A thorough Pentagon review of decades of U.S. government investigations into UFO sightings discovered no evidence that any of the sightings were extraterrestrial in origin, nor that the U.S. government or private companies ever possessed extraterrestrial technology that had been secretly reverse-engineered.

The Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) conducted a review of US government records dating back to 1945. Over the last two years, AARO has integrated the US government’s investigations into UFO or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) incidents, as required by Congress due to renewed interest in whether they are extraterrestrial in origin.

“AARO has found no verifiable evidence that any UAP sighting has represented extraterrestrial activity,” Tim Phillips, AARO’s acting director, told reporters before the 63-page unclassified study was made public on Friday.

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“AARO has discovered no verifiable evidence that the United States government or private industry has ever had access to extraterrestrial technology,” he said. “AARO has found no indications that any information was illegally or inappropriately withheld from Congress.”

“AARO assesses that alleged hidden UAP programs either do not exist, or were misidentified authentic national security programs unrelated to extraterrestrial technology exploitation,” according to Phillips. “We assess that claims of such hidden programs are largely the result of circular reporting in which a small group of individuals have repeated inaccurate claims they have heard from others over a period of several decades.”

Phillips underlined that individuals with prior links to the United States military or government who have come forward with some of the accusations dismissed by the study done so “without malice or any effort to mislead the public.”

“Many have sincerely misinterpreted real events, or mistaken sensitive U.S. programs for which they were not cleared as having been related to UAP or extraterrestrial exploitation,” stated Mr. Trump.

The report cites multiple instances in which people named legitimate classified operations, but “the interviewees mistakenly associated these authentic USG programs with alien and extraterrestrial activity.”

For example, AARO investigated an allegation of a person “overhearing a conversation about a technology test at a military base where “aliens” allegedly were observing, and AARO judges that the interviewee misunderstood the conversation.”

The report also describes the testing of a sample from an alleged extraterrestrial crash obtained by AARO from a private UAP investigating organization and the United States Army, which was found to be “a manufactured, terrestrial alloy” of magnesium, zinc, bismuth, and trace elements of lead that “does not represent off-world technology or possess any exceptional qualities.”

Phillips described the historical review as the most extensive government-wide review of classified and unclassified U.S. government materials pertaining to UFO events.

“Nobody got in our way and said no,” Phillips added, describing how even clandestine government entities entrusted AARO with historic material. “When we had people who were slow to agree, the door was eventually opened.”

Overall, he stated that approximately half of AARO’s 40-person staff were involved in the effort to gather historical information from all federal agencies that had conducted previous reviews of UAP incidents, conduct interviews with witnesses referred by Congress, and compile the report, which in some cases involved reviewing physical documents held by the National Archives.

The study contains a synopsis of every major U.S. government investigation into UFO events dating back to 1945, much beyond the well-known Project Blue Book, and includes those whose existence was declassified for the first time in order to be included in the report.

One of those inquiries was into “Kona Blue,” a proposed Department of Homeland Security program that was never completely approved due to a lack of merit. Advocates for the program “were convinced that the USG (U.S. Government) was hiding UAP technologies” and that Kona Blue would offer a mechanism for congressional committees to monitor them.

“It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected,” said the report’s authors. “This material was only assumed to exist by KONA BLUE advocates and its anticipated contract performers.”

The research judged that the bulk of UAP sightings in prior decades could be blamed “on the misidentification of conventional occurrences and objects” and that some were almost certainly a result of the boom in new technologies that witnesses would have sensibly identified as UFOs.”

One of the new technology that was misinterpreted in the 1950s was the then-secret and recently created U-2 espionage plane, which flew at an altitude of 60,000 feet while other planes flew at 20,000. According to the article, the sun’s reflection at particular locations on the horizon “would illuminate the U2” during its high-altitude flights.

The U2 was one of two dozen new airplane and space technologies included in the report that could have been misinterpreted as UAPs due to its classification in some situations.

Phillips described a personal experience he had as an active duty Marine during a training exercise in Arizona, which was later revealed to have been an interaction with a secret classified military technology in development at the time.

Phillips stated that he and members of his unit saw and heard an item passing overhead, but it did not appear on the radar of the air defense systems they were working on. Nonetheless, they were able to detect an object on the system’s optical tracker that was unlike anything they had ever seen before.

They all discovered much later that what they had witnessed was a flying test of the F-117 Nighthawk, the first fighter aircraft to feature stealth technology that prevented it from appearing on radar.

“The stealth worked because the radar didn’t pick it out,” explained Phillips. “But we didn’t know what that was,” he added, describing a similar experience to what they discovered during interviews with UAP witnesses brought to AARO by Congress.

He explained that AARO investigators interviewed witnesses directed to them by Congress, who offered specifics of their experiences, which in some cases could be cross-checked with technology testing at a nearby range that matched what they reported.

“I would have thought it would have been a UAP myself when I actually saw the picture of it,” Phillips remarked. “So these are rational people making observations that just relating to what they know.”

According to the research, interest in UFOs in popular culture “is more pervasive now than ever” and that “the speed of discovery, and the ubiquity of information available through the internet on the topic is unprecedented.”

“Aside from hoaxes and forgeries, misinformation and disinformation is more prevalent and easier to disseminate now than ever before, especially with today’s advanced photo, video, and computer generated imagery tools,” according to the report, which also cited Internet search and content recommendation algorithms as reinforcing “individuals’ preconceptions and confirmation biases.”

AARO continues to analyze fresh reports of UAP occurrences reported by military personnel, the FAA, and NASA. Phillips stated that the number of events reported to AARO has now surpassed 1,200, but that they are able to address a significant proportion of them promptly, with 122 resolved in February.

Phillips stated that if his office ever established that a UAP incident was of alien origin, the information would not be classified because it is not within his office’s authority.

“The fact that we don’t understand something, it’s not necessarily classified,” he went on to say.

Phillips told reporters that, as part of his office’s efforts to quickly resolve UAP incidents, AARO was developing Gremlin, a new portable real-time UAP sensor technology that could be deployed on short notice to national security sites where UAP incidents had been reported.

“We need to understand what that is,” Phillips added. “And so that’s why we’re developing sensor capability that we can deploy in reaction to reports.”

“We already have specified what type of sensors they need to have to capture this in real time and then how that information will be relayed back to us and our mission partners we can analyze it, help them mediate whatever that particular incident is,” he went on to say.

Phillips stated that the new technology is presently undergoing range testing to detect drone, bird, and bat profiles, as well as providing fresh insights on other natural events.

“We’re learning a lot about solar flaring,” explained Phillips. “We’re really starting to understand what’s in orbit around our planet and how we can eliminate those as anomalous objects.”

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