Growing news coverage of UFOs is influencing people’s views about extraterrestrial life, particularly among younger Americans, according to a new survey. 

According to the survey’s findings, more than a third of respondents—and particularly younger adults—say recent reporting on unexplained aerial phenomena has strengthened their belief that aliens exist.

Connecting data from over 2,000 Americans, the survey found that 37% say recent news coverage about UFOs has increased their belief in extraterrestrial life (ET). Meanwhile, 54% say their views have not changed, and just 10% report that the coverage has made them less likely to believe in ET. The survey was conducted by Talker Research between July 1 and July 6, 2026. 

Gen Z Data 

According to the survey’s findings, more than half of Gen Z respondents—54%—said recent UAP news has increased their belief in ET. That figure drops to 45% among millennials, 36% among Gen X, and 23% among baby boomers.

These results arrive amid an increasingly mainstream conversation surrounding government hearings, military UAP reports, whistleblowers, broadcast and online news coverage, and podcasts. Such exposure may be helping shape how Gen Z views what is possible and whether intelligent life exists elsewhere in the cosmos.

Looking at the results through a gender lens, 34% of men say UFO news coverage has made them more likely to accept that we are not alone in the universe, compared with 33% of women.

Media and Entertainment Culture Feedback Loops 

Historically, widely publicized UFO reports have helped shape the language and imagery Western society uses to describe unexplained aerial phenomena. One famous example occurred in 1947, when pilot and businessman Kenneth Arnold reported seeing unusual objects flying near Mount Rainier, an incident that received widespread media coverage.

The idea behind such a cultural feedback loop is relatively straightforward: someone sees something outside their normal understanding of reality and reports it. Media and entertainment then pick up the concept and expand upon it, creating their own interpretations of what extraterrestrial beings or UFOs might look like. Audiences absorb those representations, which may subsequently influence how some people perceive, remember, or describe their own unusual experiences. Those accounts can then return to popular culture, potentially reinforcing the cycle.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that what a person saw wasn’t anomalous. Instead, it suggests that media and entertainment may influence how people interpret or describe what they experience.

A 2025 paper in Evolutionary Human Sciences deconstructs a “two-way feedback loop between behavior and beliefs.” The framework suggests that existing beliefs influence behavior; people then observe that behavior, and the observed behavior influences what people believe others think/do. Finally, those beliefs influence subsequent behavior.

The new survey also considered the potential influence of popular culture. More than half of respondents (54%) believed alien movies and television make Americans more likely to believe in the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life; 27% saw no connection between entertainment and belief, while 8% believed such programming actually makes people less likely to believe.

UFOs as a Belief System and Common Misconceptions 

An additional consideration when reading this survey is whether UFOs themselves should be characterized as a belief system. The subject is also an area of study examined by researchers from a range of disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, physics, anthropology, neuroscience, and others.

Many academics would argue that categorizing UFOs solely as a belief system risks pigeonholing the subject as a form of religion rather than recognizing it as an area of study. A belief system, by contrast, is a framework of ideas through which people interpret reality according to a particular set of assumptions or principles.

Jeffrey Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religion at Rice University’s Department of Religion, addressed related questions in his March 2026 keynote, “Mind-Manifesting Shock: Comparing Psychedelic and Abduction Experiences, Religion and Psychedelics: Critical Cross-Cultural, Cross-Disciplinary Approaches,” at the Center for the Study of Religion at Ohio State University.

“We are often ‘believing backwards,’ taking comfort in someone else’s altered states, or in the present ‘explanations’ of this or that neuroscience or physics,” Kripal said at the time.

In other words, when people experience something anomalous and ask why it happened or what the experience might mean, they may immediately reach backward for an existing framework through which to interpret it.

In an email to The Debrief, Kripal adds, “I think the existing frameworks of religion and science ‘explain’ to people what happens, though they do not.”

The Debrief also reached out to Matthew Halsted, Associate Professor of Biblical Studies and Executive Team/Registrar at Eternity College, and asked how he would classify UAP—as an area of belief or a subject of study—and why.

“When it comes to ‘UAP,’ we have to see it as a two-sided coin,” Halsted told The Debrief. “On one side, we have the phenomenon itself (the actual sighting of the thing in the sky); on the other side of the coin, we have the public narrative (how we as people, and our respective governments, talk about reported sightings).”

Halsted adds, “The UAP topic (the ‘coin’) creates a lot of questions for the public, which inevitably gives rise to some sort of belief system. Some walk away believing it’s all nonsense, while others believe there’s something real about this whole thing.”

Halsted’s view, therefore, appears more nuanced than simply classifying UAP as a belief system: the topic can generate belief systems and competing interpretations around reported phenomena, but the subject itself extends beyond a simple question of belief versus nonbelief.

National Security Considerations

When asked how they would react if extraterrestrial life were definitively confirmed, 38% of Americans said their first response would be curiosity, more than twice the 17% who said they would be fearful. Men were also more likely than women to say they would be excited by such a discovery, at 20% compared with 11%.

Perhaps more strikingly, 60% of participants believed that governments know more about UFOs than they have disclosed to date.

The bigger question is whether participants believe society is prepared to accept confirmation that extraterrestrial life exists. Forty-five percent believe society would be prepared if governments confirmed the existence of alien life, while 55% say society would not be adequately prepared to comprehend the implications.

“It’s clear that the public—across age groups—is clamoring for greater UAP transparency,” said Christopher Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and current Chairman of the Board with the Disclosure Foundation, which also conducted a recent survey on the subject in June. According to Mellon, the survey found that “more than 84% of Americans want greater transparency, regardless of whether they consider themselves believers, skeptics, or unsure. And a recent Talker Research poll found that 54% of Gen Z say recent news stories have increased their belief in UAP.”

An era of misinformation and disinformation? 

The survey’s findings are compelling, but they leave another important factor largely unaddressed: not simply how information is perceived, but how easily misinformation and disinformation can proliferate in an era of online news, podcasts with inconsistent fact-checking standards, questionable or compromised sources, and clickbait headlines engineered to capture attention.

The issue, then, is not merely what a generation believes, but how people decide what is real and what is not. Within today’s fragmented information environment, audiences increasingly face the difficult task of distinguishing credible evidence from speculation, honest mistakes from misinformation, and legitimate reporting from deliberate deception.

None of this means that the broader UFO enigma can simply be dismissed. Rather, it underscores an additional challenge surrounding the subject: misleading or demonstrably false claims can now reach large audiences very quickly.

Addressing that problem will require better media literacy, stronger sourcing and fact-checking standards, and greater attention to the often-blurred distinction between evidence and interpretation. Ultimately, younger generations coming of age amid an unprecedented volume of digital information will have to navigate those distinctions for themselves. How successfully they learn to do so may have consequences extending far beyond what they believe about UFOs—shaping how they understand science, institutions, current events, and reality itself.

This is why it’s critically important that we understand UAP as accurately as possible. Whether information is being communicated between family members, friends, researchers, journalists, or policymakers, distinguishing established facts from interpretations and unverified claims gives people a better foundation for understanding the world around them and making informed decisions.

This survey suggests that UFOs are no longer confined to a subculture or counterculture; the topic has entered the mainstream. The question now is what that shift will mean for the future.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

A spacecraft propelled by a subluminal warp drive would cause an extremely bright glow if it passed through Earth’s atmosphere, according to findings detailed in a new study.

Physicist Shaun Fell from the international think tank Applied Physics (AP) and Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb detail their findings in a new paper, which also suggests that extremely small “warp bubbles” could be used as weapons, and that Einstein’s theory of general relativity permits warp bubbles with micrometer-sized surfaces housing very large craft, similar to technologies that appear in science fiction.

The authors emphasize that their new study, which appeared on the preprint server arXiv and has not yet been peer-reviewed, does not prove the existence of aliens, extraterrestrial technology, or warp drives. However, they suggested their analysis offers a viable scientific foundation for many UAP reports of bright lights and “orbs” discussed in recent Pentagon file drops, and is supported by a mathematically valid means of interstellar travel that interplanetary visitors—if they exist—might use to reach Earth.

“Warp drives are a fantastic way to travel through the universe, and it makes sense to my human brain that aliens would find them advantageous too,” Dr. Fell told The Debrief.

Warp Drives: From Science Fiction to Science Fact?

Science fiction authors have proposed ways to travel faster than the speed of light for decades. In the 1960’s, science fiction TV trendsetter Star Trek brought the concept to the wider public with the U.S.S. Enterprise’s infamous Warp Drive. Although a convenient storytelling tool for propelling the show’s heroes across the cosmos at human time scales, the scientific viability of warp drive travel didn’t exist when creator Gene Roddenberry’s vision first premiered.

