Reporting UFO Sightings to the US Navy Just Got Easier

Back in the 1950s, if you saw an unidentified flying object, you could fill out one of the U.S. Air Force’s handy UFO questionnaires for Project Blue Book. That government program dissolved in 1969, but the military has remained interested in UFO sightings ever since. In April 2019, the U.S. Navy confirmed it is updating its guidelines for how pilots and personnel should report what it calls “unexplained aerial phenomena,” or UAP.

“There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years,” the Navy said in a statement to POLITICO, the first outlet to report the news. “[T]he Navy is updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities.”

Project Blue Book was the longest running of the U.S. government’s official inquiries into UFO sightings, compiling reports on more than 12,000 sightings or related events from 1952 to its dismantling in 1969.

George Gorman UFO Encounter — A WWII veteran fighter pilot was just finishing a cross-country flight when a strange white light appeared on his wing. After it made aggressive moves, he engaged with it in the night sky for 27 minutes—but it outmaneuvered his plane, sometimes at speeds exceeding 400 m.p.h. The government called it a weather balloon. Read more

It was dusk when the Mays boys and their friend Tommy saw a pulsing red light streak from the sky and crash on a nearby farm. With their mom and some older boys, they high-tailed it up the hill to get a better look—and came running back down in terror. Through a dense mist, they say, they saw a 10-foot-high monster with a glowing green face. Read more

The Lubbock Lights — Over a two-week stretch, hundreds of residents in this university town—including several prominent scientists—saw mysterious blue-green lights streaking across the night sky. One Texas Tech freshman snapped pictures, which show a cluster of lights in a “V” formation. The official explanation: migratory birds reflecting street lights. Read more

Two Eastern Air Lines pilots reported seeing a cigar-shaped aircraft with two rows of windows. But after investigators generated a top-secret report, the Air Force incinerated it. Some wonder if the craft was Soviet, or part of the rocketry tests being run by former Nazi aerospace engineers spirited to the U.S. after the war. Read more

Witnesses reported seeing “green balls of fire” in the skies around the Los Alamos and Sandia atomic-weapons laboratories and other highly sensitive military installations. In one instance, the fireball raced head-on toward a plane, forcing the pilot to swerve. Some explanations: Soviet spy devices, nuclear fallout debris or an alternate form of lightning. Read more

Scoutmaster Sonny DesVergers was driving some Boy Scouts near West Palm Beach when they saw a bright light flash over a palmetto grove. He stopped to investigate—and later emerged terrified, with burns on his arms and a tale of a 30-foot diameter saucer that had enveloped him in a red mist. Grass in the grove was singed, and its roots charred. Read more

Betty and Barney Hill couldn’t understand why the light was chasing their car. But after some rhythmic beeping, they got drowsy and woke up two hours later, 35 miles away, disheveled and confused. Years later, hypnosis helped them recover memories of an abduction by gray humanoid creatures who led them into a saucer and conducted invasive tests. Read more

1 / 8: Everett

Basically, the Navy wants to create a formal process for pilots and other personnel to report flying objects they can’t explain so that someone can investigate. The Navy seems less concerned that UAPs are a sign of alien life, and more concerned that they’re unauthorized aircrafts from a foreign nation. This is why the U.S. started investigating UFO sightings in the late 1940s, too: there was concern that people were actually spotting secret Soviet planes.

The Navy’s announcement about its UAP reporting guidelines comes a year and a half after The New York Times revealed the Pentagon had a secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program from 2007 to 2012. Luis Elizondo, the former Pentagon official who led the classified program and is featured in HISTORY’s new show Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation, resigned because he felt the Pentagon wasn’t doing enough to identify and combat UAPs. Elizondo has said he thinks they could be a threat to national security. (Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation premieres on May 31 on HISTORY.)

The short-lived Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was able to run as long as it did because it had support from prominent members of Congress like Senator Harry Reid. Similarly, the Navy’s recent UAP updates may have been a response to Congressional interests in tracking them.

“In response to requests for information from Congressional members and staff, Navy officials have provided a series of briefings by senior Naval Intelligence officials as well as aviators who reported hazards to aviation safety,” the Navy said in its statement to POLITICO. It did not, however, identify which members of Congress had requested the briefings.

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