// CHRONOLOGY
From Kenneth Arnold’s ‘flying saucers’ in 1947 to the Pentagon’s 2026 file releases: 64 key events in three eras, each linked to its sources.
1947–1969 · 16 events
Flying saucers, Project Blue Book and the first official investigations — until the Air Force closed the book in 1969.
Private pilot Kenneth Arnold reports nine shining objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier, Washington, at speeds he estimated over 1,200 mph. A newspaper headline turns his description into the phrase ‘flying saucer’ — and a global phenomenon is born.
Roswell Army Air Field issues a press release saying it has recovered a ‘flying disc’ near Roswell, New Mexico. Within a day the story is changed to a weather balloon. In the 1990s the U.S. Air Force says the debris came from Project Mogul, a classified balloon program to detect Soviet nuclear tests. Roswell remains the most famous UFO case in history.
The U.S. Air Force opens its first official UFO study, Project Sign, followed by Project Grudge. An internal ‘Estimate of the Situation’ reportedly argued for an interplanetary explanation; it was rejected by leadership and copies were said to have been destroyed.
Oregon farmers Paul and Evelyn Trent take two photos of a disc-shaped object over their farm. The pictures appear in Life magazine and are still debated: the Air Force-funded Condon study could not rule them out as genuine, while skeptics argue a small model was hung from an overhead wire.
Blue Book becomes the Air Force’s long-running UFO investigation. From 1947 to 1969, Blue Book and its predecessors log 12,618 reports. 701 are never identified.
Navy Chief Photographer Delbert Newhouse films a dozen bright objects over Utah. The Navy’s photo lab concludes they are not birds or aircraft; months later the CIA’s Robertson Panel says they were most likely sunlit seagulls.
On two weekends in July, radar operators at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base track unknown targets over the U.S. capital. Jets are scrambled. The Air Force holds its largest press conference since World War II to explain the events as temperature inversions.
A CIA-sponsored scientific panel concludes UFOs pose no direct threat, but recommends a public ‘debunking’ campaign to reduce public interest — a decision later cited as the start of decades of official stigma.
Driving home through rural New Hampshire, Betty and Barney Hill report a large craft descending toward their car, then a stretch of time they cannot account for. Under hypnosis in 1964, both describe being taken aboard and examined by non-human beings; their psychiatrist concluded it was a psychological experience. The case became the template for modern ‘alien abduction’ stories.
Police Sgt. Lonnie Zamora reports a shiny, egg-shaped craft and two small figures in a gully outside Socorro, New Mexico, then a roaring lift-off. Investigators find scorched brush and landing marks. Project Blue Book lists it as ‘unidentified’; skeptics suggest a prank or a secret test vehicle.
A brilliant fireball is seen across several U.S. states and Ontario, and residents of Kecksburg report something crashing in nearby woods. Some later claim soldiers hauled away an acorn-shaped object; searchers at the time said they found nothing, and astronomers concluded it was a meteor. A court-supervised NASA records search (2007–2009) found no evidence of a recovered craft.
After mass sightings in Michigan are dismissed as ‘swamp gas’, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford calls for a congressional hearing, saying the American public deserves a better explanation.
Students and teachers at Westall High School in Melbourne, Australia, say they watch a silver, saucer-shaped object descend toward nearby bushland. It remains Australia’s biggest mass sighting. Theories include a stray research balloon, but no official records have surfaced.
Ten Minuteman nuclear missiles at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, suddenly go offline. Former launch officer Robert Salas later says a glowing object hovered over a missile site; Air Force engineers traced the shutdown to an electronic ‘noise pulse’, and the officers on duty say no UFO was involved.
Witnesses, including a police constable, see lights go down into the sea off Shag Harbour, Canada. Searchers find only a trail of yellow foam, and no aircraft is missing. Canadian government files refer to it as an unidentified flying object.
