The idea of UFOs — whether as observed objects or as a cultural concept — has hovered in U.S. public life for decades, with each new wave of reported sightings, government inquiries, and popular films feeding the next. An Associated Press timeline reviewed the subject’s evolution from early widely reported encounters to formal U.S. investigations, and then into an era where the Pentagon and lawmakers have treated unidentified aerial phenomena as a continuing question of data and security.
The timeline points to June 24, 1947, when private pilot Kenneth A. Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying near Mount Rainier in Washington state, an account the AP says helped spark a wave of other sightings. It also describes July 2, 1947, when a ranch foreman checking on sheep found strange debris spread over a prairie near Roswell, New Mexico. The AP account says authorities initially suggested the material was from a flying disc but later said it was from a weather balloon.
In 1948, the AP timeline says the U.S. Air Force began an official investigation into UFOs through Project Sign. It adds that the effort was renamed Project Blue Book in 1953 and that more than 12,600 reported sightings were investigated between 1948 and 1969, eventually ending with the Air Force concluding in 1969 that it found no evidence of UFOs of extraterrestrial origin or that threatened national security.
As the government investigation structure took shape, the AP timeline says Hollywood also embraced UFO stories. It cites the spy film “The Flying Saucer” in 1950, later follows with the debut of “Star Trek” in 1966, and then places Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977) and “E.T. the Extraterrestrial” (1982) among the most enduring pop-culture milestones. It also includes Roland Emmerich’s “Independence Day” release in 1996, reflecting how UFO themes moved from Cold War-era fascination into blockbuster framing.
The AP timeline then highlights specific reported sightings and accounts that appeared to span different decades and settings. It mentions radar operators and pilots seeing unexplained objects in the sky above Washington, D.C., in July 1952, and describes November 1957 Texas sightings in Levelland, where dozens of people reported strange lights that interfered with vehicles and lights. Later, it notes that in December 1980 U.S. Air Force personnel stationed in Great Britain reported seeing strange lights above Rendlesham Forest, northeast of London, and officers reportedly saw a metallic object after investigating the lights.
In more recent years, the AP account focuses on the language shift from “UFOs” to “unidentified aerial phenomena” and on the government’s review efforts. It says that in 2015 U.S. aviators tracked an unidentified object that was dubbed “Gofast,” while other leaked video footage labeled “Gimbal” showed an object tracked as it moved high along clouds. The AP timeline says the Pentagon later released the videos, and in 2019 Navy acknowledgments described three declassified clips as unidentified aerial phenomena.
The AP timeline says that in 2020 the Pentagon announced a UAP Task Force, and in 2021 investigators produced a government report that, in reviewing 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories, did not find extraterrestrial links, while calling for better data collection. It also describes congressional engagement as lawmakers held a hearing in 2022 for the first time in 50 years on UFOs, with lawmakers saying UFOs are a national security concern, and it notes NASA’s concurrent study efforts and the creation of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO.
The timeline also includes allegations and denials about whether the government possesses more than it publicly acknowledges. In July 2023, it says former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch testified before a House Oversight subcommittee that the U.S. was concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse-engineers unidentified flying objects. The AP timeline says the Pentagon denied that it was concealing such a program.
In 2024, the AP account says the Defense Department’s AARO examined U.S. government investigations since 1945 of reported sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena and found no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence. It also says the study found no evidence that the government and private companies had reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology and were hiding it, underscoring the report’s conclusion that the available record did not support extraterrestrial explanations.
Finally, the AP timeline closes with a set of developments in 2026 that the AP characterizes as a flurry of government activity around extraterrestrials and UFOs. It says that on Feb. 14, former President Barack Obama responded to a question about whether “aliens” are real on a podcast and later posted the remarks on social media, including a claim that while life exists “out there,” the chances of visits were low and that he saw no evidence during his presidency of extraterrestrials making contact. It also says that on Feb. 19, President Donald Trump announced on social media that he was directing the Pentagon and other agencies to identify and release files about extraterrestrials and UFOs and that he told reporters he did not know if UFOs were “real or not.” The AP timeline adds that on March 31, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna requested in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the government release about four dozen videos related to UAP sightings to an oversight committee task force, describing the presence of UAPs near sensitive military airspaces as a threat to readiness.