Pentagon Launches Website to Provide Declassified Information on UFO Sightings
The U.S. Department of Defense has launched a website intended to be a "one-stop shop" for declassified information pertaining to unidentified aerial phenomena, more commonly known as UFOs.
The website is the work of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was established by the National Defense Authorization Act last year to investigate unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), or "airborne objects that are not immediately identifiable." As of the launch on Thursday, the website only featured a handful of videos, with some determined to have been commercial aircraft, and others yet to be resolved.
Eventually, the website will feature a tool allowing current and former U.S. government employees, service members and contractors to "provide reports via a private and secure means." Pentagon press secretary, Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a news briefing on Thursday that the update is expected to arrive in the fall, as well as a similar tool for civilians to file reports.
"The posting of the website is the next step in this process, in terms of ensuring that the public has information and insight into UAPs," Ryder said during the briefing. "And so what you see today is what has been declassified to date. The department is committed to transparency with the American people on AARO’s work on UAPs."
He added that the office reviews the facts and, "when possible," will declassify information to make it publicly available.
The launch of the website coincides with a push for transparency when it comes to UFOs.
Back in July, the house oversight committee held its first-ever public hearing on UAPs, hearing unclassified testimony from three retired military veterans who had reported their own sightings. One of the witnesses, former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch, claimed to have knowledge of the existence of a secretive UFO retrieval program, and said that the U.S. government was in possession of "non-human" biological materials.
Grusch also claimed that the government has covered up its research into so-called UFO sightings, and had done so above Congressional oversight. Government officials have denied his claims.
In an unclassified report released back in January, the National Intelligence Director’s Office said that the Defense Department had received 366 new reports of UAPs since March 2021. Although nearly half were "characterized as balloon or balloon-like entities" in preliminary analysis, the report stated that "initial characterization does not mean positively resolved or unidentified."