Tag: close encounters

FAA Updates Controller Manual to Reflect New UAP Reporting Policy

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has formally replaced the term “Unidentified Flying Object” (UFO) with “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena” (UAP) in its core air traffic control manual, marking a notable procedural update that aligns with recent federal terminology and U.S. code. The change was highlighted by Americans for Safe Aerospace (ASA) and its founder, former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, who praised the revision as a step toward transparency and improved aviation safety reporting.

The update was issued under FAA Notice N 7110.800, effective October 26, 2025, and applies to all Air Traffic Organization (ATO) personnel. The notice modifies two key sections of FAA Order JO 7110.65, the governing document for air traffic control procedures. Specifically, it updates paragraph 1-2-6, “Abbreviations,” and paragraph 9-8-1, “General,” to remove the word UFO and introduce UAP in its place.

(Editor’s Note: As of publication, the FAA’s online version of Order JO 7110.65 does not yet reflect the revisions outlined in Notice N 7110.800. The updated language appears only in the notice itself, pending formal incorporation into the manual.)

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Top UFO investigator reveals three spine-tingling, never-before-seen encounters

You may have heard of the Tic Tac UFO encounter or the Gimbal and Go Fast videos.

But years before these now-world-famous craft sightings went mainstream, a little-known research group was analyzing them over and over again.

MUFON – the Mutual UFO Network – has 700 investigators in the U.S. and has been collecting evidence of strange encounters since the 1960s.

One of its top analysts, Bob Spearing, told DailyMail.com ‘Our slogan is, ‘Doing the Air Force’s job since 1969′.’ MUFON now has 137,000 reports of UFO encounters in its files.

Searing is today revealing the strangest cases which he believes could be the catalyst for further government investigations and congressional hearings.

Flying squids

The idea of ‘Jellyfish’ UFOs rocketed into the public consciousness thanks to a video on an Iraqi military base, released by journalist Jeremy Corbell.

MUFON debunked that video, which Spearing describes as having ‘so many flaws’ – but looked in its archive to find others.

‘What we found was startling,’ said Spearing – there were dozens of similar cases, both of larger squid-like craft – and smaller floating squid, some of which seemed to ‘suck the life-force’ from victims.

‘We found a lot of drawings and photographs starting from Denmark in the 70s of these giant cloud-like mushrooms, and it goes right up until today – but then we also discovered that there’s also a phenomenon of indoor jellyfish.

One strange encounter in Singapore found sleeping women attacked by floating objects with bioluminescent tentacles.

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Active duty Navy chief who witnessed UFO convinced doubtful colleagues with radar expertise: ‘It was like checkmate’

An active-duty Navy chief saw four tic-tac shaped UFOs off the coast of California while working on the USS Jackson — and convinced a doubting radar officer the craft were real with an undeniable “checkmate.”

US Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Alexandro Wiggins witnessed multiple UFOs on radar on the evening of February 15, 2023 — observing the first one emerge seamlessly out of the ocean, he said.

“What am I seeing?” recounted Chief Wiggins, who spoke to The Post on behalf of himself as an individual and not as a representative of the Navy. “From my observations, it did in fact come from the water.”

“It was first seen on radar and once I saw it on radar, I wanted to confirm visually what I was seeing on radar if it was clouds and atmospherics and something else.”

Wiggins then moved out to the core bridge wing of the USS Jackson and went through his mental checklist of things the object could be — but was convinced by an odd maneuver it made that it was not standard human technology.

“It [was] rising into the air high enough to where I’m like, alright, that’s definitely: A. too fast and B. not something I’ve seen before,” the 21-year Navy veteran said.

The keen-eyed officer saw three other objects moving in coordination roughly 8 nautical miles away from the USS Jackson — then reported the unknown objects to a tactical officer and rushed to observe the craft on a Sapphire radar.

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SHOCK TESTIMONY: U.S. Air Force Veteran Reveals He Witnessed a Silent 100-Foot TRIANGLULAR UFO at Langley AFB — Shot Into the Sky in Seconds

Congress heard jaw-dropping testimony today during the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets’ hearing titled “Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection.”

