Pentagon quashes conspiracy theories, says no evidence of secret US work on alien technology

A Pentagon office set up to investigate purported alien encounters dating back decades found no evidence to support claims that any of those incidents were actual sightings of extraterrestrials.

The office also rejected the claim that US had or was covering up a programme to reverse-engineer alien technology. While some cases remain unexplained, in almost every instance the reports were fabricated or had more mundane explanations.

Others stemmed from confusion over top-secret government programmes around aerial drones and satellites that had nothing to do with aliens, according to the 63-page report from the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

“All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” the report said. Claims of secret government programmes were “the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case despite the lack of any evidence.”

The findings will do little to dissuade the legions of Americans who believe the government is hiding an extensive history of alien visitation. But it offers what the Pentagon sees as the definitive attempt to debunk everything from the 1947 Roswell crash – actually a downed military balloon – to some of the earliest reports of flying saucers, which were probably the V-173 “flying pancake,” a programme discontinued in 1948.

The Pentagon established the office and launched the review in response to a fresh surge of interest in alien sightings that was prompted by the 2020 release of mysterious videos taken by naval aviators. They showed objects flying at high speed and moving in ways that defied explanations. The report did not, however, explain those sightings.