“The truth is out there,” and according to the U.S. government, it’s likely that the truth is that UFOs aren’t aliens.
Even before a cowboy found debris near Roswell, N.M., that spawned decades of research into potential alien contact with Earth, the U.S. government was researching Unidentified Flying Objects UFOs), now referred to as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs).
On Friday, the Department of Defense released a report that covers UAP research going back to 1945. According to the department, the 63-page All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s Historical Record Report found no evidence that any UAP sighting is linked to extraterrestrial activity.
“In completing this report, AARO reviewed classified and unclassified archives dating back to 1945, conducted dozens of interviews and partnered with officials across the DoD and the interagency,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder Friday. Additionally, he said the report found no evidence that “the U.S. government or private companies have access to, or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,” or that information on the subject had been inappropraitley withheld from Congress.
Lawmakers directed the office to conduct the report as part of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. Another volume of the report is expected later this year, covering findings from interviews and research completed between November 2023 and April 2024.
News that UAPs aren’t linked to aliens might come as a disappointment to the 42% of Americans who believe in UFOs, per Ipsos poll results released last summer. In fact, some reporters seemed skeptical of the findings this week.
“Why will Americans believe that the Pentagon has investigated itself and found that there’s no evidence of alien life?” one asked.
“Well, look, the AARO Office used a very rigorous, analytical, scientific approach to investigate all past U.S. government efforts, all claims by interviewees,” said Ryder. “They were granted access at the highest levels to all information. No – none of the agencies that they spoke with prevented them from getting any of the information that they needed to do. We understand that this is something that is you know, a great interest to a significant number of people and organizations. And so they took this very seriously. They followed the evidence wherever it led them. And you know, I think the results speak for itself.”
Another reporter asked: “So on the UAP report, the Pentagon concluded that there is no evidence of UAPs being off-world technology, but it also said the government setup programs to reverse engineer such technology.
Why did the government plan to study off-world technology if it says it doesn't have any?”
To that, Ryder said: “Alleged hidden UAP reverse engineering programs either do not exist or were misidentified authentic National Security Programs unrelated to extraterrestrial activity or technology exploitation. So what we found is that claims of hidden programs are largely the result of circular reporting by a small group, repeating what they heard from others, and that many people have sincerely misinterpreted real events or mistaken sensitive U.S. programs as UAP or being extraterrestrial exploitation.”
While the report didn’t find any evidence of extraterrestrial life, that doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t out there.
“The scientific community will agree that it is statistically invalid to believe that there is not life out in the universe, as vast as the universe is and the number of galaxies and solar systems and planets,” said Sean Kirkpatrick, former head of the AARO Office, in an interview with POLITICO. “That is what part of NASA’s mission is to look for that life. The probability, however, that that life is intelligent and that it has found Earth and that it has come to Earth and that it has repeatedly crashed in the United States is not very probable.”