Government and military
Air Force investigations, bases and aircrew reports, from Project Sign to today. 216 events, newest first.
Government1997
Chile set up CEFAA, a committee within its civil aviation directorate (DGAC, part of the Air Force structure), to study anomalous aerial phenomena reported at airports and by aircrews. It became one of the longest-running official UAP study bodies in the world.
Photo: Direccion General de Aeronautica Civil, Public domain
Government30 Nov 1995
At a Christmas tree lighting in Belfast, President Bill Clinton answered a 13-year-old's letter by saying that, as far as he knew, no alien craft crashed at Roswell in 1947, and that if the Air Force had found alien bodies it had not told him.
Photo: William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0
Government29 Sep 1995
President Clinton signed Presidential Determination 95-45, exempting the Air Force operating location near Groom Lake, Nevada, from waste-law provisions that would force disclosure of classified information. It cited pending litigation; the site, popularly called Area 51, is central to UFO lore.
Photo: Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings31 Jul 1995
Capt. Jorge Polanco of Aerolineas Argentinas flight 674 reported a bright light pacing his Boeing 727 on approach to Bariloche during a power cut; Gendarmeria pilots also reported it. A 2018 Argentine Air Force report attributed it to a searchlight aimed at the clouds; files were released in 2020.
Photo: Nocturnogatuno, CC BY 3.0
GovernmentJun 1995
USAF Fact Sheet 95-03 set out the Air Force's standing answer on UFOs: Blue Book logged 12,618 sightings, 701 stayed unidentified, none showed a threat or evidence of extraterrestrial craft, and nothing since 1969 justified resuming investigations. Af.mil still carries the text.
Photo: U.S. Air Force, Public domain
Government8 Sep 1994
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.
Photo: United States Air Force, Public domain
MediaJul 1994
Showtime aired Roswell, a TV film directed by Jeremy Kagan with Kyle MacLachlan as an Air Force intelligence officer revisiting the 1947 events and Martin Sheen in support. It dramatized claims that a flying saucer was recovered and the story covered up.
Photo: Roswell Daily Record, Public domain
Government1994
The Royal Australian Air Force stopped investigating UFO sightings in 1994. According to the National Archives of Australia, it reasoned that only about 3 percent of reports could not be explained by natural phenomena and that these posed little or no security threat.
Photo: Nick Dowling at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Military31 Mar 1993
Police and military witnesses, including a patrol at RAF Cosford, made more than 30 reports of bright lights across central England over about six hours. MoD radar replays showed nothing unusual; most sightings were traced to the re-entry of the Russian rocket that launched Cosmos 2238.
Photo: N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0
Government1992
Spain's Defence Ministry says a review of the Air Force's confidential UFO files began in 1991 and a physical copy of the released files was placed in the Air Force central library in Madrid in 1992. Releases continued through the decade and eventually covered 80 case files.
Photo: Zarateman, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media1992
Nuclear physicist turned UFO lecturer Stanton Friedman and Don Berliner published Crash at Corona (Paragon House), arguing the U.S. military recovered a crashed UFO in New Mexico in 1947 and hid it. Air Force reports in the 1990s instead tied the Roswell accounts to balloon projects.
Photo: AllenS, Public domain
Sightings4 Aug 1990
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.
Photo: Ian S, CC BY-SA 2.0
Military30 Mar 1990
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.
Photo: Pedro Aragao, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings29 Nov 1989
Gendarme patrols near Eupen reported large, silent triangular objects with bright lights, starting months of similar reports across Belgium. On the night of 30-31 March 1990 the Belgian Air Force scrambled two F-16s after a radar contact; the pilots saw nothing and the object was never identified.
Photo: Ronnie Macdonald from Chelmsford, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0
Media29 Nov 1988
Donald Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps officer whose 1950s books and articles argued that flying saucers were real and that the Air Force was withholding what it knew, died in Virginia at 91.
Photo: CBS, "The Mike Wallace Interview" 1958 March 8, Public domain
Government1987
Stanford astrophysicist Peter Sturrock published a review of the Air Force-funded Condon Report in the first issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. He argued the director's summary differed substantially from the staff's case findings, which stressed unanswered questions.
Military19 May 1986
Air Force radar and civilian and military witnesses reported about 21 unidentified objects over four Brazilian states, and five fighter jets were sent to intercept them. The air minister said days later there was no technical explanation; an Air Force report on the night was released in 2009.
Close encounters27 Apr 1986
Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, longtime scientific consultant to the Air Force UFO projects, died at 75 in Scottsdale, Arizona. He had become a critic of Blue Book's methods, founded the Center for UFO Studies and coined the 'close encounters' terms in his 1972 book.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Whistleblowers1986
Ralph Noyes, a retired senior Ministry of Defence official, wrote to the MoD in 1986 that in 1970 he had been shown RAF Venom gun-camera film of UFOs at a secret screening in MoD Main Building. The letter is among MoD UFO files released by The National Archives.
Government1985
A 1954 memo from Robert Cutler to Gen. Nathan Twining mentioning an 'MJ-12' meeting turned up in Air Force records at the National Archives. NARA later said it could not verify it, citing a missing register number, wrong markings and paper, and Cutler being abroad on the date.
Military1983
Lt. Col. Charles Halt's January 1981 memo to the UK Ministry of Defence, 'Unexplained Lights', describing lights and landing traces near RAF Woodbridge, was released in the U.S. under FOIA. In October 1983 the News of the World ran it as a front-page UFO landing story.
Photo: Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, Public domain
MilitaryDec 1980
U.S. Air Force personnel at RAF Woodbridge reported unexplained lights in Rendlesham Forest on two nights, including an object seen near the base's back gate. Deputy base commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt reported the events to the UK Ministry of Defence in a January 1981 memo.
Photo: Charles Halt, CC0
Military9 May 1980
A U.S. defense attache cable from Lima reported that Peruvian Air Force officers saw a round object hovering near Mariano Melgar air base at La Joya, and that an Su-22 fired on it without effect. Pilot Oscar Santa Maria Huertas later gave his own account. The object was never identified.
Photo: U.S. DoD photo, uploaded by en:User:Victor12, Public domain
Media1980
Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore's book The Roswell Incident revived the 1947 debris story as a crashed-saucer cover-up. The Air Force's 1997 report called Roswell essentially a non-story until the late 1970s and cited the book among sources for later claims.
Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
Media1980
Sunn Classic Pictures released Hangar 18, directed by James L. Conway, a drama in which the Air Force hides a crashed saucer at a Texas base while the White House chief of staff keeps it quiet before an election. Its title echoes a claim made at a 1974 symposium about a stored crashed craft.
