Government and military
Air Force investigations, bases and aircrew reports, from Project Sign to today. 216 events, newest first.
Media20 Jan 2015
John Greenewald's site The Black Vault posted about 129,500 pages of Air Force Project Sign, Grudge and Blue Book records as searchable PDFs. The files had long been viewable on microfilm at the National Archives but had not been fully online.
Government8 Jul 2014
France's space agency CNES, through its UAP study unit GEIPAN, hosted a two-day international workshop in Paris on better ways to collect and analyze UAP reports. Scientists, gendarmerie and air force officials and outside researchers presented; GEIPAN published the papers and slides.
Photo: GEIPAN / Wizly-08, Public domain
Whistleblowers2014
Former USAF security policemen Jim Penniston and John Burroughs, central witnesses to the December 1980 Rendlesham Forest events, published Encounter in Rendlesham Forest with former UK MoD official Nick Pope. It sets out their first-person accounts plus memos and interview transcripts.
Photo: Simon Leatherdale, CC BY-SA 2.0
GovernmentOct 2013
Peru's air force said it was reviving DIFAA, an office set up in 2001 to study anomalous aerial phenomena that had been dormant for about five years, citing a rise in reported sightings. Col. Julio Vucetich said it would pair air force staff with scientists and take public reports.
Photo: Lizet Morales Zaragoza, CC BY-SA 4.0
Whistleblowers2013
In the 2013 documentary Mirage Men, former Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent Richard Doty admitted infiltrating UFO circles. The film says Doty and colleagues fed false material to researchers, notably New Mexico businessman Paul Bennewitz.
Photo: The Evening Times, Public domain
GovernmentSep 2012
Newly declassified 1956 Air Force records released through the National Archives described Project 1794, a disc-shaped vertical take-off aircraft that contractor Avro Canada projected could reach Mach 4 and 100,000 feet. The project never produced a working saucer.
Photo: Bzuk at English Wikipedia, Public domain
Government6 May 2011
Argentina's air force set up CEFAe, a commission of military and civilian experts, to study reported aerial phenomena. Press accounts say it examined few cases at first; in 2019 it was restructured as the CIAE, which reports that the cases it analyzed were identified as ordinary objects.
Military4 Nov 2010
Images and video from a Chilean Air Force change-of-command ceremony at El Bosque base showed a small object near the aerobatic team. In 2012 retired general Ricardo Bermudez of the air force's CEFAA committee said experts ruled out birds, aircraft and meteors; skeptics suggested an insect.
Photo: Unknown photographer, Public domain
Whistleblowers27 Sep 2010
At a briefing organized by researcher Robert Hastings, former Air Force personnel including Robert Salas, Robert Jamison and Charles Halt said UFOs had been seen at nuclear weapons sites and claimed some missiles went offline. The accounts were their own; no new official records were released.
Government9 Aug 2010
Brazil's Air Force commander signed Portaria 551/GC3, limiting the Air Command's UFO role to registering reports and forwarding them to the National Archives. Air defense command catalogs reports and the Air Force documentation center sends originals to the archive.
Government5 Aug 2010
A National Archives release of MoD UFO files included a second-hand account that Winston Churchill ordered a wartime encounter between RAF bombers and a UFO kept secret to avoid mass panic. The claim came via a relative of one of Churchill's bodyguards and is unconfirmed.
Photo: Sgt. J. Mapham, No. 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit, Public domain
WhistleblowersJun 2010
Retired Col. Charles Halt, former deputy commander at RAF Woodbridge, signed a notarized statement saying he believed the objects he saw in 1980 were extraterrestrial and that U.S. and UK services downplayed them. His former base commander rejected the cover-up claim.
Photo: Simon Leatherdale, CC BY-SA 2.0
GovernmentJan 2009
Denmark's air force published 329 pages of previously classified UFO report files covering 1978 to 2002, after which a civilian group handled sightings. A spokesman said they were released because journalists kept asking; UPI reported the files include more than 200 unsolved cases.
Sightings21 Apr 2008
Residents across north Phoenix reported a line of red lights that shifted formation and faded one by one; Luke Air Force Base said no aircraft of its were involved. Two days later a local man told a TV station he had tied road flares to helium balloons, and police declined to investigate.
Photo: Alan Stark, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings8 Jan 2008
Several dozen people around Stephenville, including a county constable, reported a large, quiet, low object with shifting lights, some saying jets chased it. The Air Force Reserve's 301st Fighter Wing first said none of its planes were there, then said 10 F-16s had been training in the area.
Photo: CletusDitto, CC BY-SA 3.0
Whistleblowers12 Nov 2007
A panel of former pilots and officials from seven countries, moderated by former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, described encounters with unidentified objects at the National Press Club and urged the U.S. to reopen official UFO investigations through the Air Force or NASA.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
Government2005
Following an audit, CNES restructured its UFO service as GEIPAN, adding public information to its mission and placing it under a steering committee with gendarmerie, police, air force and weather service members. The committee first met in September 2005; GEIPAN later put its case archives online.
Photo: GEIPAN / Wizly-08, Public domain
Military5 Mar 2004
A Mexican Air Force surveillance plane on a drug patrol recorded up to 11 lights visible only in infrared over Campeche. The Defense Ministry gave the video to a UFO researcher, and it aired in May 2004; a later analysis argued the lights were distant oil-platform flares.
Photo: Zahpo75, Public domain
Government2004
The Brazilian Commission of Ufologists, coordinated by Revista UFO editor A. J. Gevaerd, launched a 2004 campaign asking the government to open its UFO files. Organizers say it led to meetings with Air Force and Defense Ministry officials and to later document releases to the National Archives.
GovernmentDec 2001
In late December 2001 the Peruvian Air Force set up an Office for the Investigation of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena (OIFAA), reportedly after a televised sighting over Lima's La Molina district. The office later lapsed and was relaunched as DIFAA in 2013.
Photo: Sodacan, CC BY-SA 4.0
WhistleblowersAug 2000
Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper's memoir Leap of Faith, written with Bruce Henderson, says that in 1957 at Edwards AFB camera crew filmed a saucer-shaped craft landing, and that the film was sent to the Pentagon on orders and never heard of again. No official record of it has been confirmed.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Military1999
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.
MediaJul 1997
Roswell, New Mexico, staged a celebration for the 50th anniversary of the 1947 debris recovery, with tens of thousands of visitors expected. It came days after the Air Force released 'The Roswell Report: Case Closed', which attributed alien-body stories to test dummies.
Photo: J Dykstra, Public domain
Government24 Jun 1997
Days before Roswell's 50th anniversary, the Air Force released a 231-page report by Capt. James McAndrew. It said accounts of alien bodies likely stemmed from anthropomorphic test dummies dropped from high-altitude balloons in the 1950s, plus a 1956 crash and a 1959 balloon mishap.
Photo: James McAndrew, Public domain
Government1997
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.
Photo: NASA Glenn Research Center, Public domain
