Around the world
Soviet and Russian cases, and reports from Japan, China, India and the rest of Asia. 41 events, newest first.
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Government6 Jun 2024
More than 80 Japanese lawmakers formed a nonpartisan group, headed by former defense minister Yasukazu Hamada, urging the government to create a body to gather and analyze UAP information and to work with the U.S. AARO. Members framed UAP chiefly as possible security threats.
Photo: Cabinet Public Relations Office, Japan, 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
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
Sightings19 Nov 2023
Flights at Imphal's Bir Tikendrajit International Airport were disrupted for several hours after an unidentified object was reported hovering over the airport. The airport director said two flights were diverted and three departures delayed.
Photo: Haoreima, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government16 Feb 2023
Japan's ruling LDP and Komeito approved a government plan on Feb. 16, 2023 to relax rules on using weapons against unmanned objects violating Japanese airspace. It followed the Defense Ministry's statement that objects seen in 2019-2021 were strongly suspected to be Chinese spy balloons.
Photo: Guilhem Vellut, CC BY 2.0
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
Government13 Feb 2023
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Feb. 13, 2023 that U.S. high-altitude balloons had entered China's airspace more than ten times since early 2022. The White House National Security Council called the claim false.
Photo: China News Service, CC BY 3.0
Government12 Feb 2023
On Feb. 12, 2023, a maritime development office in Qingdao's Jimo District told fishermen an unidentified flying object had been spotted off Rizhao and that it was preparing to shoot it down. No follow-up official account said whether that happened.
Photo: Smainali3, CC BY 3.0
Government3 Feb 2023
China's Foreign Ministry said the object over the U.S. was a civilian airship for mainly meteorological research, blown off course by westerly winds, and expressed regret over its unintended entry. The Pentagon rejected this, saying it was a surveillance balloon.
Photo: Jeanne, Public domain
Close encounters23 Aug 2022
Three researchers at the Main Astronomical Observatory of Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences posted a preprint describing daytime-sky video of fast bright and dark objects. They estimated sizes of 3 to 12 meters and very high speeds; the paper was not peer reviewed when posted.
Photo: Alexey laa, CC BY 4.0
Media14 Jun 2022
Science and Technology Daily, a state-run paper, reported that a Beijing Normal University team had found suspicious narrow-band signals in FAST data; the report was then removed. Lead scientist Zhang Tongjie said radio interference was a very likely cause.
Photo: SCJiang, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings2 Apr 2022
A streak of light crossed several Maharashtra districts on the evening of April 2, 2022, and a hot metal ring about 3 m across and a sphere were found in Sindewahi, Chandrapur. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell linked the streak to the reentry of a Chang Zheng 3B third stage.
Photo: Ganesh Dhamodkar, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings3 Dec 2021
A moving line of lights puzzled residents of Pathankot in Punjab and parts of Jammu and Kashmir. Indian media cited defence sources calling it a satellite and linked it to a batch of SpaceX Starlink satellites launched from Florida the day before.
Photo: Dktue, CC0
Government14 Sep 2020
Defense Minister Taro Kono issued standing orders telling Japan's Self-Defense Forces to record and photograph unidentified aerial objects and analyze sightings, including public reports. The ministry said it knew of no SDF encounters, and Kono had said he did not believe in UFOs.
Photo: Japanese Ministry of Defense, CC BY 4.0
Sightings2 Jul 2020
A bright fireball seen across the Kanto region at about 2:32 am set off reports around Tokyo. Fragments found in Narashino, Chiba, days later were confirmed by Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science as the country's 53rd known meteorite.
Photo: National Museum of Nature and Science, Japan, Public domain
Military28 Apr 2020
Asked about the Pentagon release of Navy UFO videos, Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono said no SDF pilot had met a UFO and that he did not really believe in them, but that encounter procedures would be set and Japan would seek the US analysis.
Photo: Prime Minister's Official Residence, CC BY 4.0
Sightings18 Dec 2018
A roughly 10 m meteor exploded over the Bering Sea off Kamchatka on Dec. 18, 2018. Infrasound stations logged it, but astronomers did not notice until March 2019, when NASA's JPL added it to its fireball database and it drew attention at a planetary science conference.
Photo: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL-Caltech, MISR Team, Public domain
GovernmentFeb 2018
Answering a written question from lower-house lawmaker Seiji Osaka, the cabinet said it had never confirmed UFOs thought to come from beyond Earth and had made no special study of how to respond if one entered Japanese airspace. The question also cited the U.S. Pentagon's UFO program.
Photo: Cabinet Public Relations Office, Cabinet Secretariat of Japan, CC BY 4.0
Government25 Sep 2016
China's state news agency Xinhua reported the opening of the 500-meter FAST radio telescope in Guizhou, then the world's largest single-dish radio telescope. Chinese astronomers said its work would include studying possible interstellar communication signals.
Photo: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team, Public domain
Military2012
Indian army border troops in Ladakh reported about 100 sightings of yellowish glowing objects drifting from the Chinese side over several months in 2012. Astronomers later sent by the army reportedly identified many as Jupiter and Venus, though earlier cases had been blamed on Chinese lanterns.
Photo: Stanzin1945, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings11 Sep 2010
Chinese media reported that airline flights bound for Baotou in Inner Mongolia were diverted on September 11, 2010, after an unidentified object was reported over the airport. No official cause was given, and the story drew wider notice abroad weeks later.
Sightings7 Jul 2010
Flights at Hangzhou's Xiaoshan airport were halted on the night of July 7, 2010, after an unidentified glowing object was reported, affecting about 18 flights. Chinese reports differed on radar detection, and suggested explanations ranged from sunlit aircraft to a military flight.
Photo: jo.sau, CC BY 2.0
Whistleblowers26 Apr 2010
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, head of Russia's Kalmykia region, said on Channel One's Pozner program that aliens visited his Moscow apartment in 1997 and showed him their ship. Duma deputy Andrei Lebedev wrote to President Medvedev asking about state-secret risks; the Kremlin declined to comment.
Photo: A.Savin, CC BY-SA 3.0
Government20 Dec 2007
Japanese Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters, as his personal view, that there were no grounds to deny UFOs exist, and mused on how the pacifist constitution would let the military respond to an alien arrival. The remarks followed a cabinet colleague's similar comment that week.
Photo: Cabinet Public Relations Office, Japan, CC BY 4.0
