Government employees, and later the general public, will be able to submit information on sightings to a new website
The US Defense Department has launched a website where service members can log their encounters with UFOs and the public can view declassified documents on the phenomena. Despite the Pentagon’s recent embrace of transparency, some whistleblowers allege that the military still knows more about extraterrestrial life than it’s letting on.
The department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) launched the website on Wednesday. According to a statement from the Pentagon on Thursday, the resource will serve as a “one-stop shop” for press releases and briefing transcripts, as well as declassified photos, videos, and documents on UFOs.
The AARO was formed last year after the Pentagon admitted that a series of videos captured by military personnel – including one that showed mysterious “pyramid-shaped objects” harassing a US Navy vessel off the coast of California in 2019 – were genuine. The AARO refers to UFOs as ‘unidentified anomalous phenomena’ (UAPs), and studies reports of land- and sea-based UAPs as well as flying objects.
The new website, which the AARO was required by law to set up, also allows current or former military members and government employees to submit their own UAP reports. A mechanism for members of the general public to make reports will be announced in the coming months, the Pentagon said.
By last December, the AARO stated that it had collected almost 400 UAP reports. However, US Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Ronald Moultrie told reporters that the office’s experts “haven’t seen anything that would lead us to believe any of the objects we have seen are of alien origin.”
Some whistleblowers say otherwise. In June, US Air Force veteran David Grusch claimed that a top-secret military unit has been “retrieving non-human-origin technical vehicles” for decades and possessed the remains of “dead pilots” from these extraterrestrial spacecraft. In testimony to Congress in July, Grusch alleged that the Pentagon is using taxpayer dollars to fund the reverse-engineering of alien craft.
The AARO denied Grusch’s claims, although he insisted that the supposed reverse-engineering program was being conducted without the knowledge of the AARO or US lawmakers.
Two former Navy pilots testified alongside Grusch, with one claiming to have seen UAPs exhibit “technology… far superior to anything that we had,” and the other stating that senior military officials had discouraged him and his fellow pilots from reporting such sightings.
