38.90 N, 77.04 WView on OpenStreetMap (opens in a new tab)
15 entries here, 1952 to 2025, in date order.
On two weekends in July 1952, radar at Washington National Airport and Andrews AFB tracked unexplained targets, some matched by pilot sightings, and jets were sent to intercept. The Air Force publicly suggested temperature inversions as a likely cause.
A CIA-convened panel of scientists chaired by physicist H. P. Robertson reviewed UFO reports and found no direct threat to national security. It recommended training and public education to strip the subject of its special status.
The House Armed Services Committee held an open hearing on UFOs with Air Force Secretary Harold Brown, Blue Book consultant J. Allen Hynek and Maj. Hector Quintanilla. Brown said an advisory board found no threat and urged contracts with universities to study selected sightings.
The House Committee on Science and Astronautics held a one-day symposium on UFOs chaired by Rep. J. Edward Roush. Six scientists, including J. Allen Hynek, James McDonald and Carl Sagan, presented views, and further papers were added to the printed record.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote to Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn asking for a restricted special access program for parts of the DIA aerospace study he called AATIP, citing sensitive findings. A November 2009 DIA review found no justification for the protection.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a preliminary assessment of military UAP reports from 2004 to 2021. It explained one case with high confidence, a deflating balloon, and said limited data left the rest unresolved.
The FY2022 defense bill, signed Dec. 27, 2021, ordered the Pentagon and intelligence community to set up an office on unidentified aerial phenomena, with unclassified annual reports and semiannual classified briefings to Congress. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand pushed the provision.
A House Intelligence subcommittee held an open hearing on UAP with Under Secretary of Defense Ronald Moultrie and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray, who showed newly declassified video. It was described as the first open congressional hearing on the subject in about 50 years.
NASA said it would commission an independent team, chaired by astrophysicist David Spergel, to study unidentified aerial phenomena using only unclassified data and recommend how NASA could help. The 16-member team began work in October 2022.
Senators Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds filed the UAP Disclosure Act as an amendment to the Senate defense authorization bill. Modeled on the JFK records law, it would have created a UAP records collection at the National Archives and an independent review board.
Former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch testified under oath that he had been told of a decades-long program to recover craft of non-human origin, which he said he learned through interviews rather than firsthand access. The Pentagon and AARO have said they found no verifiable evidence of such programs.
NASA's independent UAP study team released its final report, urging better-calibrated sensors and data and a larger NASA role. It said the scientific literature holds no conclusive evidence of an extraterrestrial origin. NASA said it was appointing a director of UAP research.
The FY2024 defense bill, signed Dec. 22, 2023, kept a reduced version of the Schumer-Rounds UAP Disclosure Act, ordering agencies to send UAP records to a new National Archives collection. Conferees dropped the proposed independent review board and the push to obtain privately held material.
Two House Oversight subcommittees held a joint hearing at which Tim Gallaudet, Luis Elizondo, Michael Gold and Michael Shellenberger testified under oath. The witnesses alleged excessive secrecy around UAP and urged more disclosure and better reporting.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna's House Oversight task force heard sworn testimony from Navy and Air Force witnesses and journalist George Knapp. Rep. Eric Burlison showed a video he said was filmed off Yemen in October 2024 of a Hellfire missile apparently failing to down an object.
