U.S. military personnel and commercial pilots reported at least 291 UFO sightings since August 2022, the Pentagon said in a report released late Wednesday, with some of the craft exhibiting “high-speed travel,” “unusual maneuverability” and other strange characteristics.
The latest study from the federal government’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, covers the period from August 2022 through April. During that time, the AARO said it received 291 reports of unidentified aerial phenomena. Seventeen of those reports involved incidents that took place before August 2022, while the remaining 274 occurred during that time frame. It’s not clear how many UFOs have been reported since April.
Most of the reported sightings took place over U.S. military airspace, officials said. None of the incidents resulted in any injuries or “adverse health effects.”
“However, many reports from military witnesses do present potential safety of flight concerns and there are some cases where reported UAP have potentially exhibited one or more concerning performance characteristics such as high-speed travel or unusual maneuverability,” reads a portion of the AARO report, produced by the Defense Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The government said that none of the UFOs appeared to pose any direct, immediate threats to U.S. national security. But officials left open the possibility that at least some of the craft could belong to China, Russia or other foreign actors.
“While the mere presence of UAP in the airspace represents a potential hazard to flight safety, none of these reports suggest the UAP maneuvered to an unsafe proximity to civil or military aircraft, positioned themselves in flight paths, or otherwise posed a direct threat to the flight safety of the observing aircraft,” the study says. “Although none of these UAP reports have been positively attributed to foreign activities, these cases continue to be investigated.”
As of April, the AARO said it has received 801 UAP reports, though the actual number of sightings is believed to be much higher. The latest report covers the period earlier this year when a suspected Chinese spy balloon traveled across the U.S. and was eventually shot down off the South Carolina coast. In the days afterwards, the military shot down multiple unidentified craft traveling over North American airspace. They are believed to have been weather balloons or other small objects used for research.
The study also comes on the heels of a stunning congressional hearing in July during which former U.S. intelligence officer David Grusch told Congress under oath that he is aware of “a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program.” He even suggested that the Pentagon has long been in possession of actual alien bodies.
Retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Washington Times shortly after that hearing that he is aware of no such programs.
“I can tell you … that as the chairman I have been briefed on several different occasions by the [Pentagon’s] UAP office. And I have not seen anything that indicates to me about quote unquote aliens, or that there’s some sort of cover-up program. I just haven’t seen it,” Gen. Milley said in the August interview, just weeks before his retirement.
“There is a lot of unexplained aerial phenomena out there. That’s true,” he said. “And they’ve got pilot reports, there’s various other sensors out there, and some of it is difficult to explain.”
“Most of it, actually, they can explain away by a variety of things, like balloons for example — the whole Chinese balloon thing comes to mind,” Gen. Milley said. “They can explain a lot of it, but there is some that’s really kind of weird and unexplainable … But I’ve seen nothing to suggest that we, the United States military or the United States government, has in fact recovered any sort of vehicle that is not man-made, or made here on earth, or that there’s any kind of remains.”
“I haven’t seen any of that kind of stuff,” he said.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.