In 1994, Mexican mathematician Miguel Alcubierre moved the discussion from science fiction to science fact when he proposed the first mathematically viable warp drive metric. Since then, several other scientists have weighed in, including noted NASA warp drive pioneer Harold G. Sonny White. Still, even the most elegant mathematical solutions for traveling faster than the speed of light have hit roadblocks that prevent their realization, including the use of exotic forms of matter that exist only in theory.

In an email to The Debrief, Dr. Fell explained that superluminal warp drives (meaning faster than light) “have a whole host of fundamental difficulties that have not been solved yet, not even including negative energies that have historically plagued previous solutions.”

The Debrief previously covered the Applied Physics team’s attempt to solve the problem with a physical warp drive capable of approaching the speed of light but not exceeding it. Although that metric has conquered outstanding physics hurdles that have hampered previous models, the AP team said their new paper used a subluminal version of the original Alcubierre metric.

“The Alcubierre metric is used as a proxy for any zero ADM mass solution, meaning any warp drive solution that does not exhibit typical gravitational effects,” Dr. Fell explained.

Any Warp Bubble Traveling Faster than 5% the Speed of Light

In a recent post on Medium, Dr. Loeb said his previous studies confirmed that the distortion of spacetime proposed in the warp drive metric “must perturb the air” when passing through Earth’s atmosphere. The Harvard scientists also noted that those studies showed that such an atmospheric perturbation caused by a relativistic warp drive “would inevitably generate a bright fireball by shocking the air around it.”

In a previous article, AP physicists told The Debrief that a well-known 2006 UAP sighting in Chicago that included a hole “punched in the clouds” also fits with predictions of warp drive interactions with Earth’s atmosphere.

To follow up on his latest proposal, Loeb and Fell conducted detailed hydrodynamical simulations of the airflow around warp bubbles encasing theoretical spacecraft. In warp drive models, a warp bubble encases the craft in an area of stable space, keeping it completely still as the drive propels toward its destination by warping space itself. This effect is what gives the drive its name.

After running the numbers, Loeb and Fell determined that the heated air around the warp bubble would reach 220 billion degrees Kelvin if the spacecraft was traveling fast enough. Critically, the team calculated the effects of such craft passing through the atmosphere “at a fraction of the speed of light.”

“Any warp bubble traveling faster than 5% the speed of light through the atmosphere will generate optical signatures qualitatively the same as those presented in our paper,” Fell told The Debrief, before adding “slower than that, and the optical signature has a different physical origin.”

Loeb said the calculation suggests that an “aircraft-scale” spacetime (warp) bubble moving at the right velocities would produce luminosities exceeding one terawatt. For comparison, the AP scientist noted that this amount of energy is roughly one-tenth of global electric power consumption.

A “Brilliant Fireball” Detectable at Great Distances

When describing how this high-energy atmospheric interaction would appear to a ground observer, Loeb said, “It should be easy to detect such a brilliant fireball at great distances.”

For example, Loeb explained that any observer would witness two distinct signals suggesting that a warp drive-propelled craft has entered the atmosphere. The first would be a direct, high-energy burst of radiation emanating from the shock zone. Next, a wave of extremely energetic photons would get absorbed by the thicker lower atmosphere. Loeb said this “extreme” energy ends up “reradiated” as light in the visible ultraviolet (UV) spectrum.

“This will manifest itself as a bright atmospheric glow directly below the shock zone,” the Harvard scientist explained.

The study authors also noted that some fireballs would be larger than others. In the right scenario, Loeb suggested that the atmospheric glow caused by a warp drive could “completely dominate the surface solar flux by orders of magnitude.” This means it would be the brightest object in the sky even during daytime.

Conversely, the Applied Physics team noted that warp drives moving much more slowly through the atmosphere, including just above the speed of sound, would not be nearly as bright as those moving above 5% the speed of light. Loeb said warp drive craft at rest or moving well below relativistic speeds “would not generate such extreme luminosities.”

Micrometer-Sized Warp Bubbles as Weapons?

Another intriguing aspect of the study involves the possibility of extremely small warp bubbles interacting with the atmosphere to generate visible light signatures. For example, Loeb suggested that “a micrometer-scale bubble moving at a few times the sound speed at sea-level would result in a modest luminosity of order 1 kilowatt.”

“This slower velocity regime is something we are currently studying,” Fell told The Debrief.

When asked what practical benefits a micrometer-sized warp bubble seemingly too small to accommodate a full-sized spacecraft might offer, Fell joked that a discussion with “my alien buddies” resulted in some unexpected solutions. This included one potentially ominous possibility and another more fantastical explanation that sounds like something right out of the world of Harry Potter.

The first harrowing solution Fell and his hypothetical “otherworldly” colleagues offered involved using tiny warp drive-enabled craft as weapons. For example, the AP physicist explained, even a microscopic warp bubble would exhibit “tremendous gravitational tidal forces.” Based on their models, Fell told The Debrief that such a micrometer-sized warp bubble “would obliterate almost any material in its path, especially if it’s traveling exceedingly fast.”

“This is a very difficult topic to analyze critically because we don’t really know if superluminal warp travel is allowed by the laws of physics,” Fell also told The Debrief. “Would it create observable signatures? Almost certainly. Would any human still be alive to record the measurement? Probably not.”

The Interior of a Tiny Warp Bubble—Harry Potter’s “Weasley Tent”?

Since any plan that would likely annihilate the Earth “wouldn’t be very practical for the aliens,” Fell offered The Debrief an even more fantastical explanation for why our spacefaring visitors may want to engage a micrometer-sized warp bubble, which scientists call the Van Den Broeck warp drive.

As Fell explained, general relativity allows the surface area of a theoretical warp bubble to be microscopically small, “while the interior volume may be as large as you want.”

“I always think of the Weasley tent at the Quidditch World Cup in the 4th Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire),” the AP physicist told The Debrief. “The outside looks like a normal camping tent, but the inside is this great big room.”

Surprisingly, such fantasy world solutions to practical scientific problems are theoretically achievable within general relativity. As a result, Fell added, if the models were correct and such a warp bubble was viable, relativity as we understand it “provides an avenue for microscopic warp bubbles that can house great big ships or other cargo.”

“The applications are really endless for that,” he added.

Connecting Warp Drive Physics with UAP Sightings

When discussing the connection between their findings and the accounts of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) chronicled in recent Pentagon document releases, Loeb pointed to a series of ‘puzzling’ orbs “mentioned explicitly in a reliable report dated June 5, 2026.”

According to Loeb, that report, signed by Dr. Jon Kosloski, director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in the Pentagon, describes “an orange ‘mother’ orb launching smaller red orbs.” Loeb’s retelling of Dr. Kosloski’s account also notes that “40% of the phenomena during the reported event lack a reasonable explanation and remain unresolved.”

Although some UAP reports describe physical craft, researchers have often noted that the largest category involves glowing light or orbs. Although Loeb did not suggest all or any sightings were alien craft, the study’s author noted that warp-drive physics supports the idea that some of these reports could be explained by advanced propulsion technology.

“Could some of the reported orbs be slow warp bubbles?” Loeb asked. “There is one way to find out: by studying them experimentally.”

Dr. Fell agreed, telling The Debrief that “the important thing is that purported UAP observations can be critically examined through the laws of physics, as we know them today.”

“If there really are intelligent beings visiting our Earth, how did they get here?” he asked. “What was their mode of transport? If such a spacefaring vehicle entered our atmosphere, what would it look like?”

While neither author suggested that their mathematical solution settles the debate about aliens or alien craft visiting Earth, Fell said their paper “places observational constraints on these questions and narrows the possibilities.”

AP founder Gianni Martire similarly told The Debrief that his team’s paper does not prove warp drive or alien life. However, the enthusiastic scientist did note that the mathematics makes it possible that science “may simply be catching up to UFO lore that has existed for hundreds of years.”

“It’s possible E.T has been flashing his headlights at us along, not by choice,” Martire said.

The study “Radiative Signatures from Warp Drives Traveling Through the Earth’s Atmosphere” is available on the preprint server, arXiv.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org.

An analysis of dozens of strange objects captured in official U.S. government videos has revealed new insights—and challenges—involving the study ofunidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

Since May 8, 2026, the U.S. Department of War has released more than 100 videos that reportedly capture evidence of unknown objects in U.S. airspace and near American military operations around the world.

Now, a preprint paper by researchers Jacob Haqq-Misra of Blue Marble Space and Ravi Kopparapu of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center examined 112 videos released this year under the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).

