Government and military
Encounters reported by Navy aviators and ship crews, including the Nimitz and the released videos. 68 events, newest first.
Select any year above to see what happened that year.
Open Navy encounters as a timeline
GovernmentJul 2026
AARO's report for June 2024 to May 2025, due October 2025 but out in July 2026, logged 319 new UAP reports. No resolved case pointed to breakthrough foreign technology and it found no evidence of recovered UAP material. A Navy report of about 100 objects off Virginia was still under investigation.
Photo: U. S. Department of Defense, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Public domain
Government9 Sep 2025
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.
Photo: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 4.0
Military13 Dec 2024
Naval Weapons Station Earle's public affairs officer confirmed multiple instances of unidentified drones entering the base's airspace during the New Jersey sightings wave. The base said no direct threat had been identified and did not say when the incursions happened.
Photo: Szeremeta, CC BY 4.0
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
WhistleblowersMar 2024
Retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, a former Oceanographer of the Navy, published the Sol Foundation's first policy paper, 'Beneath the Surface', arguing that UAP research should look at the ocean and at reported objects that move between air and water.
Photo: United States Department of Commerce, Public domain
Government1 Dec 2023
AARO added its first case resolution reports to aaro.mil, covering cases labeled Atmospheric Wake, Southeast Asia Triangles and Western United States, with imagery. Later reports found no anomalous behavior in other cases, including the GoFast video and a 2013 Puerto Rico infrared video.
Photo: U. S. Department of Defense, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Public domain
Whistleblowers2023
Former Navy F/A-18F pilot Ryan Graves founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, a nonprofit that says it supports pilots who report UAP and pushes for better reporting. Graves says pilots began sending reports to the group because they lacked another channel.
Photo: U.S. House Committee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, Public domain
Sightings19 Oct 2022
Bergen Airport, near Norway's main naval base, shut for about two and a half hours after drone sightings first reported around 4:15 a.m.; Forde airport also briefly closed. Police said they were sure of at least one drone, and Norway's security service took over the probe.
Photo: Varde / Avinor, CC BY 3.0
GovernmentSep 2022
Answering a FOIA request from The Black Vault, the Navy's FOIA office withheld all UAP-designated videos in full, saying release would give adversaries information on Navy operations and capabilities. It said three earlier videos were released only because they had already leaked.
Photo: United States Navy, Public domain
Government17 May 2022
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.
Photo: U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Public domain
Government17 May 2022
At the House Intelligence subcommittee's UAP hearing, Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray said triangle-shaped objects filmed by Navy crews were likely small drones, their shape an effect of light passing through night-vision goggles onto an SLR camera.
Photo: U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Public domain
Government23 Nov 2021
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks directed the intelligence under secretary to set up the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group as successor to the Navy's UAP Task Force, focused on objects in special use airspace. It was later replaced by AARO.
Photo: United States Department of Defense, Public domain
Government19 Oct 2021
In a University of Virginia Center for Politics talk with Larry Sabato, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said he had spoken with Navy pilots whose radars locked onto unknown objects. He said no one knew what they were and hoped they were not an adversary's technology.
Photo: Bill Ingalls, Public domain
Media8 Aug 2021
Showtime debuted 'UFO', a four-part documentary series from J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot and Zipper Bros. Films directed by Mark Monroe and Paul Crowder. It covered cases such as the Phoenix Lights and O'Hare, the Pentagon's AATIP study and the leaked Navy videos.
Photo: Montclair Film Festival, CC BY 2.0
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
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
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
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
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
Government16 Dec 2020
On the Conversations with Tyler podcast, former CIA director John Brennan called the Navy pilot videos eyebrow-raising and said some phenomena might reflect something not yet understood, possibly another form of life. He framed it as keeping an open mind, not as a conclusion.
Photo: CIA photo, Public domain
Media6 Oct 2020
James Fox's documentary, narrated by Peter Coyote, surveyed UFO cases since the 1940s alongside the newly released Navy videos. It featured former Senate leader Harry Reid, ex-New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and researcher Jacques Vallee. It was released for digital download.
Photo: OldDominionVA89, CC BY-SA 4.0
WhistleblowersOct 2020
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon said in the documentary The Phenomenon that he received the three Navy videos from a Defense Department contact and gave them to the Times for its 2017 story. The Times said DoD was its on-record source.
Photo: Max Moszkowicz, CC BY 3.0
Media8 Sep 2020
Retired Navy Cmdr. David Fravor gave a nearly four-hour interview on the Lex Fridman Podcast, retelling his 2004 encounter with a white 'Tic Tac' object off California and discussing fighter flying and UFO reports. The episode added to his widely viewed first-hand accounts.
Photo: U.S. House Committee On Oversight and Accountability, Public domain
Government4 Aug 2020
Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist approved a Navy-led task force to detect, analyze and catalog UAP that could threaten national security. The Pentagon announced it on August 14.
Photo: DNI, Public domain
Media23 Jul 2020
The New York Times reported that Pentagon UFO work had continued inside the Office of Naval Intelligence as the UAP Task Force and that a Senate report expected periodic public findings. Consultant Eric Davis said he had briefed officials on 'off-world vehicles'; none has been publicly verified.
Photo: U.S. Navy, Public domain
