The truth is still out there, man. (And not being covered up by a highly secretive U.S. government program. Probably.)
A wide-ranging new Pentagon review of decades of classified U.S. government documents on what it calls “unidentified anomalous phenomena” has found no evidence of extraterrestrial activity ― or attempts at a cover-up.
The 63-page report, compiled by the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office and released publicly Friday, examined classified U.S. programs going back to 1945 and uncovered exactly zero off-world contact.
“AARO assesses that alleged hidden UAP programs either do not exist, or were misidentified authentic national security programs unrelated to extraterrestrial technology exploitation,” AARO acting Director Tim Phillips told reporters at a briefing.
“We assess that claims of such hidden programs are largely the result of circular reporting in which a small group of individuals have repeated inaccurate claims they have heard from others over a period of several decades.”
Many persistent rumors about extraterrestrial aircraft in the U.S. government’s possession appear to have originated from sightings of real U.S. military technology in development.
One person interviewed by the AARO, for instance, claimed to have witnessed alien technology being tested at a government facility. In reality, the report found it “almost certainly was an observation of an authentic, non-UAP-related, technology test that strongly correlated in time, location, and description provided in the interviewee’s account.”
Another rumor concerning a military officer who described, in detail, physically touching an off-world spacecraft was instead found to have touched an F-117 Nighthawk, the world’s first operational stealth aircraft.
Other secret aircraft and national security programs that led to false UAP reports include the Manhattan Project, the experimental V-173 “Flying Pancake” plane, several high-altitude balloon projects, the U-2 spy jet, a 1960s-era satellite reconnaissance program called “Corona” and a joint U.S.-Canada effort to build a supersonic, vertical takeoff and landing fighter known as “Project Silver Bug.”
And in a blow to claims the U.S. government and private contractors are in possession of exotic metal materials from space, a sample of a supposed crashed spacecraft provided to AARO was found to be made of “a manufactured, terrestrial alloy” made of normal Earth elements like magnesium and zinc.
In more enticing news to UFO buffs, the report did describe a 2010-era Department of Homeland Security proposal codenamed “Kona Blue” that would have attempted to acquire and reverse-engineer an off-world spacecraft.
Its supporters were convinced the U.S. government was hiding extraterrestrial technology and believed that, by creating the program, all knowledge of alien tech would be moved within its purview.
“It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected,” the report emphasizes. “This material was only assumed to exist by KONA BLUE advocates and its anticipated contract performers.”
DHS leadership ultimately rejected the proposed program for lack of merit.
But the Pentagon is still on the lookout. Moving forward, AARO wants to equip the U.S. military with portable detection kits known as “Gremlin” to more consistently document mysterious encounters.
“If we have a national security site and there are objects being reported that [are] within restricted airspace or within a maritime range or within the proximity of one of our spaceships, we need to understand what that is,” Phillips told reporters. “And so that’s why we’re developing sensor capability that we can deploy in reaction to reports.”