The U.S. government has investigated UFOs and UAP through a series of official programmes spanning eight decades. This article traces that history through declassified records, official government documents, and the National Archives.
The Early Programmes (1947-1969)
Project Sign (1947-1949): The U.S. Air Force established Project Sign in late 1947, following a wave of UFO sightings. An internal estimate reportedly concluded that UFOs were likely interplanetary in origin, a conclusion rejected by Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt Vandenberg.
Project Grudge (1949-1951): Replaced Project Sign with a more sceptical mandate. The programme was widely criticised for adopting a debunking approach rather than conducting objective investigation.
Project Blue Book (1952-1969): The longest-running official UFO investigation, operating for 17 years under the U.S. Air Force. Blue Book investigated 12,618 reported sightings. Of these, 701, approximately 5.5%, were classified as “unidentified” after analysis. The project’s scientific consultant, Dr. J. Allen Hynek of Northwestern University, initially approached the topic as a sceptic but became increasingly convinced that a genuine unexplained phenomenon warranted serious study. The complete archive, over 130,000 pages, has been declassified and is available through the National Archives.
Project Blue Book was closed on December 17, 1969, following the Condon Report’s recommendation that further study was unlikely to yield scientific value.
The Gap Years (1969-2007)
Following Blue Book’s closure, no publicly acknowledged U.S. government programme investigated UFOs for nearly four decades. During this period, civilian organisations continued investigating sightings, and foreign governments maintained active programmes including France’s GEIPAN (established 1977).
Whether classified U.S. programmes operated during this period is a subject of ongoing congressional inquiry, driven in particular by David Grusch’s whistleblower allegations and AARO’s Historical Record Report.
AATIP (2007-2012)
The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was a $22 million Pentagon programme funded from 2007 to 2012 through the Defense Intelligence Agency, initiated by then-Senator Harry Reid. The programme investigated UAP encounters and contracted research through Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies.
AATIP’s existence was revealed on December 16, 2017, through simultaneous reporting by the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post. The stories were accompanied by the release of three Navy infrared videos, FLIR1 (2004 Nimitz incident), Gimbal, and GoFast (both 2015 East Coast encounters), showing objects exhibiting unusual flight characteristics.
Luis Elizondo, who managed AATIP, resigned from the Department of Defense in October 2017, citing excessive secrecy and internal resistance to taking UAP seriously.
The Navy Videos
On April 27, 2020, the Department of Defense officially released the three Navy infrared videos, confirming their authenticity and stating the objects depicted remained “unidentified.” This was the first time the Pentagon formally acknowledged that released military footage showed objects the government could not identify.
Declassified Archives
Multiple batches of UAP-related documents have been declassified: the complete Project Blue Book files (130,000+ pages via NARA), CIA UFO files released through FOIA, UK Ministry of Defence files covering 1950-2009, and NSA signals intelligence-related UFO documents. The FY2024 NDAA’s UAP Records Collection provision created a new framework for centralizing and releasing government UAP records.
The Historical Record’s Significance
A recurring pattern emerges: official acknowledgement followed by investigation programmes that were closed, defunded, or classified, only to be revealed decades later. AATIP’s existence was unknown to the public for a decade before the 2017 revelation. Congressional investigators are actively trying to determine whether other programmes operated during the officially acknowledged “gap years.”
