The US is not secretly hiding alien technology or extraterrestrial beings from the public, according to a defense department report.
On Friday, the Pentagon published the findings of an investigation conducted by the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), a government office established in 2022 to detect and, as necessary, mitigate threats including “anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects”.
Addressing pop culture beliefs surrounding alien technology and extraterrestrial beings, the report said: “A consistent theme in popular culture involves a particularly persistent narrative that the [US government] … recovered several off-world spacecraft and extraterrestrial biological remains, that it operates a program or programs to reverse-engineer the recovered technology, and that it has conspired since the 1940s to keep this effort hidden from the United States congress and the American public.”
“The proliferation of television programs, books, movies and the vast amount of internet and social media content … most likely has influenced the public conversation on this topic, and reinforced these beliefs within some sections of the population,” it added.
AARO investigators, which were “granted full access to all pertinent sensitive [US government] programs”, reviewed all official government investigatory efforts since 1945. Investigators also researched classified and unclassified archives, conducted approximately 30 interviews, and collaborated with intelligence community and defense department officials responsible for controlled and special access program oversight, the report revealed.
According to the report, AARO found “no evidence that any US government investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP [unexplained anomalous phenomenon] represented extraterrestrial technology”.
It added that sensors and visual observations are imperfect, the vast majority of cases lack actionable data and such available data is limited or of poor quality. The report also said resources and staffing for such programs have largely been irregular and sporadic and that the vast majority of reports “almost certainly” are the result of misidentification.
In addition, the report found “no empirical evidence for claims that the [US government] and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology”.
Addressing the deluge of reports and claims that the US government is involved in reverse-engineering alien technology, the report said: “AARO determined, based on all information provided to date, that claims involving specific people, known locations, technological tests and documents allegedly involved in or related to the reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial technology, are inaccurate.”
Last July, a former US intelligence official and whistleblower claimed that the US government conducted a “multidecade” secret UFO program that attempted to reverse-engineer crashed UFOs. In his congressional hearing, David Grusch, who led analysis of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP) within a defense department agency until 2023, claimed to the House oversight committee that “non-human” beings had been found.
Despite its conclusions, the report nevertheless revealed that the government did at one point consider a program to reverse-engineer alien technology. The program, titled Kona Blue, was proposed to the Department of Homeland Security and was supported by people who believed the US government was concealing alien technology.
“This proposal gained some initial traction at DHS to the point where a 35 Prospective Special Access Program (PSAP) was officially requested to stand up this program, but it was eventually rejected by DHS leadership for lacking merit,” the report said, adding that the program’s supporters never provided empirical evidence to support their claims.
The report said that AARO investigators found no evidence that US companies “ever possessed off-world technology” and that a claim by an interviewee who named a former military officer as having allegedly touched an extraterrestrial spacecraft “is inaccurate”.
“The claim was denied on the record by the named former officer who recounted a story of when he touched an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter that could have been misconstrued by the interviewee, though the named former officer does not recall having this conversation with the interviewee,” the report said.
AARO investigators also concluded that a sample from an alleged extraterrestrial spacecraft that AARO acquired from a private UAP investigating organization and the US Army is “a manufactured, terrestrial alloy”.
The report added that the sample is primarily composed of magnesium, zinc and bismuth with other trace elements such as lead.
The report’s public release comes as AARO’s acting director, Timothy Phillips, told reporters on Wednesday that the US military is developing a UFO sensor and detection system called Gremlin.
“If we have a national security site and there are objects being reported that [are] within restricted airspace or within a maritime range or within the proximity of one of our spaceships, we need to understand what that is … and so that’s why we’re developing sensor capability that we can deploy in reaction to reports,” Phillips said, CNN reports.
Meanwhile, a recent study by Johns Hopkins University researchers found that sound waves that were thought to hail from a 2014 extraterrestrial fireball north of Papua New Guinea “were almost certainly vibrations from a truck rumbling along a nearby road”, in turn raising doubts that materials extracted last year from the ocean are alien artefacts that came from the meteor.