Following the University of Colorado ‘Condon Report’, which concluded further study was unlikely to be scientifically useful, the Air Force closes Project Blue Book. Officially, the U.S. government is out of the UFO business.
1970–2016 · 14 events
Officially, the story was over. Pilots, police and whole towns kept reporting — and the Pentagon quietly kept studying.
Two Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom jets are sent to intercept a bright object over Tehran. Both pilots report instrument and weapons-system failures as they approach. A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency memo calls it ‘a classic which meets all the criteria necessary for a valid study of the UFO phenomenon.’
France’s space agency CNES creates GEPAN, a scientific unit in Toulouse that investigates ‘unidentified aerospace phenomena’ reported by the public and the Gendarmerie. Now called GEIPAN, it is one of the longest-running official UAP offices in the world and has published its case files online since 2007. Only a few percent of its cases remain unexplained.
U.S. Air Force personnel at RAF Woodbridge, England, report strange lights and a landed craft in the forest over several nights. Deputy base commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt records an audio tape and writes an official memo to the UK Ministry of Defence.
Near Huffman, Texas, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and her 7-year-old grandson report a fiery object hovering over the road, followed by a group of twin-rotor helicopters. All three report illnesses they blame on the encounter. An Army inquiry found no evidence the helicopters were military, a federal judge dismissed their lawsuit in 1986, and the object has never been identified.
The crew of a JAL cargo 747 over Alaska report enormous lights pacing their aircraft for nearly 50 minutes. The FAA investigates; radar data is debated for decades.
Thousands of Belgians report large triangular craft. The Belgian Air Force scrambles F-16s and later releases radar data publicly — a rare move by a national military.
Sixty-two schoolchildren in Ruwa, Zimbabwe, describe a craft landing near their playground and beings emerging. Harvard psychiatrist John Mack interviews the children. Many still stand by their accounts as adults.
Three young women in Varginha, Brazil, say they saw a strange being with a large head and red eyes crouching by a wall. Rumors of captured aliens and army trucks make it Brazil’s most famous UFO case. A 1997 Brazilian military inquiry concluded the women had seen a local man; ufologists dispute that finding.
Thousands of people across Arizona see a V-shaped formation of lights. A second set of lights later that night is attributed by the military to flares. Then-Governor Fife Symington later says he saw a craft himself and could not explain it.
Following a 1994 report that traced the Roswell debris to Project Mogul balloons, the U.S. Air Force releases ‘The Roswell Report: Case Closed’. It says stories of alien bodies most likely came from crash-test dummies dropped from high-altitude balloons. Critics point out those dummy drops happened in the 1950s, years after 1947.
Off the coast of San Diego, radar on the USS Princeton reportedly tracks objects dropping from 80,000 feet to sea level in seconds. Cmdr. David Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich see a white, wingless, 40-foot ‘Tic Tac’ that mirrors their movements and then accelerates out of sight. Later that day a jet records the FLIR1 video.
United Airlines employees and pilots report a dark, disc-shaped object hovering over Gate C-17 before shooting straight up through the clouds, leaving a hole. The FAA attributes it to a weather phenomenon.
Pushed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Defense Intelligence Agency funds a roughly $22 million program studying ‘advanced aerospace threats’. Its existence would remain unknown to the public for a decade.
Navy F/A-18 pilots off the U.S. East Coast report near-daily encounters with unknown objects for months. Two infrared videos are recorded. Pilot Ryan Graves later tells 60 Minutes the objects were seen ‘every day for at least a couple years.’
2017–now · 34 events
A secret Pentagon program is revealed. Then come the Navy videos, sworn testimony and, in 2026, the files.
‘Glowing Auras and Black Money: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program’ reveals AATIP’s existence and publishes Navy videos. Former program official Luis Elizondo, who resigned in protest weeks earlier, goes public. The modern disclosure era begins.
The U.S. Navy drafts new guidelines so pilots can formally report ‘unexplained aerial phenomena’ without stigma. In September 2019 a Navy spokesperson confirms the leaked videos show unidentified phenomena.