The researchers, both of whom serve on the UAP Science Advisory Council to the U.S. government, say their study highlights significant limitations on analysis of the purported UAP videos due to missing or redacted sensor data, which prevents civilian researchers from having enough of the tools necessary to determine whether seemingly fast-moving objects in the videos actually display anomalous velocities.

Kopparapu and Haqq-Misra’s new study, which has not yet undergone peer review, highlights a fundamental problem that has impeded analytical efforts involving UAP videos collected by U.S. military personnel: that the apparent speed of an object suggested by its movement across a camera’s field of view is not necessarily an accurate indication of its real physical velocity.

In an email to The Debrief, Haqq-Misra explained that while the new study is among the first to explore the limitations on what can be discerned about these objects based on analysis of the current batch of PURSUE releases, the underlying problem is not a new one for researchers tackling the UAP problem.

“I think our conclusion will come as no surprise to people in the aviation, aerospace, and intelligence communities who have already been closely following UAP disclosure,” Haqq-Misra told The Debrief, though expressing that the conclusions he and Kopparapu present “may not be fully appreciated in the broader public discussion.”

“I get lots of questions from friends, family, and other scientists about my opinion of the government ‘UAP disclosure’ data,” Haqq-Misra said. “A lot of people haven’t even looked at the data and may assume that there is more available than we really are getting.”

In terms of what data has been made available to the public since May, Haqq-Misra says the limitations are obvious.

“Most of the useful quantities are redacted,” he said. “It is also not immediately obvious that what appears to be a fast-moving object in an infrared sensor video might be a mundane object (like a bird) much closer to the camera.”

Analyzing the DOW’s ‘PURSUE’ UAP Videos

The videos Haqq-Misra and Kopparapu analyzed, all of which are currently available at the U.S. Department of War website, were acquired by targeting pods and other turret-mounted camera systems aboard military aircraft or similar government platforms. The collection includes infrared and electro-optical imagery, much of it showing unidentified objects either crossing the camera’s field of view or being actively tracked by the sensor.

Haqq-Misra and Kopparapu reviewed all 112 videos to determine what kinematic information could be extracted from them. At its simplest, analysts can measure how quickly an object moves across a video in pixels per frame. However, the problem arises when it comes to converting that apparent motion into an actual velocity—a process that requires several additional pieces of information.

In an email to The Debrief, Kopparapu, who expressed that his views are based on his own independent analysis and do not reflect those of NASA, said there was one primary form of data that, if it were to accompany future video releases, could make them far more useful to scientists working to understand the performance characteristics of the objects they convey.

“Based on our preliminary mathematical analysis, perhaps the single most important missing quantity is the range; the distance between the object and the observing platform, ideally measured over time,” Kopparapu told The Debrief. “Without range, something moving rapidly across the image could be a small nearby object moving relatively slowly or a much larger, distant object moving extremely fast.”

Additional information Kopparapu says would be very useful would include details about the camera’s field of view, as well as “the motion of the observing platform and viewing geometry.”

In their recent paper, Kopparapu and Haqq-Misra detail the specific measurements that would be required to determine an object’s velocity. However, Kopparapu expressed to The Debrief that “Some apparent anomalies could even arise from sensor or imaging effects,” adding that without the additional data outlined above, “there is simply not much more that can be concluded scientifically.”

Haqq-Misra told The Debrief that one of the goals of the UAP Science Advisory Council is to make recommendations about what kinds of data future PURSUE releases might be able to include that would enable independent scientists to conduct more accurate and meaningful kinematic analyses. 

“We are hopeful that our recommendations based on analyses of sensor videos like these will lead to additional release of data that may even help us resolve some cases,” Haqq-Misra told The Debrief, echoing Kopparapu’s sentiments about the importance of having access to information about the object’s range from the camera system at the time the video was captured.

“Knowing the distance from the camera to the object is essential,” Haqq-Misra said. “This information might be under the redacted black boxes of some of the videos, so unredacted videos would be best.”

UAP Transparency vs National Security

The question of whether information currently redacted from government UAP videos can be safely released to scientists without compromising U.S. national security—as well as how much of that data should be released—remains a sticking point between Pentagon officials and the broader scientific community.

For researchers like Haqq-Misra, one solution might involve having some form of verifiable U.S. government record that certifies certain portions of the redacted information, without necessarily conveying that in the videos themselves in ways that could compromise sensitive information about the systems used to obtain the footage.

“Even just telling us the distance on an official government document would help!” Haqq-Misra told The Debrief.

“The flight trajectory of the aircraft with the observing camera is another important piece of data,” Haqq-Misra added. “In some cases, this data may simply be lost, but if flight logs exist for any of these cases, that would also help.

Although Haqq-Misra adds that technical information about the specific cameras used to capture a given video would “make the data even more useful,” the U.S. Department of War regulates much of this technical data under strict security classification, export control, and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) policies. Such restrictions are imposed to protect critical capabilities like sensor resolution, focal lengths, tracking algorithms, and other capabilities or technical properties that might potentially be exploited by foreign adversaries if they were revealed publicly.

While U.S. military concerns over the release of such information is often warranted, without access to it, the nature of how some military systems operate can make it difficult—if not impossible—to make meaningful determinations about the objects detected.

One example includes objects that are being actively tracked while they are filmed. By its design, a targeting system can move its camera to keep an object near the center of the frame, making the subject’s apparent movement approach zero, even if it is traveling rapidly through the environment. The resulting imagery can create the illusion of a stationary object and becomes unhelpful without access to additional information about the object’s movement.

GOFAST: A Case Study in Transparency?

Another example where the appearance of an object’s movement on video can differ significantly from its actual speed appears in the well-known Navy “GOFAST” video. Haqq-Misra and Kopparapu note that this footage was once widely interpreted as evidence of an object moving at extraordinary speed near the ocean surface. However, subsequent analysis using available telemetry showed that much of its apparent motion resulted from parallax generated by the observing aircraft, with its calculated motion ultimately being consistent with wind-borne drift—in other words, the object was most likely a balloon.

The important difference between the GOFAST video and those included in recent PURSUE releases, the researchers note, comes down to the amount of additional information that was available.

“In the GOFAST case, sufficient information was available to constrain the object’s motion relative to the observer and assess it in relation to reported wind conditions,” Haqq-Misra and Kopparapu write in their recent study. Notably, following its initial unauthorized release in 2017 along with two other historical U.S. Navy videos of alleged UAP, the Pentagon eventually determined that GOFAST did not reveal any sensitive information that compromised U.S. national security.

“After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena,” an April 2020 Pentagon statement read. Seemingly, this case would appear to demonstrate that in at least some cases, enough additional information could remain unredacted in future UAP video releases to allow similar technical determinations to be made.

DOW-UAP-PR113: Anomalous Appearance, but Limited Information

Another example Kopparapu and Haqq-Misra look at in their paper involves a video in the recent PURSUE releases designated DOW-UAP-PR113, which features an infrared video reportedly recorded over the western United States in 1996.

The footage depicts what appears to be a compact dark object (or possibly two moving in very close proximity) rapidly crossing the camera’s field of view. Based on Kopparapu and Haqq-Misra’s measurements, the object travels approximately 142 pixels per frame, equivalent to roughly 2.2 frame widths per second, and remains directly visible for only about one-tenth of a second.

One thing that makes the video unique among the PURSUE releases is the presence of markings in the imagery, which the researchers say allows them at least a limited ability to reconstruct an approximate angular scale and horizontal field of view. However, like in other cases, too little information is present to be able to make a complete determination about the object’s motion and capabilities.

For Kopparapu, circumstances like these demonstrate why he advises against drawing conclusions based on what can often appear to be remarkable speed or other capabilities in the PURSUE videos, yet without ruling them out necessarily as being mundane.

“With such limited data, I would urge people to avoid both extraordinary conclusions and outright dismissal,” Kopparapu told The Debrief. “Something can look extremely anomalous when we are seeing only a small part of the information needed to understand it.”

What the PURSUE Videos Can—and Cannot—Tell Scientists

Fundamentally, Haqq-Misra and Kopparapu believe that the videos currently made available under the PURSUE initiative cannot demonstrate—nor can they necessarily be used to exclude—the presence of anomalous kinematics displayed by the alleged UAP they contain.

This issue extends beyond just the PURSUE releases, however, since similar limitations can arise even with imagery captured by conventional cameras, whose technical capabilities are easily discernible. For instance, a single camera primarily measures angles, meaning some aspects of an object’s three-dimensional motion simply cannot be reconstructed based on that imagery alone.

To overcome such problems, Haqq-Misra and Kopparapu point to the use of multi-sensor approaches by independent research efforts.

