An investigation by the Department of Defense into UFO sightings found no evidence to support the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
The Pentagon published a report on Friday by its All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) reviewing 80 years of UFO sightings and concluded there is no evidence UFO sighting reflected the existence of alien life.
“AARO found no evidence that any USG investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology,” the DoD report summarizes. Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) is the technical term used to classify UFOs.
The Pentagon determined the majority of UFO sightings were false alarms and misidentified ordinary flying objects. A significant portion of the reports on UFO sightings lacked the necessary information to be fully resolved, but the Pentagon believes they would be identified as ordinary objects if more information were available.
Additionally, the Pentagon looked into allegations the government and private corporations teamed up to reverse-engineer UFOs and alien life. There was no evidence to substantiate the allegations of reverse-engineering, the AARO report concludes.
“AARO determined, based on all information provided to date, that claims involving specific people, known locations, technological tests, and documents allegedly involved in or related to the reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial technology, are inaccurate.”
All of the alleged reverse-engineering programs were either non-existent or misidentified by interviewees during the investigation, the AARO found after it received unrestricted access to sensitive national security programs and evaluated the various claims by interviewees. The AARO interviewed roughly 30 people for its investigation and explored various claims by individuals who purport to have knowledge of UFOs.
“AARO assesses that all of the named and described alleged hidden UAP reverse engineering programs provided by interviewees either do not exist; are misidentified authentic, highly sensitive national security programs that are not related to extraterrestrial technology exploitation; or resolve to an unwarranted and disestablished program,” the AARO report says.
“The interviewees and others who have mistakenly associated authentic sensitive national security programs with UAP had incomplete or unauthorized access to these programs; discussion of these programs outside of secure facilities presents a high risk of exposing national security information.”
For example, an intelligence program was expanded in 2021 to protect supposed reverse-engineering and failed to discover any examples of it taking place, so it was eventually disbanded. The AARO believes the reverse-engineering claims derive from a program called KONA BLUE, a proposed special access Department of Homeland Security program related to UFOs. The program was based on a canceled defense intelligence agency program and DHS never approved it.
AARO attributes the reverse-engineering theories to cultural, political and technological forces dating back to the 20th century. Government secrecy surrounding military programs and the expansion of national security threats are examples of pre-modern factors. Experimental technologies during the Cold War were believed by mistaken observers to be UFOs, AARO asserts. Modern explanations for the proliferation of perceived UFO reverse-engineering include the pop-culture interest in extraterrestrial life and its prominence online.
The report was generated based on intelligence and defense community records, open-source information, interviews and both classified and unclassified archives. It was mandated by the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act giving the Pentagon 540 days to conduct the investigation. Volume two of the report will be published later this year, the Pentagon said in a press release.
U.S. government programs related to UFOs dating back to 1945 ranging from formal programs with offices full of staff to short-term government projects were investigated by the AARO and the report lists the AARO’s findings for each program.
“To date, AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP represented off-world technology or the existence a classified program that had not been properly reported to Congress,” the report concludes.
Many of the UFO reports remain unsolved.