Off San Diego, the combat information center of the USS Omaha records a round object moving over the sea before it vanishes at the surface, as a voice says ‘it splashed.’ After the clip leaked in 2021, the Pentagon confirmed it was recorded by Navy personnel and was being reviewed. No official explanation has been published; skeptics have suggested a balloon or another distant object.
The Department of Defense formally releases FLIR1, Gimbal and GoFast ‘to clear up any misconceptions’ about their authenticity. In August 2020 it establishes the UAP Task Force.
The Director of National Intelligence publishes a 9-page report on 144 military UAP reports (2004–2021). Only one is explained (a balloon). Eighteen show ‘unusual movement patterns or flight characteristics.’ The report states that UAP ‘clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security.’
A House Intelligence subcommittee questions Pentagon officials Ronald Moultrie and Scott Bray in open session — the first public congressional hearing on the subject in more than 50 years.
The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office becomes the Pentagon’s official UAP office, with a mandate covering air, space, sea and the ‘trans-medium’ boundary between them.
The 2022 annual report states the government now holds 510 UAP reports. Of 366 newly identified reports, 195 were linked to balloons, drones or clutter; 171 remained ‘uncharacterized and unattributed’, some showing ‘unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities.’
After a Chinese surveillance balloon is shot down on February 4, U.S. fighter jets shoot down three more unidentified objects over Alaska, Canada’s Yukon and Lake Huron in three days. Officials later say they were most likely benign balloons.
AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick testifies in public for the first time, before a Senate Armed Services subcommittee. He says AARO has found no credible evidence of extraterrestrial activity or off-world technology, while noting that a small number of cases show ‘potentially anomalous’ characteristics.
Former intelligence officer David Grusch tells Congress and the Inspector General that the U.S. has a decades-long program retrieving and reverse-engineering craft of ‘non-human origin’. The story is published by journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal.
Senators Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds introduce a sweeping bill modeled on the JFK Records Act, with an independent review board and government ‘eminent domain’ over any recovered technology. A scaled-back version — creating a UAP records collection at the National Archives — is signed into law in December 2023.
Under oath before a House Oversight subcommittee, Grusch, Cmdr. David Fravor and former Navy pilot Ryan Graves testify. Asked if the government has bodies, Grusch says ‘biologics came with some of these recoveries’ and that they were ‘non-human’. The Pentagon denies his claims.
At a UFO hearing in Mexico’s Congress, journalist Jaime Maussan displays two small bodies he claims are 1,000-year-old ‘non-human’ beings from Peru. Scientists dismissed the claim, and Mexico’s national university distanced itself from any interpretation of its tests. In 2024, Peruvian forensic experts said similar figures were dolls made from earthly bones and modern glue.
NASA’s UAP panel publishes its final report, calling for better data, a modern scientific approach, and an end to stigma. NASA appoints its first Director of UAP Research.
AARO’s Volume 1 historical review finds ‘no evidence’ that any U.S. government investigation has confirmed extraterrestrial technology, or that a secret reverse-engineering program exists. Supporters of disclosure call the report incomplete. A promised second volume has not been released as of October 2026.
Luis Elizondo, Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet (ret.), journalist Michael Shellenberger and former NASA official Michael Gold testify before the House Oversight Committee. Elizondo testifies that secret UAP programs have operated without proper congressional oversight and that the U.S. possesses technologies of non-human origin.
AARO’s annual report says it received 757 new reports in a year, bringing its total to 1,652. Most were resolved as ordinary objects or archived for lack of data; 21 were flagged as meriting further analysis due to anomalous characteristics.
Weeks of sightings of large drone-like objects over New Jersey and the East Coast spark national alarm and temporary FAA flight restrictions. Officials later say most were authorized drones, aircraft or misidentifications.
A documentary featuring 34 current and former U.S. government, military and intelligence officials premieres at SXSW on March 9 and reaches Prime Video and theaters on November 21, bringing the insider testimony to a mass audience. In Congress, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets takes up UAP.
