Much of it stemming from "hazing" or a frowned-upon tradition of playing cruel jokes on the uninitiated as a right of passage. This allegedly occurred in the US Air Force over decades. Meanwhile, claims of alleged government UFO coverups remain largely unproven. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the best path to shaping the public's understanding of this phenomenon is through the gathering and scientific analysis of sensor data.

Wall Street Journal journalists Joel Schectman and Aruna Viswanatha recently published part one of an exposé on UFO disinformation disseminated by the Pentagon, primarily the US Air Force. Just a month prior, I also posted an article about official UFO disinformation: in the late 90s, the CIA published a report on their involvement with UFO investigations that included instances of their own deception during the Air Force’s UFO investigations in the 50s. In the late 80s, a former US Air Force Office of Special Investigation (OSI) agent claimed he had also participated in deceiving the public about UFOs. In both cases, the purpose of the deception was to cover up top-secret technology by leading the public to believe what they were seeing was not ours — but aliens.

In order to separate the signal from the noise, it is vital to understand exactly what current UAP information comes from official disinformation. UAP is the new buzzy policy term for UFO, we'll use both as we discuss past events and today's news cycle.

Congress supports the need to target the disinformation and filter it out. When they expressed their expectations for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the latest UAP investigation organization, they additionally required AARO to investigate “the key historical record of the involvement of the intelligence community with unidentified anomalous phenomena, including… any efforts to obfuscate, manipulate public opinion, hide, or otherwise provide incorrect unclassified or classified information about unidentified anomalous phenomena or related activities.”

I was disappointed when the topic wasn’t included in the first version of AARO’s historical report on UAP released in early 2024. The recent Wall Street Journal article revealed AARO had researched disinformation, but they were pressured by the US Air Force to not report it publicly because of fears the information could “jeopardize secret programs and damage careers.”

The Wall Street Journal found that official UFO disinformation has been a common practice. It has included military personnel disseminating doctored photos of alleged flying saucers at Area 51, secret tests conducted including military personnel without their knowledge and leading them to believe they were seeing UFOs, and decades-long hazing practices that included showing military personnel alleged flying saucer photos and claiming they were from projects that reverse-engineer alien spacecraft.

Among the military personnel given false information about aliens as a joke were officers, which may explain the strong beliefs held by “whistleblowers” at the recent congressional hearing who claim there is a government cover-up regarding the truth about alien visitation. Despite the allegations made in those hearings, no hard evidence or legitimate official documents to back the claims have come to light.

The Wall Street Journal article raises questions about whether the current UAP investigation is a worthwhile effort. The question being, if the Pentagon fooled its own personnel into believing in aliens, then maybe it’s all a waste of time. As someone who has covered this topic for decades, I am long past putting faith in wild claims, but I don’t think I am alone in the belief that there is something worth looking into. I also agree with those who feel the scientific effort is much more capable of tangible, demonstrable discoveries than waiting for confessions from alleged secret keepers to get us answers.

The Pentagon’s first effort to look at the UFO phenomenon was in the late 40s. Back then they were investigating flying saucers, a term made famous by the report of an amateur pilot named Kenneth Arnold. In June, 1947, he reported seeing a formation of shiny objects over Washington state. His report became so famous that it prompted the US Air Force to create Project Sign to look into the flying saucer issue. That evolved into Project Grudge, and then in 1952, Project Blue Book. It was the first chief of Project Blue Book, Col. Ruppelt, who coined the phrase Unidentified Flying Object (UFO). He wanted to bring legitimacy to their effort and highlight the fact that they did not know what the "flying saucers” they were investigating were or where they came from. In other words, we don’t know if they are alien spacecraft, because they remain “unidentified.”

In a case of history repeating itself, a new term was created by academics, officials, and science minded UFO researchers for the same reasons Ruppelt coined the term UFO. Now we use the phrase Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon (UAP) in an attempt to destigmatize UFO research and remind the public these things are still unidentified. It is yet to be seen if the name change is working as many in the public and the media now use the term UAP to reference alien spacecraft.

By the end of Project Blue Book, the US Air Force had collected over 12,000 UFO reports. Although most were resolved, around 700 could not be explained. Many of these unexplained cases involved military or law enforcement personnel. After several reports of UFOs buzzing Washington National Airport in the summer of 1952, US Air Force Major General John Samford confirmed their commitment to UFO investigations by stating, “a certain percentage of this volume of reports have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things.”

As is the case today, media coverage of UFO encounters in the past drove the public’s interest in continuing the investigation. That is until 1969, when the US Air Force enlisted the University of Colorado to put together a group of professors, academics, and experts to conduct a supposed unbiased third party analysis into the value of UFO investigation which concluded there was no scientific value to the effort. The US Air Force used that report to claim there was no threat to national security posed by UFOs, and Project Blue Book was closed.

Many argued the report produced by the University of Colorado did not justify the conclusion. In fact, an engineer in France named Claude Poher felt the report was a compelling argument for the continued investigation of UFOs. He successfully petitioned the French government to begin their own investigations which continue to this day.

More recently, the most compelling UAP case is an event that took place off the coast of San Diego in 2004. During training exercises, the chief radar operator with the Nimitz carrier strike group observed strange readings. He was seeing targets move erratically, including dropping from over tens of thousands of feet to ground level in seconds.

Eventually, a couple F-18s were sent to take a look at one of the targets. When they arrived at the location, they saw a disturbance on the water. Hovering above the disturbance was a solid white object. Wing Commander David Fravor approached to get a closer look and described the object as a 40 foot long white Tic Tac lozenge-shaped object that reacted to his presence by turning toward him. The object then avoided Fravor’s attempt to get behind it before it flew off at an incredible speed. In addition to Fravor, his equipment operator, the pilot and equipment operator of the F-18 that accompanied him, and a marine pilot of another aircraft that came to have a look, all witnessed the event.