In terms of what kinds of scientific observations might constitute a “genuine” UAP in future detections, Haqq-Misra says he and his colleagues with the UAP Science Advisory Council are already providing recommendations for the kinds of sensor platforms that could be leveraged to capture better UAP imagery and other data in the future.

“We have already provided recommendations for sensors that could be deployed to collect better quality data for understanding these objects,” Haqq-Misra told The Debrief. “An ideal observatory would be a multi-modal and multi-site observatory, leveraging video observations from infrared to visible and including other modalities such as radio, radar, and audio data collection.”

“The Galileo Project at Harvard is an example of a privately funded effort following this experimental design,” he adds.

Overall, the researchers say that while based on their analysis “the PURSUE sensor videos in their present form cannot fully resolve unidentified cases or conclusively indicate anomalous velocities,” the new research presents a meaningful early step toward identifying future strategies that may help researchers obtain better, more useful data.

“Reality takes time,” Kopparapu told The Debrief, “but fallacy does not.”

“Careful scientific investigation, accompanied by access to the underlying data, is the only reliable way to make progress on these cases,” he adds.

Kopparapu and Haqq-Misra’s recent paper, “Limits on Velocity Recovery from the PURSUE Sensor Videos,” appeared on the arXiv.org preprint server.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

Pages of released UAP files do not settle the question of what is in the sky. They do show what government agencies were told, what their files retained and where the evidence breaks off. That is the value of the fifth tranche of records released on 7 August through the U.S. government’s UAP portal. Three […]

The post Inside the Fifth U.S. UAP Release: The Gulf of Oman, Bagram and a Puzzling Clock appeared first on Curiosmos.

Welcome to this edition of The Intelligence Brief… This week, the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) finally released its long-delayed Fiscal Year 2025 report on unidentified anomalous phenomena, revealing the latest findings from the Office’s growing number of UAP cases. In our analysis, we’ll be looking at 1) what the latest report reveals about AARO’s growing database of nearly 2,000 UAP reports, 2) why satellite flares continue to account for many recent sightings, 3) the report’s intriguing references to unresolved incidents near sensitive military installations and critical infrastructure, and 4) what AARO’s latest findings suggest about the challenges investigators still face in explaining a small but persistent number of UAP reports.

Quote of the Week  

“AARO seeks to capitalize on a diverse set of sensor technology capabilities and intelligence analytic tradecraft…  to improve the USG’s effort to investigate and respond to UAP in the air, maritime, and space domains at scale and speed.”

– AARO FY 2025 ANNUAL REPORT

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Pentagon’s AARO Releases Long-Delayed UAP Report

This week, the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) finally released its 2025 annual report on unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP.

You read that correctly: the long-delayed report for fiscal year (FY) 2025 has been MIA since its expected release date last October, and finally appeared at AARO’s website just three months (or so) ahead of the scheduled release date for its next annual report. Hey, better late than never.

According to AARO’s latest findings, there were no cases it resolved that point to advanced foreign technology or extraordinary capabilities exhibited by UAP, but close to 200 reports from its latest batch remain unexplained due to insufficient data.

AARO also reiterated two conclusions that have remained consistent across previous reports: investigators have found no evidence that the U.S. government or any private organization has recovered or exploited materials derived from UAP, and the office has received no verified reports of adverse health effects directly associated with UAP encounters.

Beyond that, here’s a look at some of the report’s primary findings.

Key Findings in AARO’s 2025 Report

Offering an overview of the office’s investigations of cases collected between June 2, 2024, and May 30, 2025, the new report conveys that AARO received 319 new UAP cases during the reporting period, bringing its total case holdings to 1,870 since the office’s creation.

274 incidents occurred in the air domain, while 44 involved objects observed in space, and one occurred in the maritime domain. “The single maritime domain UAP case AARO received involved a report from U.S. Navy assets operating off the coast of Virginia,” AARO’s report states. “The report described approximately 100 airborne UAP and two, likely uncrewed, surface systems. AARO is actively investigating this event in coordination with the reporting unit.”

The brief description of this single maritime incident AARO received is intriguing, although very little context is provided, and it is unclear whether it may be describing UAVs and uncrewed launch platforms observed at sea, which might be attributable to a U.S. foreign adversary.

A Whole Lotta Satellites

As for those “objects observed in space,” AARO’s report makes it clear that none of the space-domain cases originated from space-based sensors, but instead mostly came from civilian pilots reporting through the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The other two originated from U.S. Space Command ground-based sensors.

“AARO applied all-source analysis techniques and three-dimensional modeling to render a high confidence assessment for each of these cases as being attributable to satellite flaring,” the report reads.

The fact that satellite flaring has significantly contributed to recent alleged UAP sightings is nothing new. In 2022, following a series of sightings by pilots involving what were characterized as “racetrack UAPs,” it was determined that the sightings resulted from an optical illusion created by SpaceX Starlink satellites.

While 114 of the 319 new cases AARO has received have been resolved, it says that 191 cases have been placed into AARO’s “active archive,” which involves reports that presently lack sufficient data required to make an assessment.

“UAP cases held in active archive inform AARO’s locational and trend analyses and remain open to future resolution should further information or improved analytical techniques enable a more conclusive resolution,” the report states. Additionally, there were nine cases referred to members of the Intelligence Community and AARO’s science and technology partners for further technical analysis.

Trends in the Data

The report also identifies several trends among the incoming reports. In terms of appearance, spherical shapes remain the winning category, comprising close to 40 percent of reported UAP morphologies, with lights representing around 33 percent. Around 25 percent of sightings lacked enough information to give any clear indication of shape at all.

In terms of altitude, most airborne sightings occurred between 10,000 and 35,000 feet, while reports above 45,000 feet declined significantly from the previous reporting period; notably, AARO attributes this to its progress in identifying satellite flares.

Fortunately, no flight safety-related incidents were reported for the period discussed in the FY 2025 report, although there were two cases that “contained descriptions of electronic or avionic interference reported as attributable to UAP in proximity to an operational aircraft.” AARO says it remains unclear whether those effects were directly related to the observed UAP.

UAP Near Critical Infrastructure?

Perhaps one of the most significant elements of the new report is that there were reportedly several new cases logged near sensitive military installations and critical infrastructure. “Some narrative reports were suggestive of phenomena whose performance characteristics exceed the known state-of-the-art within a given domain,” the report states, though adding that “No technical data accompanied these reports.”

“If validated, the attendant phenomena underlying these reports may represent a currently unmitigated threat vector,” the report states. “Part of AARO’s mission is to provide data and analysis that helps mitigate potential UAP-related national security threats or operational hazards.”

The report additionally documents a significant increase in reports involving unmanned aerial systems operating near U.S. nuclear infrastructure, with 50 incidents referred to AARO by the National Nuclear Security Administration and Nuclear Regulatory Commission—a 178 percent increase over the previous year’s total.

It is clearly stated that none of these objects were genuine UAP or exhibited anything unusual. “The reports contained descriptions of UAS morphologies ranging from small hobbyist-sized UAS to larger multi-rotor models. Quadcopters were the most reported morphology,” AARO’s report states.

As with past AARO annual reports, the FY 2025 updates leaves much to the imagination—a fact that is very in keeping with recent UAP imagery and documentation released by the Pentagon through its PURSUE initiative. Still, the report’s findings—vague as they are—do indicate one fundamental issue: objects or phenomena that remain difficult to attribute to any known sources continue to be tracked by U.S. defense personnel.

With nearly 2,000 reports in its current collection, AARO concedes that while it has found no evidence of links to any extraordinary phenomena, there are also still a good number of cases that remain unresolved, and which warrant further attention.

Perhaps that’s the real takeaway—not that AARO has found evidence of anything extraordinary, but that some reports do continue to defy straightforward explanation.

That concludes this week’s installment of The Intelligence Brief. You can read past editions of our newsletter at our website, or if you found this installment online, don’t forget to subscribe and get future email editions from us here. Also, if you have a tip or other information you’d like to send along directly to me, you can email me at micah [@] thedebrief [dot] org, or reach me on X: @MicahHanks.

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The United States Department of War (DOW) released its latest collection of imagery and other materials related to unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) on Friday.

The fourth official release under what the DOW has dubbed the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), the latest tranche of files includes several new previously unseen U.S. military videos depicting unidentified aerial objects acquired by the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

“Today, the Department of War is publishing the fourth release of declassified and historical Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) files as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE),” said Assistant to the Secretary of War for Public Affairs and Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell in a statement.

“The collection continues to be housed on WAR.GOV/UFO, and the Department will release additional files on a rolling basis,” Parnell said.

