Government and military
Reports at missile bases, weapons storage areas, test sites and nuclear plants. 41 events, newest first.
Select any year above to see what happened that year.
Open Nuclear sites as a timeline
Sightings9 Nov 2025
Operator Engie said drones flew over the Doel nuclear plant near Antwerp on the evening of Nov. 9, 2025, first counting three and then five, aloft for about an hour. Operations were not affected. The operators were not identified; it followed drone reports over Belgian military bases.
Photo: Tadmouri, CC BY-SA 4.0
Military1 Nov 2025
Belgian Defence Minister Theo Francken said drones flew over Kleine-Brogel air base, widely reported to store U.S. nuclear weapons, over the nights of Nov. 1-2, 2025. A jammer failed and pursuers lost a drone. He called it a likely spy operation but named no one responsible.
Photo: U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Joshua Dewberry, Public domain
SightingsOct 2025
Two peer-reviewed papers by Beatriz Villarroel, Stephen Bruehl and colleagues reported that brief star-like flashes on 1950s Palomar survey plates clustered around nuclear test dates and UFO reports. Other astronomers argued the flashes are plate or copying artifacts.
Photo: Palomar Observatory (scan by Michael Vergara), CC BY-SA 3.0
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
Military30 Oct 2024
At a September 2025 House Oversight hearing, Rep. Eric Burlison played a video he said was taken on October 30, 2024 by an MQ-9 tracking an orb off Yemen as another MQ-9 fired a Hellfire missile that appeared to strike it. The video's source was not officially authenticated at the hearing.
Photo: House Creative Services, Public domain
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
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
Whistleblowers19 Oct 2021
At the National Press Club, Robert Salas and three other former Air Force officers described 1960s incidents in which they said UFOs coincided with missiles going offline or appeared during tests. The accounts repeat claims first made decades after the events and have not been officially confirmed.
Photo: Moszkowicz, CC BY 3.0
Sightings29 Sep 2019
Security officers at Arizona's Palo Verde nuclear plant reported five or six drones over the site on Sept. 29, 2019, and more the next night. NRC records released under FOIA show the reports went to the NRC, FBI and others; operators were never found and the reports were closed unresolved.
Photo: Cuhlik, Public domain
Media13 May 2019
Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist who lectured on UFOs for five decades and whom a colleague called the original civilian investigator of the Roswell crash, died at 84 at Toronto Pearson airport while returning home to Fredericton. He said he never saw a UFO himself.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings3 Jul 2018
Greenpeace activists flew a drone into the no-fly zone of EDF's Bugey nuclear plant in France and crashed it into the wall of the spent-fuel building to show the site's vulnerability. EDF said two drones overflew the site, one was intercepted, and the security of the installations was not affected.
Photo: Spiritrespect, CC BY-SA 3.0
Government28 Jun 2018
A National Assembly commission of inquiry, with Paul Christophe and Barbara Pompili as authors, delivered its report on the safety and security of French nuclear installations, listing drones alongside cyberattacks and insider threats as new forms of threat.
Photo: Pmau, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings10 Nov 2016
A metal cylinder about 4.5 m long fell on a jade-mining site in Hpakant, Kachin State, and a smaller piece with Chinese writing pierced a house roof; no one was hurt. State media said it might be satellite or missile parts, and experts linked it to a Chinese Long March 11 launched the day before.
Photo: Arezarni, CC BY-SA 3.0
Military7 Nov 2015
On the evening of Nov. 7, 2015, a bright, spreading light was seen and filmed from California to Nevada and Arizona, prompting UFO speculation online. The Navy and Pentagon said it was a scheduled, unarmed Trident II (D5) test missile fired from the submarine USS Kentucky off the coast.
Photo: U.S. Navy, Public domain
Military26 Jan 2015
Drones were detected over Ile Longue near Brest, home of France's ballistic-missile submarines, on the night of 26-27 January 2015, and the maritime prefecture sought to confirm it. A deputy raised it in Parliament amid months of drone overflights of French nuclear sites.
Photo: Rundvald, CC BY-SA 4.0
SightingsOct 2014
EDF said unidentified drones flew over seven of its French nuclear sites between Oct. 5 and Oct. 20, 2014, mostly at night. Each plant filed a police complaint and the interior minister said a judicial investigation was under way; no operator was named.
Photo: Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings8 Nov 2010
A KCBS news helicopter filmed a billowing trail rising over the Pacific northwest of Catalina Island that many viewers took for a missile launch. The Pentagon first called it unexplained, then said it was most likely an airplane contrail distorted by camera angle and the setting sun.
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.
Sightings9 Dec 2009
A large white spiral with a blue tail was seen and photographed over northern Norway on the morning of Dec. 9, 2009. Russia's Defense Ministry said the next day a Bulava missile test had failed in its third stage; analysts widely tied the spiral to it, though Russia did not confirm the link.
Photo: Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, CC BY 4.0
Close encounters2007
Nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden, Betty Hill's niece, published 'Captured!' with New Page Books. It retells the 1961 Hill abduction claim, drawing on the Hills' papers, letters and audiotapes, which Marden held as conservator, and compares their hypnosis sessions.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Military6 Jun 2002
U.S. early-warning satellites saw a small asteroid explode over the Mediterranean with an estimated 20 to 30 kilotons of energy. Brig. Gen. Simon Worden later told a House subcommittee that a similar blast over India or Pakistan, then in a nuclear standoff, could have been mistaken for an attack.
Photo: US Air Force, Public domain
Government14 Oct 1997
Lord Hill-Norton tabled written questions in the House of Lords on the 1980 Rendlesham Forest reports, including the Halt memo and its radiation readings. The government replied that the MoD had judged the memo of no defence significance and would neither confirm nor deny nuclear storage claims.
Photo: Anefo (photographer unknown), CC0
Media1996
Nuclear physicist and ufologist Stanton Friedman published 'Top Secret/Majic', defending the authenticity of the disputed Majestic-12 papers, which describe a secret Truman-era group handling a recovered saucer. The papers' authenticity is widely disputed, and skeptics call them fakes.
Photo: AllenS, 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
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
