Topic
Encounters reported by pilots, radar crews and base personnel, from the 1950s to today. 141 events, newest first.
Military9 May 2024
Japan's Defense Ministry concluded that footage of the warship Izumo at Yokosuka, posted on Chinese social media in March 2024, was most likely shot by a drone that went undetected. Minister Minoru Kihara pledged faster counter-drone purchases.
Photo: Kurushima Kaikyo Ohashi (Wikimedia Commons user), CC0
Military7 Dec 2023
Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense began listing Chinese balloons crossing the Strait median line in its daily reports, and dozens followed through early 2024, some passing over the island. The ministry generally assessed them as weather balloons and called the launches gray-zone harassment.
Photo: NASA Johnson Space Center, Public domain
Military6 Dec 2023
Starting December 6, 2023, drones of varying size and number repeatedly flew over Langley AFB, home to F-22s, through the month. The Air Force confirmed the incursions, and NORAD-NORTHCOM commander Gen. Gregory Guillot raised them before the Senate in March 2024.
Photo: Tech. Sgt. Natasha Stannard, Public domain
Military28 Apr 2023
A balloon at about 36,000 feet was detected near Hawaii and visually checked by F-22s, which described a spherical object. Defense officials said it showed no link to China or another adversary, posed no threat and was not shot down; its owner was never identified.
Military27 Apr 2023
Poland's defence ministry said the remains of an unidentified aerial military object were found in a forest near Bydgoszcz; prosecutors opened a probe. The government said it had tracked an object in December and then lost it; media later reported a Russian Kh-55 cruise missile.
Photo: George Chernilevsky, Public domain
Military16 Feb 2023
Troops on Taiwan's Dongyin island saw an object fall and found balloon wreckage on a shooting range. Markings identified it as a radiosonde made by a Chinese radio factory, and the army called it a weather instrument, amid the U.S.-China spy balloon dispute.
Photo: Datou Jiazu (Flickr), CC BY-SA 2.0
Military14 Feb 2023
After re-analyzing balloon-shaped objects seen over Japan in November 2019, June 2020 and September 2021, Japan's Defense Ministry said they were strongly presumed to be unmanned Chinese reconnaissance balloons. Tokyo protested to Beijing, which objected to the attribution.
Photo: Guilhem Vellut, CC BY 2.0
Military14 Feb 2023
Romania's defence ministry said radar picked up a small target resembling a weather balloon at about 11,000 m over the southeast on Feb. 14, 2023. Two NATO-assigned MiG-21 LanceR jets searched for about 30 minutes but found nothing visually or on radar.
Photo: claudiu_ne2000, CC BY-SA 2.0
Military12 Feb 2023
At a Pentagon briefing on the objects downed over North America, a reporter asked Gen. Glen VanHerck whether aliens had been ruled out. He said he would leave that to intelligence agencies and had not ruled anything out. The White House said the next day there was no indication of aliens.
Photo: U.S. Northern Command, Public domain
Military12 Feb 2023
On Feb. 12, 2023, the FAA closed airspace over part of Lake Michigan for about two hours 'in support of' Defense Department activities, and NORAD said it imposed the restriction for air-traffic safety. It came a day after a Montana closure and hours before an object was downed over Lake Huron.
Military10 Feb 2023
Days after downing a Chinese balloon, U.S. fighters shot down unidentified objects off northern Alaska (Feb. 10), over Canada's Yukon (Feb. 11) and over Lake Huron (Feb. 12). President Biden later said they were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research.
Military6 Feb 2023
Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of NORAD and Northern Command, told reporters that earlier Chinese balloon flights over the U.S. had not been detected in real time, calling it a domain awareness gap; intelligence found them afterward. A U.S. official said the UAP review helped identify the program.
Photo: U.S. Northern Command, Public domain
Military4 Feb 2023
An F-22 from Langley AFB downed a Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon about six miles off South Carolina after it crossed the continental U.S. The episode preceded the shootdowns of three more objects later that month.
Photo: U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tyler Thompson, Public domain
Military3 Feb 2023
Colombia's Air Force said it detected an object with balloon-like features above 55,000 feet, moving about 25 knots, and tracked it out of the country's airspace, judging it no threat. The Pentagon had reported a Chinese balloon over Latin America; China called it a stray civilian craft.
Photo: Fuerza Aerea Colombiana, CC0
Military1 Feb 2023
A high-altitude balloon seen over Billings halted flights at the city's airport for about two hours. The Pentagon said it was tracking a Chinese surveillance balloon over sensitive sites in Montana, home to Malmstrom AFB's ICBM fields, and chose not to shoot it down over land.
Photo: Department of Defense, Public domain
Military2023
At the July 2023 House Oversight UAP hearing, Rep. Matt Gaetz said a member of an Eglin AFB flight crew showed him a photo of an orb a pilot saw near four craft in a diamond formation over the Gulf of Mexico. He asked that the image and radar data be given to the committee.
Photo: Ike Hayman, U.S. House Office of Photography/House Creative Services, Public domain
MilitaryApr 2022
U.S. Space Command officials confirmed the velocity data for a January 2014 fireball off Papua New Guinea that Harvard researchers had argued came from outside the solar system. NASA noted the short data record makes the interstellar origin hard to confirm.
Photo: Abraham Loeb and Frank H. Laukien (Galileo Project), CC BY 4.0
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.
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
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