As with previous releases, the new videos leave much to the imagination; in most cases, they show small blurry objects captured with multi-sensor electro-optical targeting capabilities from fighter aircraft or UAVs, and in some cases, imaging systems on board civilian aircraft. In addition to the new imagery, several historical documents from as early as the 1940s were included with the release, the majority of which were previously made available in past releases by various U.S. government agencies.

Here is a look at a few key takeaways from the latest batch in the Pentagon’s ongoing release of UAP-related materials.

A Deeper Look at the Latest PURSUE UAP File Release

One series of historical NASA images included with the new PURSUE release originates from the 1996 STS-80 mission. The entry on the DOW’s site, “NASA-UAP-D030, STS-80 Unidentified Object Image 1, 1996,” features photographs obtained by astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia at the time, which convey a small triangular or cone-shaped object.

“During STS-80, between November 19 and December 7, 1996, astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Columbia captured a series of three images of an unidentified object in low-Earth orbit. In the first photograph, the object is visible near the center of the frame, to the right of the limb of the Earth,” a caption accompanying one of the images states at the DOW website.

It is unclear what the object in the photograph may be, although it is worth noting that several observations of allegedly unusual phenomena occurred during STS-80, which included the imagery captured of grainy luminous shapes from the spacecraft’s backward-facing cameras. The most common interpretation of these objects is that they were ice particles outgassed from the spacecraft, whose highly reflective surfaces could produce the optical effects captured from the space shuttle’s cameras, especially in such low-light conditions.

DOW-UAP-PR030, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, 2023: In this video, “Two areas of contrast transit the sensor field-of-view. The first enters the field-of-view from the bottom right and exits from the top edge of the frame. The second, relatively smaller area of contrast enters from the top and exits the bottom of the frame.”

The unusual shape of the object first seen entering the frame from the bottom of the screen could potentially be the result of a sensor artifact, similar to past videos released by the DOW, where the starlike appearance of refraction spikes emanating from an object (as also seen in this example from the most recent release) had been misinterpreted by some as being the literal shape of the alleged UAP.

DOW-UAP-PR108, Unresolved UAP Report, Western United States, 2020: This footage, reportedly collected over the Western United States in 2020, is notable (if for no other reason) due to its similarity to the famous “Tic Tac” imagery from 2004, captured by F/A-18 pilot Chad Underwood off the Baja California coast. Apart from that superficial similarity in appearance, the footage—like others from recent PURSUE releases—provides little additional context, and it is unclear what the object (seen below) may be.

Several other examples of imagery included with the fourth PURSUE release depict objects apparently engaging in flight at high speeds, such as an object appearing in “DOW-UAP-PR112, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2019” where the observer reportedly described the object in question as exhibiting “flight characteristics unlike anything [the observer] had seen in 28 years for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy.”

Other objects appearing in videos included with the newest release, such as the UAP in “DOW-UAP-PR116, Unresolved UAP Report, Atlantic Ocean, 2020,” include descriptions from the observer that note an object with a “darker, maroonish color, approximately 12-15 feet in height” that was “travel[ing] with the wind,” did not “maneuver or change direction,” and appearing similar to a “large, somewhat deformed balloon.”

We would have to agree with the witnesses’ assessment in the case: the flight dynamics of the object in the accompanying video (seen above) are indeed very consistent with an inflatable object, albeit possessing an odd shape (it is also possible this object may be a cluster of smaller balloons). The same can be said of other examples in the new releases, where, in some instances, dangling payloads beneath what are obviously balloons are clearly discernible in the purported “UAP” videos.

Clarity Remains Elusive, but More Releases to Follow

To date, none of the videos or other documentation made available at the DOW website as part of its PURSUE releases provides clear examples of any objects attributable to unknown aircraft, or objects exhibiting unusual or advanced technologies.

In his statement on Friday, Parnell said the DOW and its agency partners “are actively working on the next release of UAP files,” which can be expected to appear on the DOW website in the coming weeks. In the meantime, all of the existing four releases of UAP imagery and documentation can be found on the DOW’s PURSUE page.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

The fascinating behind-the-scenes story of the exploits of the first team of private astronauts to cross the Kármán line is finally being told.

A newly released documentary film, “Beyond Blue Sky: The Untold Story of the First Private Astronauts,” now available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime, reveals the award-winning accomplishment and includes firsthand testimony from the pilots and engineers who made the inaugural private astronaut space flights possible.

The film also includes one of the two record-setting astronauts, U.S. Navy combat veteran Brian Binnie, sharing an unusual, life-altering experience for the first time on screen, an event that he credits for inspiring him to continue after a crushing setback almost ended his dreams of flying to space.

A Private Astronaut’s Failure and a UAP Encounter

In an email to The Debrief, documentary filmmaker Kevin Curran noted that his Emmy-nominated crew, “with a proven space pedigree,” including chronicling milestones of Blue Origin, SpaceX, Astrobotic, and NASA, was able to capture “razor’s-edge supersonic test flight footage” to reveal the story of the first team of private astronauts to join the small group of humans to have ventured into space.

Along the way, the documentary depicts the team’s successes and failures in their pursuit of reaching space for the first time—and then doing so two more times with extra ballast—to win a $10 million prize.

Although Binnie, a Princeton-educated aeronautical engineer and 20-year Navy pilot, would typically seem like the obvious choice for the award-winning space attempt, a difficult crash landing on the first rocket-powered test flight of the program had Binnie doubting whether he would get another opportunity to pilot SpaceShipOne for the remaining five test flights.

As incredible as the team’s historic accomplishments were, Curran told The Debrief that the story took an unexpected, but inspiring turn when Binnie revealed an out-of-this-world encounter that he credited with inspiring him to recover from that setback and ultimately make the historic flight.

“The rest of the documentary is pretty incredible/riveting, I think, but [Binnie’s] story makes it so topical right now with the Pentagon’s release of UAP files,” Curran told The Debrief.

“I Turned Around Expecting to See Them Behind Me”

According to Curran, his team had no idea about Binnie’s encounter when they started filming. As the ebullient filmmaker noted, the team was about six weeks into production on a film that he says “we thought would simply be an untold, feel-good story involving perseverance and redemption within the birth of private spaceflight.” Then, while the cameras rolled, Binnie made his revelation.

Although Curran notes that the pilot had previously confided in “dozens of people within the aerospace and test flight world over the years about his extreme close encounter,” this was the first time the veteran of 33 combat missions had “courageously” shared his experience on-screen.

“Like any good story, it simply became more fascinating the more we pulled on the thread,” Curran told The Debrief.

The tale began on December 17, 2003, when Binnie successfully piloted SpaceShipOne to nearly 68,000 feet on its first rocket-powered test flight, a critical early accomplishment that made him the first pilot to go supersonic in a privately funded vehicle. However, the flight ended in an extremely rough landing that damaged the craft’s landing gear, wing, and fuselage, putting Binnie’s future as one of three test pilots of SpaceShipOne in doubt.

“After the crash, the 47-year-old Binnie faced the reality that he may never fly the spaceship again on the remaining five test flights of the program,” a summary emailed to The Debrief explains.

Six days after the hard landing, Binnie was awake one morning at around 4 a.m., unable to sleep comfortably in his bed. Then, according to the astronaut’s account, he noticed that “bright lights were coming through my window blinds. I rose, opened the window blinds to find that daylight had manifested in my backyard.” The decorated Navy veteran noted that while his backyard was illuminated, everything else he looked at was dark.

The next part of Binnie’s story details the presence of around a dozen translucent, glowing “orbs” he said he could perceive within the lit area. However, the pilot recalled, the orbs did not seem bright enough to account for the inordinately bright light illuminating his backyard. During his on-screen recollection, the award-winning pilot also details the movement of the orbs, including two of them approaching him from approximately 50 feet away, passing through his bedroom window, and entering his chest.

“I turned around expecting to see them behind me, but they weren’t there,” he said.

Binnie described the pre-dawn experience as “the most incredible thing I ever witnessed.”

The Impact on Binnie and the Documentary Crew

When discussing the impact that the unusual experience had on him, Binnie told Curran’s team that he initially searched for a conventional explanation. With advanced engineering degrees and a 20-year Navy career that led him to become both a test pilot and manager of the SpaceShipOne program, he was well accustomed to evaluating unusual observations. However, after exhausting all prosaic possibilities, the trained scientist, pilot, and observer ultimately concluded that the mysterious glowing orbs represented an intelligent phenomenon that had somehow allowed him to perceive them.

“It gave me hope that I had a purpose, and that purpose was to not simply take defeat, but was to pick myself up and continue,” Binnie told the documentarian.