At a House Oversight task force hearing on UAP transparency and whistleblower protection, military witnesses and journalist George Knapp testify. Rep. Eric Burlison plays never-before-public video, which he says was recorded on October 30, 2024, of an orb off the coast of Yemen being struck by a Hellfire missile — and appearing to continue on its way.
The annual defense law again leaves out the full UAP Disclosure Act, but requires briefings on U.S. and Canadian military intercepts of unidentified objects over North America since 2004, and directs AARO to account for UAP security classification guides.
In a Truth Social post, President Trump says he will direct the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, and other agencies to ‘begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life’, UAP and UFOs.
The Pentagon publishes 162 declassified files at war.gov/ufo — videos, images, FBI records, historical reports from 1947–1968, Apollo imagery, and recent military sightings from the Middle East, Iraq, Greece and the UAE. The Department describes them as unresolved cases where it ‘has been unable to make a definitive determination’ about what was observed.
New batches follow on May 22, June 12, July 10, August 7 and September 18, with videos, audio, FBI and CIA records, and Cold War files on ‘green fireballs’ over New Mexico. By the end of September about 450 files have been published across six releases. As of October 11, no seventh release has been announced.
Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb announces a UAP Science Advisory Council of about a dozen outside scientists to advise the government on resolving UAP cases. An intelligence official confirmed the council to DefenseScoop, saying it supports a new UAP governance board set up by ODNI, the FBI and the Pentagon. Members include the well-known skeptic Michael Shermer; some scientists have criticized the selection.
Months after its legal deadline, AARO publishes its annual report: 319 new reports, and 370 cases resolved — all to ordinary causes. It says AARO held 1,870 reports as of May 30, 2025, and moved 191 of the new ones to an inactive archive for lack of data. It again says it has found no evidence of recovered UAP material.
The House adopts Rep. Eric Burlison’s UAP Disclosure Act as an amendment to the FY2027 defense bill, then passes the bill 216–212. The amendment would create an independent, Senate-confirmed review board with subpoena power and extend disclosure rules to government contractors. The Senate has not passed its version, so the provision is not yet law.
The fifth release adds 41 files, including six videos from a 2021 AC-130J gunship mission whose report describes about 25 objects moving at an estimated 250–1,300 mph, and a pilot’s account of a roughly 500-foot triangle over Bagram, Afghanistan, in 2002. The Pentagon lists these as unresolved cases, not confirmed anomalies.
AARO moves to buy access to the National UFO Historic Records Center, a New Mexico nonprofit that holds astronomer J. Allen Hynek’s papers and early civilian research files. A Pentagon official says AARO needs the older records to finish its required review of government UAP involvement since 1945.
The Department of War waives civil and administrative penalties under non-disclosure and special-access agreements for current and former personnel and contractors who share UAP information with the officials running the release effort. The waiver covers talking to those officials, not speaking publicly, and officials have not said it protects against criminal prosecution.
The sixth release adds about 71 files, including 37 AAWSAP research papers on topics such as warp drives and wormholes, which the Pentagon says does not mean the concepts were validated. It also includes the 1952 Tremonton, Utah film, Capt. Edward Ruppelt’s 1952 Blue Book briefing, and a 2025 military report of six spheres moving at about 480 mph.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman tells NewsNation that NASA has been part of the administration’s UAP effort and that ‘if it’s aliens, I think NASA should have a seat at the table.’ He adds that natural phenomena or advanced human technology remain possible explanations.
Michael Shermer, the Skeptic magazine publisher who sits on the administration’s UAP Science Advisory Council, writes in The Boston Globe that ‘so far, in my opinion, we have found no verifiable evidence’ of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. He says the council has met weekly since July, and that redactions in the released videos hide the distance, speed and size data needed to judge them. It is one member’s opinion; the council has issued no formal findings.
Last updated October 13, 2026