An unidentified flying object (UFO), or unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP), is any perceived airborne, submerged or transmedium phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. Upon investigation, most UFOs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained.
Ufology, sometimes written UFOlogy, is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary origins. While there are instances of government, private, and fringe science investigations of UFOs, ufology is generally regarded by skeptics and science educators as an example of pseudoscience.
The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) proposes that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are best explained as being physical spacecraft occupied by extraterrestrial intelligence or non-human aliens, or non-occupied alien probes from other planets visiting Earth.
Black triangles are UFOs reported as having a triangular shape and dark color, typically observed at night, described as large, silent, hovering, moving slowly, and displaying pulsating, colored lights which they can turn off.
Project Condign was a secret unidentified flying object (UFO) study undertaken by the British Government's Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) between 1997 and 2000.
GEIPAN, is a unit of the French Space Agency CNES based in Toulouse whose brief is to investigate unidentified aerospace phenomena (UAP), and make its findings available to the public.
The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was an unclassified but unpublicized investigatory effort funded by the United States Government to study unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP). The program was first made public on December 16, 2017. The program began in 2007, with funding of $22 million over the five years until the available appropriations were ended in 2012. The program began in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
Luis Elizondo is a media personality and author formerly employed by United States Army Counterintelligence and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. According to Elizondo, he was director of the now defunct Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which was associated with the Pentagon UFO videos. Elizondo's statements about his Pentagon role with AATIP have been contested by Pentagon officials. Since 2017, he has claimed there is a government conspiracy to suppress evidence that UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin.
The Pentagon UFO videos are selected visual recordings of Forward-looking infrared (FLIR) targeting cameras from United States Navy fighter jets based aboard aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2004, 2014 and 2015, with additional footage taken by other Navy personnel in 2019. The four grainy, monochromic videos, widely characterized as officially documenting UFOs, have received extensive coverage in the media since 2017. The Pentagon later addressed and officially released the first three videos of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) in 2020, and confirmed the provenance of the leaked 2019 videos in two statements made in 2021. Footage of UAPs was also released in 2023, sourced from MQ-9 military drones.
The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is an office within the United States Office of the Secretary of Defense that investigates unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and other phenomena in the air, sea, and/or space and/or on land: sometimes referred to as "unidentified aerial phenomena" or "unidentified anomalous phenomena" (UAP). Its first director was physicist Sean Kirkpatrick, and its current director is Jon T. Kosloski who reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks.
Redwire Corporation is an American aerospace manufacturer and space infrastructure technology company headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. The company was formed on June 1, 2020 by the private equity firm AE Industrial Partners.
Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, also known as the UAP Report and colloquially named the Pentagon UFO Report, is a United States federally mandated assessment, prepared and published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on June 25, 2021, summarizing information regarding unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) which include unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Substantial public attention had been given to the mandated June 25 report, fueled by statements by former high level officials in the U.S. government, including former president Barack Obama, who stated in June 2021 "...there's footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don't know exactly what they are."
On 17 May 2022, members of the United States House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation held congressional hearings with top military officials to discuss military reports of unexplained aerial phenomena (UAPs). It was the first public congressional hearing into UFO sightings in the US in over 50 years.
Kevin Hunter Knuth is a Professor of Physics at the University at Albany (SUNY). Knuth conducts research in information physics, foundations of quantum mechanics, and Bayesian analysis with applications towards various problems in physics. He also conducts research into UFOs.
The Galileo Project is an international scientific research project to search for extraterrestrial intelligence or extraterrestrial technology on and near Earth and to identify the nature of anomalous Unidentified Flying Objects/Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UFOs/UAP).
Sean Michael Kirkpatrick is an American laser and materials physicist who served as the first director of the United States Department of Defense's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Kirkpatrick is also an adjunct assistant professor of physics at the University of Georgia.
In 2023, David Grusch, a United States Air Force (USAF) officer and former intelligence official, was interviewed by journalists and testified in a U.S. House of Representatives hearing. Grusch claimed that the U.S. federal government, in collaboration with private aerospace companies, has highly secretive special access programs involved in the recovery and reverse engineering of "non-human spacecraft" and their dead pilots.
The NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team (UAPIST) was a panel of sixteen experts assembled in 2022 by the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and chaired by David Spergel to recommend a roadmap for the analysis of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) by NASA and other organizations.
Investigation and analysis of reported UFO incidents under the federal government of the United States has taken place under multiple branches and agencies, past and current, since 1947. In spite of decades of interest, there remains no evidence that there are any UFOs with extraordinary origins and, indeed, those identified all have been shown to be natural phenomena, human technology, misapprehensions, delusions, or hoaxes.
The Director of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Research at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) oversees investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