After what the team calls “a bizarre series of events” that offered Binnie a second chance to pilot SpaceShipOne, the newly reinvigorated aviator boarded the craft’s final flight on October 4, 2004. During the launch phase, when the pilot and craft are hauled to a high latitude by the mothership, White Knight, Binnie said he once again reflected on the apparent UAP experience, including how he felt the orbs had given him an intangible drive to complete his mission and make history.

By the time the flight was complete, winning both the Collier and Ansari XPRIZE, Curran said the accomplishment proved that a team of “renegade geniuses” could achieve a NASA-level feat for a fraction of the space agency’s typical cost. As far as the late pilot’s unusual UAP encounter, Curran credits Binnie’s courage for sharing his experience with UAPs, while also noting the effect the man’s retelling had on him and his crew.

Brian Confided in Colleagues for Years, But This is His First Filmed Account

“One thing I wish to clarify, in the event it matters, is that I believe Brian’s story,” Curran told The Debrief, while once again citing the combat veteran’s impressive credentials.

The documentarian also noted that there has been a stigma around the UAP subject for a long time, and that Binnie “was really brave to come out to me in 2020 before any of the House Oversight Committee testimonies or recent releases by the Pentagon.”

Brian confided in only a few aerospace colleagues about the experience for many years, and even learned of another astronaut with a similar experience, but the story’s inclusion in the film was the first time he shared it on record before passing away.

“I simply want to protect Brian Binnie’s memory and surviving family, as he was always kind to me, inspiring, and I’m proud to have called him a friend,” Curran concluded.

The project “is dedicated to the memory of test pilots Brian Binnie and Mike Melvill, the first two private astronauts who had the courage to fly stick-and-rudder to space,” the documentary team states.

“Thankfully, they shared their extraordinary stories on camera before they were lost forever in the Mojave sand,” the team concludes.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

A disc-like object observed producing “beams” while it hovered above an airport in Zimbabwe in 2008, an object resembling a flying “potato” over the Cheyenne Mountains in 2022, and alleged “orbs” observed by U.S. personnel are all among the sightings included in the Pentagon’s latest release of files related to UAP encounters.

The documents, which appeared on the Department of War’s website on Friday, are just the latest in a series of rolling releases by the Pentagon under the Trump Administration.

“As the unprecedented levels of interest in both this topic and the Trump administration’s historic transparency effort continue, WAR.GOV/UFO has received over 1.7 billion hits worldwide since the site’s launch on May 8, 2026,” read a statement provided by Assistant to the Secretary of War for Public Affairs and Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell that accompanied Friday’s release.

“The Department of War and our agency partners are actively working on the next release of UAP files,” Parnell added.

However, as more videos and documents continue to surface, a fundamental question arises: what, if anything, do they reveal about UAP, and how the United States intelligence community collects and processes information about these objects, whatever their origins may be?

What the Latest PURSUE Release Reveals

Within the latest batch of files from what the Pentagon characterizes as the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), a previously unreleased file from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) describes an unusual observation of an object that reportedly hovered above the Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe in 2008.

“Individuals debated if the sighting was an advanced reconnaissance device of a foreign government or of extraterrestrial origins,” a short description provided with the document states. Although no video or other supplemental data is provided, the written account that the document contains, which features partial redactions, states that observers described a “disc-like” object possessing a hollow center and “a series of rotating lights on the underside of the airframe.” As the lighting shifted colors, the object reportedly ascended quickly and was soon out of sight.

“Regardless of the origins,” the document states, the incident reportedly “resulted in the decision to place the Zimbabwe [redacted] on high alert.”

Another series of documents describes an observation of an object shaped like a “potato” that was seen near Colorado Springs in 2024.

Witnesses at the time described seeing “distinct edges” on the object, which “appeared to look painted in a creamy/whitish opalescent color.”

“It was somewhat translucent with a slight shimmer,” the report states. “The object was made up of what can best be described as articulating fish scales or panels that were non-symmetrical, non-overlapping, and irregular shaped. The object itself was perfectly still but each panel on the object shifted in slow waves starting at different points of origin but at the same time.”

According to an assessment of the sighting by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which currently leads the Pentagon’s investigations into UAP, “Analysis possibly indicates that the positioning on the sun in relation to Cheyenne Mountain would allow for backscattering of sunlight reflecting off snow-covered ground.”

“This reflection could illuminate low-level clouds in the vicinity,” according to the assessment, which was produced by one of AARO’s intelligence community (IC) partners, adding that such conditions “might account for the visibility of the object followed by its sudden disappearance.”

The report concedes that the analyst had “low confidence in this assessment” based on limited information made available about witnesses at the time, such as their individual field of view, as well as the level of cloud cover over the area at the time.

Another pair of documents describes what sounds like a very intriguing observation of an “intense bright light” seen hovering below the tree line near the observer’s backyard. Emerging from their vehicle, the witness observed a “strange light” that they estimated to be approximately one meter in diameter. The object was described as a “brilliant and beautiful” reddish color the observer had never seen before, adding that “inside the red sphere, at the center, there appeared to be what [redacted] described as a ‘white plasma sun’ about the size of a basketball.”

In this instance, the written accounts were not alone: a supplemental video indeed shows a pair of objects matching the description provided, which look suspiciously like candle balloons, also known as “sky lanterns,” drifting along with the breeze. Additionally, the footage bears a resemblance to a video released by an aviation safety advocacy group last year (and in fact, it may be the same video), which was also quickly assessed to have been sky lanterns, rather than anomalous UAP “orbs.”

In short, the latest Pentagon releases—as with most other recent releases of government data related to UAP—feature some interesting stories, though the majority of the “new” data remains underwhelming, at least at first glance.

Hopeful—but Skeptical—Ufologists

In a posting on his X account, prominent skeptic Mick West noted that in advance of the Pentagon’s second PURSUE release, “ufologists (myself included) were hopeful we’d get some amazing evidence.”

“All 46 videos have been released,” West wrote. “None of them are amazing. Maybe it’s time to consider that this might be the best they have.”

Whether or not the videos we’ve now seen are indeed among the best examples of UAP in the Pentagon’s holdings, West isn’t wrong to point out the obvious: the current examples the Pentagon has provided fail to establish that there is anything truly extraordinary about the objects these videos convey.

West places himself in the commendable position of being among the hopeful “ufologists” that he says are eager to see better data on these phenomena. I can affirm that this author is among those ranks as well, having followed the subject for decades; beyond that, and reporting on the subject for The Debrief, I have also managed an independent UAP sightings reporting website for the last two years, as a self-funded citizen science effort to collect data on possible UAP observations and make it freely available to the public. Unlike a few similar sites and apps that crowd-source data on possible UAP sightings, I also work to assess the data and resolve cases whenever enough information has been provided to make that feasible.

Like West would probably also tell you, I can confirm that the majority of UAP sightings have prosaic explanations, which can often be determined using resources that include weather data, aviation tracking sites, astronomical software, rocket launch data, and other online resources that are generally free to the public. After attempting to resolve UAP sighting reports, there is, however, a residuum of unresolved cases that remain intriguing.

Assessing UAP videos in this way, in order to determine whether they document real anomalous phenomena or simply misidentifications of known objects, often carries a very negative stigma, partially because it has an equally negative term attached to it: “debunking.” The negative association here is unfortunate, since the careful study and interpretation of purported UAP imagery and, when warranted by evidence, its classification as either misidentified known phenomena or genuine unresolved cases, is one of the most beneficial ways we can work toward advancing our understanding of the UAP issue.

Equally unfortunate is the fact that, all too often, what we get instead when it comes to UAP releases is just the opposite: imagery and other data (sometimes including official U.S. government materials released through unauthorized channels) that have undergone virtually no assessment, and which feature scant accompanying details required to help contextualize the sightings.

What we are left with are usually blurry videos and images of objects that end up seeing wide circulation, often with the help of the most ardent promoters of UAP (many of whom also happen to be equally skilled at self-promotion). Beyond making a poor case for the legitimate study of UAP, such instances invite criticism—although not so much from the hopeful, skeptically-minded “ufologists” genuinely interested in viewing quality UAP data. Rather, the most frequent attacks originate from ideological, self-branded “skeptics” whose real focus appears to be aimed at superficially undermining the topic and its proponents using rhetoric heavily dipped in ad hominem, all as a means of driving engagement through their social media accounts.

Who can really blame them? Such high-traffic social media engagement can reportedly be quite profitable these days, and let’s face it: few among the most active voices in the online UAP fracas these days appear to be above engaging in a bit of good old-fashioned grifting—including the ones who often complain the loudest when they see others doing it.

