Originally published 2017-12-29.
Yes, the US government did run a secret programme to study UFO reports. On 16 December 2017, The New York Times and Politico revealed that the Pentagon had funded a little-known effort, usually called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), with about $22 million between 2008 and 2012. What the programme did not do was prove that aliens exist. Years of later official reviews have found no evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
Here is how the programme began, what it studied, why the 2017 reports caused such a stir, and what the government has concluded since.
How the programme started
The effort grew out of an initiative launched in 2007 at the Defense Intelligence Agency, formally called the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP). AATIP is the name that became public later and is commonly used for the whole effort.
Its main political backer was Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was then Senate Majority Leader. Reid had a long interest in the subject and was encouraged by his friend Robert Bigelow, a Las Vegas hotel and aerospace entrepreneur. Two senior senators, Ted Stevens of Alaska and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, supported the funding. The money was a tiny slice of a Defense Department budget of roughly $600 billion a year at the time.
What the money paid for
Most of the funding went to a contractor, Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies. According to the 2017 reporting, Bigelow's company modified buildings in Las Vegas to store materials said to be linked to unexplained aerial events, and researchers interviewed military personnel and civilians who said they had encountered strange objects, including checks for any physical effects on witnesses.
The contractor produced a 494-page "Ten Month Report" on alleged sightings, which has never been made public. The programme also commissioned 38 technical studies, on topics ranging from warp drives to invisibility cloaking. The list of titles was released in 2019 after a freedom-of-information request by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists.
The Navy videos
Alongside the 2017 articles came short cockpit videos recorded by US Navy fighter jets, including the 2004 "FLIR1" footage from the USS Nimitz group and the "Gimbal" video from 2015. In one clip, aircrew can be heard reacting to what they think is a group of objects. The Navy later confirmed the videos were genuine and, in 2020, the Pentagon formally released three of them, describing what they show as "unidentified aerial phenomena".
Analysts such as Mick West have argued that the most striking effects in these videos, such as the apparent rotation in "Gimbal", can be explained by the camera system, glare and the motion of the jet itself.
Was it shut down or not?
The Pentagon said funding for the programme ended in 2012 because other priorities deserved the money. Reid, by contrast, was openly proud of it and told the Times it was one of the good things he had done in Congress.
Luis Elizondo, a military intelligence official who said he ran AATIP, resigned in October 2017 in protest at what he saw as excessive secrecy, and then helped bring the story to the press. He said work continued informally after the funding stopped. The Pentagon later disputed his account of his role, while his supporters disputed the Pentagon's. In 2019 a Defense Department spokesperson confirmed that the programme had researched unidentified aerial phenomena.
One former staff member, quoted by Politico, summed up the sceptical view inside government: After a while the consensus was we really couldn't find anything of substance.
What official reviews found later
The 2017 revelations pushed Congress to take the subject more seriously, and the term "UAP" replaced "UFO" in official language. The milestones since then:
- 2020: The Pentagon acknowledged an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.
- June 2021: A preliminary assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence covered 144 reports from 2004 to 2021. Only one was explained with confidence, and 18 showed unusual movement. The report did not link any of them to alien life.
- July 2022: The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was set up to take over the work.
- January 2023: AARO reported 366 new cases; about half had ordinary explanations such as balloons, drones and clutter.
- March 2024: AARO's review of government investigations since 1945 found no empirical evidence that any sighting represented extraterrestrial technology, and no evidence of hidden alien artefacts.
Why unidentified does not mean alien
"Unidentified" simply means the people reviewing a report could not say what it was. That usually comes down to missing information: no clear distance, no second sensor, a blurry image or a short clip.
Common explanations include balloons, drones, birds, satellites, aircraft seen from unusual angles, atmospheric effects and sensor artefacts. Some cases may also involve secret aircraft or surveillance by foreign rivals, which is exactly why the military wants to know. James Oberg, a former NASA mission control engineer and long-time UFO sceptic, pointed out at the time that many people active in the air do not want others to know about it. He still allowed that a rare case might be worth a closer look.
Sceptical researchers such as Benjamin Radford, Robert Sheaffer and physicist Don Lincoln have made the same point: ordinary explanations account for the evidence released so far, and extraordinary claims need far stronger proof.
Myths worth clearing up
"The government confirmed aliens." It did not. It confirmed it studied reports, and its later reviews found no alien technology.
"The programme recovered UFO materials." The 2017 reports said materials linked to sightings were stored, but no public evidence has shown that any of them came from a non-human craft.
"Everything was covered up." Secrecy was real, but much has since been released: the videos, the study titles, the ODNI and AARO reports, and congressional hearings.
How to look at a UFO report yourself
If you see something strange in the sky, note the time, direction, how long it lasted and how it moved, and film something fixed, like a roofline, in the same shot to give a reference point. Check flight-tracking and satellite-pass apps; many sightings turn out to be satellite trains or aircraft lights. Curiosity is healthy, and the 2017 revelations showed that governments do take these reports seriously. Careful observation is what turns a mystery into an answer.
Sources: Wikipedia: Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program; Wikipedia: All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office; The New York Times, original report (16 December 2017); Politico, original report (16 December 2017). Header photo: 1965 Santa Ana, California, image via Wikimedia Commons.
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