Several other US Navy pilots have come forward to say they also had UAP encounters while on duty. The US Navy reacted by enacting new guidelines for UAP reporting in 2019.

The US Navy pilots’ claims, along with allegations of cover-ups by former intelligence personnel, propelled the UFO topic to a level of interest that has never been equaled. With so much attention on the sensational claims of the alleged whiteblowers, sober conversations from credible institutions regarding how to best investigate UAP have gone unnoticed.

While a lot of attention has been given to AARO’s claims that they have found no credible evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, they have also stated “UAP continue to represent a hazard to flight safety and pose a possible adversary collection threat.” AARO reports have repeatedly demonstrated that many cases go unresolved due to a lack of data. The solution? AARO says it is “to document, analyze, and when possible, resolve UAP reports using a rigorous scientific framework and a data-driven approach.”

And before anyone writes AARO off as solely interested in debunking, current AARO Director Jon Kosloski recently made an appearance on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Startalk podcast and made some shocking comments. When discussing cases that merit further investigation, he mentioned hovering black triangles the size of a Prius and glowing orbs reported by “local law enforcement.”

NASA also put together a study group of scientists to look into UAP. The NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study’s task was not to investigate UAP, or review the history of UAP investigations, but rather to advise NASA on how they could “move the scientific understanding of UAPs forward.” The group was given 9 months, and a budget not to exceed $100,000 to review the data available and put together their report. NASA’s study group took the effort seriously and came to a similar conclusion as AARO. In their final report they wrote: “The study of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) presents a unique scientific opportunity that demands a rigorous, evidence-based approach.”

Using the Nimitz incident as an example, we have a case in which credible witnesses are reporting incredible things, just as Samford observed in the 50s. However, the data is solely anecdotal, and we have no sensor data to confirm the event or record the nature of the phenomena observed. This data could have given investigators enough information to identify the object as either something mundane, advanced human technology operating in an area it shouldn't be, or indeed anomalous. In the case of the latter, the data would be even more valuable. If it reveals something exotic, it would give us insight into the nature of the phenomenon observed.

Harvard professor and astrophysicist Avi Loeb agrees. Via email he said the key to figuring out the nature of UAP is “by collecting scientific-quality data on them through dedicated observatories.” He created the Galileo Project, whose goal “is to bring the search for extraterrestrial technological signatures of Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations (ETCs) from accidental or anecdotal observations and legends to the mainstream of transparent, validated and systematic scientific research.”

Loeb says, “The Galileo Project is currently assembling three such observatories that will monitor millions of objects in the sky every year.” Their first observatory was on the rooftop of a building on the Harvard campus. Their paper “Overview of the Galileo Project” reviews some of the equipment used on the rooftop observatory, including multiple types of cameras, passive radar antennas, audio equipment to analyze sound, a spectrum analyzer, and more.

I asked Loeb, who recently proposed a “Vision for a UAP-Manhattan Project,” whether all of the effort was worth it. He replied, “Definitely. Because the intelligence agencies discuss UAP and therefore the collection of data could help national security even if all UAP are human made.”

In their report, NASA went on to make a few more suggestions. To bring much needed transparency to UAP studies, the report suggests “a strategy that encourages citizen analysis of UAP data would bring an element of transparency to the field that could help combat biases, preconceived skepticism, and mistrust of authorities.”

The report also suggests “engaging the public is also a critical aspect of understanding UAP. The panel sees several advantages to augmenting data collection efforts using modern crowdsourcing techniques, including open-source smartphone-based apps that simultaneously gather imaging data and other smartphone sensor metadata from multiple citizen observers worldwide.”

I am a consultant with a company named Enigma Labs, which has based its business on utilizing the phone for crowdsourcing UAP data with their free Enigma app. In the spirit of data collection and crowdsourcing, the app enables the public to submit and share their UAP reports, allows users to browse local reports and read about historically significant cases, alerts users to nearby events, and facilitates public engagement in the analysis of the reports. 

The app also includes an augmented reality camera that displays real-time aircraft, satellites, and celestial objects in order to rule out mundane explanations for whatever they are seeing. Enigma receives hundreds of reports weekly, many with pictures and videos. The app enables anyone interested in participating in UAP research to get involved. 

I review the video submissions daily to find the most mysterious and entertaining. Enigma shares the most interesting reports with users and on social media. The most mysterious ones, I also share with a small number of serious and credentialed researchers interested in doing this work. The ultimate goal is to produce a case that inspires a peer-reviewed paper, which either adds to scientific knowledge by discovering a novel phenomenon or uncovers something truly exotic. 

To date, there are no photos or videos universally accepted as being anomalous. However, military pilots are still encountering objects they can not explain. Even AARO has admitted they are receiving an abundance of reports, many of which go unexplained due to a lack of data.

The conspiracy field is infamously unreliable, and through disinformation, intelligence agencies have probably done more harm than good when it comes to UAP research. But we don’t need to chase conspiracies or rely on the Pentagon to conduct real research and come up with solid answers. SETI is an example of fruitful research, despite the lack of a confirmed signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence.

I have covered science enough to know that many scientists, especially those dealing with space, love Star Trek. In Star Trek, the federation researches less advanced extraterrestrial civilizations by attempting to observe them without being detected. They don’t send them radio signals. And even if we are not being visited by aliens (yet), isn’t the quest of researching unidentified anomalous phenomena what science is really about?

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This editorial was published in collaboration with our friends at Enigma, the #1 destination for UAP sightings and alerts. Share your sighting, explore case studies, and connect with a global network of skywatchers. Download the app to search the skies with Enigma.

And for all sanctioned spacecraft and the databasing of Earth-based terrestrials, download the Supercluster App.