Fundamentally, though, none of this helps to advance our knowledge about UAP. Answers to questions about what these objects are, as well as what they aren’t, and whether any good evidence exists for truly “anomalous” behaviors often associated with these objects by those who witness them, remain void from such contentious prattling—just as it apparently remains absent from the vast majority of the new records released by the Pentagon.

However, that isn’t to say there aren’t at least a few intriguing data points that have emerged from the recent releases.

An Intriguing UAP Case from the Second PURSUE Release

In the second batch of videos released by the Department of War, one potentially intriguing example of an unidentified flying object seems to have gone mostly overlooked.

The case involves imagery from the holdings of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office that was originally captured on April 12, 2021. Labeled “Spherical UAP [CALLSIGN] 2021/04/12 vid 0,” the footage, according to details provided at the time of its release, “is likely derived from a full-motion video camera and an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform operating within the United States Central Command area of responsibility in 2021. A user uploaded this video to a classified network in June 2024.”

According to a short description provided by the Department of War, “An area of contrast enters the sensor field-of-view from the upper right corner of the frame, exiting in the bottom right corner of the screen. The sensor pans to track the area of contrast, centering it within the sensor field-of-view.”

“The sensor changes modes as the area of contrast becomes indistinct against the background,” the summary concludes.

However, viewing the footage reveals something slightly more intriguing than this description alone conveys. The footage appears to show a small, light-colored object moving above a rugged desert terrain, presumably somewhere in the Middle East. As the object is being filmed using the electro-optical system on board a United States military drone, at one point, the object can be seen as it begins to descend in altitude, an elevation change made apparent by the shadow the object casts against the terrain below it (as can be seen in the still frame from the footage featured below). At this point, the object engages in a sudden change in direction and appears to enter a shadowed area of the landscape, at which time its brightness (seemingly due to reflectivity of its surface) is significantly diminished by the surrounding shadow, and the object becomes indiscernible.

The most intriguing aspect of this behavior is the object’s apparent movement into what we might interpret as a position of concealment. In doing so, the object not only appears to “hide,” but it also demonstrates an obvious change in direction that is suggestive of controlled motion. This is significant for a few reasons: one is that in many purported UAP videos, a phenomenon known as the parallax effect can (and often does) lead to an optical illusion where a slow-moving or even stationary object can have the appearance of moving. This illusion is caused by differences in relative speed between objects closer to the camera and those further distant, causing any closer objects to appear to be moving faster than those in the background (a good explainer on parallax effect and its relationship to UAP sightings can be read here, made available at the website of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office).

In the case of the “Spherical UAP” featured in the video from the second PURSUE release, perhaps some degree of motion parallax cannot be ruled out. However, the object’s descent just before changing direction and entering the rugged portion of terrain cast in shadow appears to clearly demonstrate in this case that the object is engaged in movement, which equally appears to convey intelligent control. Finally, an interpretation that the object may be taking a position of concealment, if correct, may indicate that the object and/or its operators had been aware that it was being observed.

Does anything conveyed in this video offer proof of extraterrestrial technology? Absolutely not. Are there any obvious signs of extraordinary capabilities being demonstrated by this object? No, there aren’t. What this video does demonstrate, however, is footage of an object that appears to be engaged in behaviors that clearly show movement beyond the capabilities of most simple balloons, and one that may fit the general description of objects the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has characterized as its general “target” description for UAP it investigates (more on that in a moment).

In the case of the DOW-UAP-PR061, “Spherical UAP [CALLSIGN] 2021/04/12 vid 0” footage, the object not only demonstrates changes in its direction of motion, but also appears to conceal itself. Obviously, a better interpretation than “balloon” in this instance might be some kind of unmanned aerial system, although what limited information the footage conveys is simply too indistinct to be able to tell. Altogether, it simply remains “unidentified” in the purest sense: some kind of object engaging in what appears to be controlled flight, while not exhibiting any otherwise extraordinary capabilities.

However, all of this raises another important question about UAP reports: why do we always have to assume that an object must display “otherworldly” or otherwise extraordinary capabilities for it to qualify as a “genuine” UAP?

The Problem of Conditioning

Another intriguing phenomenon related to the recent release of UAP information by the Pentagon involves the similarity in responses to these releases from both UAP advocates and UAP skeptics.

Some proponents of genuine anomalous UAP have expressed frustration over the Department of War’s release of several dozens of videos, all of which fail to reveal any “classic” UFO shapes like flying saucers or giant black triangles, nor any confirmation of extraterrestrial technologies detailed in the troves of formerly classified documents included with the releases.

Meanwhile, skeptics essentially argue the same thing: so far, these videos show nothing particularly remarkable, and clearly fail to prove that extraterrestrials have visited Earth.

In short, the fundamental premise of most “believers” and “skeptics” appears to be the same: “UAPs either must represent evidence of extraterrestrials, or else they are unimportant.”

This premise fails to acknowledge several important issues, such as 1) that many ideas about how UAP are supposed to look and behave are based on presumptions about how we expect any technologies produced by extraterrestrials advanced enough to traverse interstellar distances would appear to us, 2) that UAP could still represent a genuine mystery, even if they aren’t evidence of extraterrestrial technologies, and 3) that even if most UAP turned out to be technologies of earthly origin, they could still represent a security concern, and hence warrant U.S. government investigation.

Clearly, it should be acknowledged that there is also witness testimony—some of it quite compelling—that describes unusual characteristics associated with UAP, such as extreme acceleration, erratic movement, exceptional agility/maneuverability, environmental effects, and other capabilities which could only be characterized as “anomalous.” Such descriptions are also part of what informs many of our expectations about how UAPs are supposed to behave. However, it is important to recognize that just because such eyewitness descriptions exist, it does not necessarily mean that we can—or should—attribute such capabilities to all UAP observations, and thereby use such presumptions as a gauge for their credibility on a case-by-case basis.

How the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office Characterizes UAP

A careful review of resources made available by the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) helps to shed further light on the attributes of what it characterizes as UAP.

A page dedicated to education and resources at AARO’s website lists a small collection of studies detailing current state-of-the-art technologies related to spherical drones, novel propulsion systems, and other technologies, which it says represent “advanced propulsion systems that are consistent with UAP observations.” The obvious implication of providing such resources involves the consideration that at least some UAP appear to operate in ways consistent with known earthly technologies, albeit ones that are still in their emergent stages.

AARO also gives us the following definition of UAP, according to an AARO Mission Brief featured at its website: “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) are sources of anomalous detections in one or more domains (i.e., airborne, seaborne, spaceborne, and/or transmedium) that are not yet attributable to known actors and that demonstrate behaviors that are not readily understood by sensors or observers.”

The brief goes on to define “anomalous detections” as “phenomena appearing to demonstrate capabilities or material properties exceeding the known state-of-the-art,” adding that UAP “may consist of one or more objects and may persist over an extended period,” are mainly “attributable to domain-awareness gaps, and in at least some cases “may represent advanced capabilities operating in domain awareness gaps.”

The AARO Mission Brief also separates the misidentification of known objects such as balloons and drones, as well as developmental or experimental platforms, from “genuine” UAP, which it clearly defines as AARO’s designated mission area.

According to past information produced by AARO under the tenure of its inaugural director, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, typically reported UAP characteristics include appearances of generally round objects roughly 1-4 meters in size, possessing white, silver, or translucent coloration. Performance altitudes, on average, fall within 10,000 to 30,000 feet, and velocities of the objects range from hovering in a stationary position to movement at speeds of up to Mach 2 (1534.54 miles per hour).

Despite such capabilities, no kind of thermal exhaust has been associated with these objects, and their propulsion systems remain unknown. Additional signatures associated with such genuinely anomalous UAP, according to AARO, include “intermittent, X-Band (8-12 GHz)” radar, as well as radio frequency emissions in the 1-3 GHz and 8-12 GHZ ranges. While no thermal exhaust evidencing propulsion is evident, intermittent shortwave infrared and medium-wave infrared thermal signatures are occasionally detectable.

“That’s what we’re looking for and trying to understand what that is,” Kirkpatrick told U.S. Senators during an April 2023 hearing that first revealed the AARO technical data described above.

Given the specificity of such technical information (all of which, as cited above, relates to AARO materials produced in 2023 during its early period in operation), one must wonder how such details could be derived from any of the videos or other materials the Department of War has released under the recent PURSUE initiative.

The obvious implication is that the data described above must have other, better-quality sources, which have not yet been released by AARO or the Department of War.

