The CIA never ran a standing UFO project, but it took a close interest from the late 1940s to the early 1950s: after the summer 1952 Washington sightings its Office of Scientific Intelligence formed a study group that reviewed the Air Force's case files, and it then secretly sponsored the 1953 Robertson Panel. Later it did occasional reviews (including a 1964 update for Director John McCone), helped the Condon study with photo analysis, and fielded FOIA requests; an internal history by Gerald K. Haines covers 1947 to 1990.
What it found: The 1952 study group judged about 90 percent of reports explainable and rejected Soviet or extraterrestrial explanations; the 1964 review found no evidence of a threat or foreign origin. The Haines history says CIA interest was substantial only until the early 1950s, and that, by later estimates of CIA officials, over half of UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were US manned reconnaissance flights (U-2 and OXCART).
Not a standing programme: a series of studies and reviews over four decades.
Sources
Its files in our official releases list
1948 to 1949Closed
Project Sign
Project Saucer (its informal first name)
US Air Force, Air Materiel Command, Wright Field
The Air Force's first formal UFO investigation, set up after the 1947 wave of 'flying saucer' reports that began with pilot Kenneth Arnold's sighting near Mount Rainier. Staff collected and evaluated sighting reports to work out whether the objects were Soviet secret weapons or something else, and reviewed intelligence on German wartime aircraft designs.
What it found: It evaluated 243 reports and in February 1949 concluded there was no definite evidence to prove or disprove that the objects were real aircraft of unknown configuration; nearly all were put down to misidentified ordinary objects, hysteria, hallucination or hoax.
Sources
Its files in our official releases list
Sign was renamed Grudge in early 1949 and took a much more sceptical line, aiming to explain reports away; it closed on December 27, 1949 and the Air Force handled UFO reports through routine intelligence channels. In October 1951 the Air Force restarted a separate Grudge office under Capt. Edward Ruppelt, which re-reviewed all earlier cases and added an 'unknown' category before becoming Blue Book.
What it found: The first Grudge looked at 244 reports, found no evidence of foreign technology or threat, and recommended scaling back because the project itself fed 'war hysteria'; the 1951-52 Grudge found no evidence of extraterrestrial origin and noted that sightings tracked press coverage.
Grudge ran twice: from February to December 1949, then again from October 1951 until it became Blue Book in March 1952.
Sources
Its files in our official releases list
A short camera-based study set up in summer 1949 after many reports of 'green fireballs' over New Mexico and Nevada. The plan was to photograph the fireballs from several cameras near White Sands so speed and altitude could be worked out.
What it found: The project only ever got one camera, which kept being moved after reports came in, and it never photographed a fireball.
Known from the AARO historical report only.
Sources
An informal name for a scientific support contract Capt. Ruppelt set up with Battelle Memorial Institute. Battelle studied how reliably witnesses remember sightings, designed a better witness questionnaire, and put the Grudge and Blue Book reports on punch cards for statistical analysis.
What it found: Its late-1954 report, 'Special Report No. 14', found that cases with enough data were explainable and judged it highly improbable that any represented technology beyond then-current scientific knowledge.
Known from the AARO historical report only.
Sources
The longest-running US government UFO investigation. Air Force staff, with astronomer J. Allen Hynek as scientific consultant, logged sighting reports and sorted them into identified, insufficient data or unidentified, with explanations such as planets, balloons, aircraft and afterburners. Secretary of the Air Force Robert Seamans announced its end on December 17, 1969.
What it found: Of 12,618 sightings reported from 1947 to 1969, 701 remained 'unidentified'. The Air Force concluded no UFO had shown any threat to national security, none showed technology beyond present-day science, and there was no evidence any were extraterrestrial vehicles.
The 12,618 and 701 figures cover 1947 to 1969, so they include the Sign and Grudge years.
Sources
Its files in our official releases list
A panel of scientists (Robertson, Lloyd Berkner, Samuel Goudsmit, Luis Alvarez, Thornton Page) quietly convened by the CIA in January 1953 to review the Air Force's UFO evidence. It looked at case files and film and considered whether UFOs were a security problem.
What it found: Its report of January 17, 1953 found 'no indication' that UFOs were a direct physical threat to national security, no remaining cases pointing to hostile foreign craft, and no need to revise scientific concepts. It recommended that national security agencies 'strip' UFOs of their special status and 'aura of mystery' through a programme to reassure the public.
Sources
Its files in our official releases list
1966 to 1969Closed
Condon Committee
University of Colorado UFO Project · the Condon Report
University of Colorado, under a US Air Force contract
Following the O'Brien committee's advice, the Air Force paid the University of Colorado $325,000 for an 18-month study of UFO reports, led by physicist and former National Bureau of Standards director Edward Condon. The team looked closely at 59 case studies, including claimed physical evidence, and got photo-analysis help from the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center.
What it found: Its general conclusion was that 'nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge' and that further extensive study probably could not be justified. A National Academy of Sciences panel endorsed the methods and conclusions, and the Air Force cited both in closing Blue Book in December 1969.
Sources give different dates for the final report (late 1968 to early 1969). The contract started October 7, 1966.
Sources
Its files in our official releases list
A small ad hoc committee that met on February 3, 1966 to review how Blue Book investigated sightings. It went over earlier panels' findings (especially the Robertson Panel), heard Air Force briefings and read selected unidentified cases.
