Veracity of UFO sightings, cover ups examined in Pentagon report

There is no evidence the US government has seen aliens or found UFOs, a new report released by the Pentagon has found.

Since the 1940s, many people had come to believe the US government had discovered alien spacecrafts and were studying UFOs in secret to learn about alien technology.

The report studied historical and famous UFO sightings to analyse theories of a government cover up.

It concluded many of those so-called sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, were likely to be new human technologies that ordinary people wouldn’t have known about at the time.

The Department of Defence’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office found pop culture had probably influenced the public’s belief that the government was hiding the discovery of aliens from them.

Movies, books and TV series have explored the idea of a secret government organisation that has found the remains of aliens and UFOs and kept it from the American people.

“AARO recognises that many people sincerely hold versions of these beliefs which are based on their perception of past experiences, the experiences of others whom they trust, or media and online outlets they believe to be sources of credible and verifiable information,” the report states.

The report acknowledges that hundreds of reports remain unsolved but it says if more and better quality data was available “most of these cases also could be identified and resolved as ordinary objects or phenomena”.

In recent years the Pentagon has poured money into UFO research and released videos as part of its investigations.

In 2019, Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough said two videos of a fast-moving object flying past US fighter jets were “part of a larger issue of an increased number of training range incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena in recent years”.

For the new report, officials interviewed 30 people who claimed to have knowledge of government secrets but the document states many of their claims were debunked through research of past programs.

The well-known Roswell incident of 1947, which has gone down in folklore as one of the most famous UFO conspiracies, was addressed in the 67-page document.

US Army officials announced at the time they had come into possession of a “flying disc” among debris in the New Mexico desert, but soon retracted that statement.

It was officially explained as the wreckage of a military balloon which used dummies to test how pilots ejected from aircraft.

The Pentagon’s report found the Roswell incident likely came from Project Mogul, a Cold War program aimed at spying on the Soviet Union using sensor-carrying balloons.

Overall, the report concluded some of the sightings from the 1940s, 50s and 60s could be explained by the testing of new technologies such as spy planes, satellite launches and the country’s space program.

It also found no evidence former government workers had been sworn to secrecy to stop them revealing secrets about aliens to the public.

A 2021 survey found 41 per cent of Americans believed humans have seen an alien spacecraft, up from 33 per cent two years earlier.

The Pentagon, in its report, stated it was not trying to dismiss honest beliefs but was working only with empirical evidence to review the information at hand.

POLL

GLOSSARY

• unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs): things seen in the sky or in space that can’t be easily identified as being human-made or known natural phenomena
• The Pentagon: the US department of defence
• perception: the way someone sees or understands things
• verifiable: able to be proved with evidence
• incursions: invasions
• unidentified aerial phenomena: things in the sky that can’t be identified
• conspiracies: secret plans
• retracted: taken back
• empirical: based on observation or experience

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QUICK QUIZ
1. When did the public start believing the US government was secretly researching alien technology?
2. What did the Pentagon report conclude?
3. What was one reason given to explain some of the so-called UFO sightings?
4. In the 2021 survey, how many Americans said they believed humans had seen an alien spacecraft?
5. What does UAP stand for?

LISTEN TO THIS STORY

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Alien maths
The Kids News article states that in a survey in 2021, 41 per cent of Americans believed humans had seen an alien spacecraft or Unidentified Flying Object (UFO).

Conduct your own survey to find out how many people in your class believe in aliens or UFO’s.

Come up with your own survey question.

Conduct your survey taking a tally of responses.

Formulate the data into a graph.

Write three facts you have discovered from the survey information.

Present your graph and facts to a classmate.

Time: allow 30 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: Mathematics, English, Personal and Social, Critical and Creative Thinking

2. Extension
With all the new technology arising into the skies, how will experts and stargazers know what is a natural part of the skies, and what is human technology?

Time: allow 10 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Science, Critical and Creative Thinking

VCOP ACTIVITY
BAB it!
Show you have read and understood the article by writing three sentences using the connectives “because’’, “and”, and “but” (BAB). Your sentences can share different facts or opinions, or the same ones but written about in different ways.