What This All Means, for Now

Of course, AARO also maintains that it has found no evidence of extraterrestrial technologies in its UAP investigations. All this taken together, a few things can be concluded based on the totality of AARO’s findings since its investigations began: 1) some objects appear to be genuinely anomalous, which AARO calls UAP, 2) AARO takes its investigations of these objects seriously, 3) studies involving breakthrough or disruptive technologies available at its website imply that AARO may suspect some UAP of being related to such developments, and are therefore not currently misidentifications of well-known objects or technologies, but possible “breakthrough” technologies whose origins remain unattributed, and 4) specific details about appearance and operational characteristics of AARO’s UAP “target package” strongly suggest the existence of higher quality UAP data that likely remains classified.

If it ends up being true that additional, higher-quality UAP data exists in U.S. government holdings—data from which AARO’s own technical attributes for genuinely “anomalous” UAP are derived—it therefore stands to reason that the recent batches of imagery fall significantly short of being the “best data” that has been obtained about these objects. Still, some of the videos, such as DOW-UAP-PR061 (described earlier in this article), nonetheless appear to match the so-called “target package” for genuine UAP first characterized by Kirkpatrick in 2023, even if they aren’t the most astonishing UAP videos in existence. Again, we should consider the conditioning outlined earlier, which has helped to encourage the public’s never-ending expectation for “extraordinary” revelations, most of which end up falling flat once they do finally come to light.

The bigger questions, for now, are whether such examples of higher-quality UAP data do indeed exist, and if so, whether they will be made public in any future releases.

“We are collecting as much data as possible, following the data where it leads, and sharing our findings whenever possible,” AARO states on its website. “We will not rush to conclusions in our analysis. In many cases, observed phenomena are classified as ‘unidentified’ simply because sensors were not able to collect enough information to make a positive attribution.”

Arguably, if there are better quality UAP materials in AARO’s holdings, there are probably very reasonable considerations for why that information has not yet been released, which may include uncertainty about whether some data could involve potentially sensitive information about experimental U.S. technologies or those of foreign adversaries, the release of which could have implications that, for now, may warrant secrecy.

In conclusion, although most of the videos in the recent Pentagon UAP releases provide too little data to draw any firm conclusions, arguably, some of the most important considerations are made evident by what the recent releases don’t contain—especially when compared to the information AARO uses as the basis for what it calls “genuine” UAP.

To borrow that overused X-Files quip once again, “the truth is out there.” Whether we’ll be seeing the best data that supports that truth any time soon is another question entirely.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

For decades, the possibility of discovering extraterrestrial intelligence has captured the imagination of scientists, sci-fi enthusiasts, filmmakers, and the public alike.

In line with such efforts, the IAA SETI Committee and the uNHIdden Foundation, two separate not-for-profit organizations, have recently released updated rules for evaluating and disclosing detections, and preparing for public preparedness in the event of potential disclosure of extraterrestrial intelligence.

With the release of director Steven Spielberg’s new alien film Disclosure Day, nearly coinciding with the recent release of the government records from the Department of War related to UAP, it seems a growing number of individuals, from the film industry to the science community, have extraterrestrials and “disclosure” on their minds. 

The IAA SETI Committee Rules 

In June 2026, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) approved a major update to the protocols governing the evaluation, verification, and communication of evidence related to extraterrestrial intelligence. The revised guidelines were designed to address a modern information environment shaped by social media, artificial intelligence, and the rapid pace of the 24-hour news cycle.

Professor Michael Garrett, Sir Bernard Lovell Chair of Astrophysics, led the international effort to revise the long-standing post-detection protocols used by researchers engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The updated guidelines have since been formally ratified by the IAA.

“The information environment we operate in today is vastly more complex than it was in 2010,” said Garrett, Chair of the IAA SETI Committee, in a statement. “In an era of deepfakes, automated misinformation, and instant global connectivity, a single unverified claim could trigger confusion or panic. These new protocols ensure that scientists maintain the highest standards of evidence before making announcements to the world.”

The revised declaration reflects the broader scope of modern SETI and technosignature research. Since the previous guidelines were adopted in 2010, advances in technology have enabled scientists to investigate the entire electromagnetic spectrum, including excess infrared heat signatures that could indicate megastructures, optical laser emissions, and even multi-messenger signals.

The updated framework also addresses modern challenges, including protections for researchers who may face harassment, doxxing, or intense media scrutiny. It further emphasizes the importance of distinguishing verified scientific data from viral rumors, hoaxes, or terrestrial interference.

New Contact Rules at SETI

At the heart of the new guidelines is a familiar scientific principle: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Under the revised protocols, no public announcement should be made until a signal or artifact has been rigorously verified by independent organizations using different instruments and methodologies.

“We do not shout ‘alien’ the moment we see a strange blip,” said Garret in a statement. “The scientific method demands we check, check again, and then ask others to check. Only when we have reached a consensus that a signal is credible do we bring it to the world.”

While the protocols explain how to share discovery news, they make one rule clear: no reply should be sent.

“The threshold for ‘extraordinary evidence’ is subjective,” Siemion says. “Because of the vast diversity of modalities in which a technosignature might manifest, it is impossible to state explicitly the criteria that would meet this threshold under all circumstances.”

“In the case of a coherent electromagnetic signal, like a narrowband carrier or a series of laser pulses, an example of ‘extraordinary’ would be if we repeatedly detected the signal at the same location with multiple independent observatories,” Siemion adds.

He also noted that, for a transient signal, compelling evidence might include multiple lines of data indicating that it traveled through interstellar space. Determining whether a phenomenon truly originated from extraterrestrial technology would likely be a lengthy process, with evidence presented, challenged, and reassessed over time.

The declaration reinforces that any response to extraterrestrial intelligence would be a decision for all humanity and should only occur following international consultation, particularly through the United Nations.

With the updated declaration now ratified by the IAA Board, it will be shared with stakeholders, including the United Nations. A formal presentation of the protocols is scheduled for the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Türkiye later this year.

“The release of these updated rules and protocols marks an important step in acknowledging both the radically different media landscape that science functions within today, and the vastly expanded efforts in terms of technology and resources being deployed in the search for intelligent life beyond Earth,” said Bill Diamond, President and CEO of the SETI Institute and IAA SETI Committee member. “We applaud Prof Garrett’s leadership in developing these new protocols and the IAA for their ratification.” 

First Contact and Humanity’s Mental Health

Another nonprofit organization has taken a different approach, focusing on the potential psychological and public-health implications of disclosure. The uNHIdden Foundation, whose mission is to support mental health related to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), recently released a preparedness framework addressing the societal impact of a paradigm-shifting discovery.

If governments prepare for natural disasters, pandemics, and other low-probability, high-impact events, should humanity also consider preparing for the possibility of contact with another intelligent civilization?

On June 8, uNHIdden Foundation Founder and Chairman John Priestland, alongside clinical spokesperson Dr. Martin Abbas, launched what they describe as the first public-health preparedness framework focused on disclosure-related scenarios.

Developed by healthcare practitioners, physicians, clinical psychologists, and public-health specialists, “Preparing for Disclosure: A Public Health Framework for Paradigm-Shifting Revelations” examines how society might reduce harm, build resilience, and support individuals processing a profound shift in humanity’s understanding of its place in the universe.

“This report is not a prediction. It is a preparedness exercise,” Priestland says. “Governments prepare for all kinds of low-probability, high-impact events.”

“Our view is that if a paradigm-shifting disclosure were ever to occur, we should at least have thought about the human consequences in advance,” Priestland added. 

The report suggests that certain groups could be more vulnerable to disclosure-related distress, including individuals with pre-existing mental health conditions, those facing socioeconomic hardship, UAP experiencers, highly religious individuals, and some STEM professionals. The authors emphasize that the report neither predicts disclosure nor attempts to judge future discoveries; rather, it argues that preparedness is a prudent response to the possibility of transformative new information.

David Whitehouse, former BBC Science Correspondent, wrote the report’s foreword, arguing that planning is essential should such a discovery ever occur.

The new framework proposes several practical actions to be taken, which include:

• Reducing stigma surrounding anomalous experiences and disclosure-related concerns
• Building public resilience and psychological flexibility
• Developing trusted sources of information and support
• Creating community conversation groups and peer-support networks
• Strengthening mental health preparedness and triage capability
• Encouraging collaboration between healthcare professionals, researchers, government, and civil society

The report argues that stronger community resilience, clearer communication during periods of uncertainty, and improved mental-health support would be critical not only during a disclosure event but during any large-scale societal disruption.

Ultimately, the question remains whether humanity is truly prepared—or whether a globally coordinated framework is still lacking. Voices ranging from the UAP community to figures within the U.S. government have argued that the public is ready. However, only time will tell what the result may be if confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligence were to arrive—and how humanity will collectively respond to the discovery.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.