What it found: It found no evidence UFOs threatened national security and no verified case clearly outside known science; about 6 percent (646) of 10,147 sightings from 1947 to 1965 were listed as unidentified. It recommended contracting universities to study selected sightings in depth, which led to the Condon study.
AARO's history dates it 1964, but the committee's own report says it met on February 3, 1966.
Sources
Its files in our official releases list
1993 to 1997Closed
Roswell inquiries
The Roswell Report (1995) · Case Closed (1997) · GAO report NSIAD-95-187
US Air Force and the General Accounting Office
After Rep. Steven Schiff's 1993 inquiries, GAO searched for government records on the July 1947 crash near Roswell, New Mexico, while the Air Force searched archives and interviewed witnesses, releasing them from secrecy obligations. The Air Force published two reports and GAO published its own findings in July 1995.
What it found: The Air Force found no sign of a UFO or a cover-up: the debris matched a balloon from the then-classified Project Mogul, and the 1997 follow-up said 'alien bodies' stories came from crash-test dummies carried by high-altitude balloons, mixed up with two later accidents. GAO found that the four Army Air Force accidents reported in New Mexico that July all involved military aircraft and happened after July 8, 1947, and that no report was required for a balloon crash.
Sources
2007 to 2012Closed
Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)
US Department of Defense
The name under which the Pentagon's UFO-related work became public in a December 2017 New York Times story, which described a $22 million programme that studied UFO reports. AARO says the name was used interchangeably with AAWSAP, and after AAWSAP ended it was used by an informal group of DoD staff who looked at military UAP reports as a side job, without its own staff or budget.
What it found: AARO says AATIP was never an official DoD programme and produced no substantive case work beyond what AAWSAP did. The Pentagon told the NYT it ended the programme in 2012, while its backers said the work went on informally.
Disputed: AARO says AATIP was never an official programme, while people who worked on it say the work carried on informally after 2012. The 2007 start date comes from The New York Times.
Sources
Pushed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Congress gave DIA $22 million in the FY2008 and FY2010 defence appropriations to study long-range foreign aerospace threats. DIA hired a private company, which produced technical papers in 12 future-technology areas and, with the DIA programme manager's support, also reviewed Blue Book and private UFO cases and studied alleged paranormal activity at a Utah ranch owned by the contractor's head.
What it found: AARO found the contract produced exploratory papers on the 12 topics (never thoroughly peer-reviewed) and no other substantive UAP case work. DIA ended it in 2012 after its deliverables were done, over DIA and DoD concerns; a 2009 request by Sen. Reid to make it a Special Access Program was turned down.
Sources
Approved by Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist on August 4, 2020 (announced August 14) to 'detect, analyze and catalog' UAP that could threaten US national security. It standardised and destigmatised military reporting and fed into the ODNI's June 2021 preliminary assessment for Congress.
What it found: The June 2021 preliminary assessment covered 144 reports from US government sources (November 2004 to March 2021). Only one was identified with high confidence (a large, deflating balloon); the rest stayed unexplained, mostly because of limited data. AARO later credited the task force's methods with helping identify Chinese high-altitude balloons.
Sources
Its files in our official releases list
Set up on November 23, 2021 as the successor to the Navy's UAP Task Force, to coordinate across DoD and other agencies on detecting, identifying and attributing objects in special use airspace and assessing threats to flight safety and national security. An executive council (AOIMEXEC) was created to oversee it.
What it found: It published no findings. AARO says it never reached initial operating capability before the FY2022 defence law led to it being renamed and expanded as AARO in July 2022.
Sources
2022 to todayStill running
All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)
US Department of Defense (now styled Department of War), with the Director of National Intelligence
Created on July 15, 2022 (announced July 20) by renaming and expanding AOIMSG, following the FY2022 National Defense Authorization Act; its first director was Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, and Dr. Jon Kosloski was director by November 2024 and still in the FY2025 report. It collects and analyses UAP reports from the military, intelligence agencies and FAA in all domains (air, sea, space), reports to Congress yearly, and published a historical review of US government UFO involvement in 2024.
What it found: AARO says most cases have ordinary explanations and it has found no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology. As of May 30, 2025 it held 1,870 reports; in the FY2025 period it got 319 new reports and resolved 370 cases (114 new plus 256 older), all prosaic objects such as balloons, satellites, birds, aircraft and drones.
Sources
- DoD release, DoD Announces the Establishment of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (July 20, 2022) Archived copy
- Department of War / AARO, Fiscal Year 2025 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP (cut-off May 30, 2025) Archived copy
- AARO, Dr. Jon Kosloski statement for the record, Senate Armed Services subcommittee (Nov 19, 2024) Archived copy
- AARO, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, Vol. I (Feb 2024) Archived copy
- ODNI, 2022 Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (Jan 2023) Archived copy
Its files in our official releases list
A 16-member outside panel NASA set up in June 2022 to work out how NASA's unclassified data and scientific tools could help understand UAP in the future. It held a public meeting on May 31, 2023 and was explicitly not a review of past incidents.
What it found: Its final report of September 14, 2023 said there are too few high-quality observations to draw firm scientific conclusions about UAP and saw no reason to conclude existing reports have an extraterrestrial source; it recommended NASA take a bigger role in data collection and reducing stigma.
Sources
Its files in our official releases list