Task Force Chairwoman Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) blasted the federal government and intelligence community for deliberately keeping Americans in the dark about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs).

Luna stressed the danger of stonewalling the public, warning that UAP secrecy directly undermines U.S. national security and erodes trust in our Republic.

U.S. Air Force Veteran Dylan Borland, a former geospatial intelligence specialist for the U.S. Air Force and senior defense analyst for BAE Systems and Intrepid Solutions, described a chilling 2012 encounter while stationed at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.

At approximately 1:30 a.m., Borland reported witnessing a massive, 100-foot equilateral triangular craft silently emerge near the NASA hangar on base.

After reporting the incident, Borland revealed that his professional career was deliberately obstructed after his experience.

He says government agencies manipulated his security clearance, falsified records, and blacklisted him to prevent him from continuing to work in the intelligence community.

He went further, disclosing that he had been exposed to classified details of the UAP Legacy Crash Retrieval Program, a program he alleges is hiding recovered craft and technologies of unknown origin from both Congress and the American public.

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Military Officials Describe UFO Sightings, Demand Government Transparency

Several former and current U.S. military officials described sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) to Congress on Sept. 9 and called on the Pentagon to be more transparent about its disclosures on the phenomenon.

During a House Oversight subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, titled “Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection,” several past and present Department of Defense officials testified that they had witnessed UFOs—which the Pentagon now refers to as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP)—while serving in the military.

The hearing also featured a new, never-before-seen video of an alleged UFO recorded near the coast of Yemen in October 2024.

Air Force veteran Dylan Borland told lawmakers that he encountered “sustained reprisals” and retaliation from the Pentagon after whistleblowing about an alleged UFO he saw while working at a military base in 2012.

“I saw an approximately 100-foot equilateral triangle take off from near the NASA hangar on the base. The craft interferes with my telephone, did not have any sound, and the material it was made of appeared fluid or dynamic,” Borland said.

“I was under the triangular craft for a few minutes, and then it rapidly ascended to commercial jet level in seconds, displaying zero kinetic disturbance, sound, or wind displacement.”

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Alien secrets: 11 mysterious UFO encounters that refuse to fade from history 

nexplained aerial phenomena, commonly branded as UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) and more recently as UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), remain one of history’s most enduring enigmas.

While most sightings are dismissed as misidentifications or atmospheric oddities, a select few stand apart – defying scientific and governmental scrutiny and leaving behind more questions than answers. These are cases with solid physical evidence, radar confirmation, or witnessed by military and aviation professionals.

Let’s delve into the 11 most compelling UFO sightings across the globe – incidents with documentation, official investigation, and mysteries that have persisted for decades despite analysis.

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Mysterious ‘orbs’ demand scientific study

President Trump interviewed Air Force pilots who were utterly baffled by the objects. They seem to chase Navy fighter jets and have been captured on radar and video. The Pentagon’s UFO analysis office is perplexed by them.

What is behind the enigmatic “orbs” reported by countless credible observers since at least World War II?

The scientific community must abandon the nearly century-long anti-scientific stigma surrounding UFOs — which the Pentagon likes to call “unidentified anomalous phenomena” — and investigate this enduring mystery. This is especially so since the Pentagon now admits openly that it is baffled by “several dozen” “true anomalies” and “really peculiar” UFO incidents, including some involving unknown “orbs.”

On July 24, the Senate confirmed former Air Force fighter pilot Matthew Lohmeier as the under secretary of the Air Force, the department’s second-highest civilian position. While in high school, Lohmeier had a remarkable UFO encounter.

According to Lohmeier, a “ball of light” descended upon him and a friend as they were in the wilderness outside of Tucson, Ariz. The object came so close that Lohmeier recalls that “it seemed to be buzzing with life, but it wasn’t man-made.”

“It was very well-organized, very spherical,” Lohmeier said, “and it seemed to be very conscious of the two of us that were sitting there in the Arizona mountains, like it was observing us … there was a level of interest from the orb to us.” Frightened, the two ran to their car. The object “zipped up and disappeared in the sky.”

Lohmeier is not the only Air Force fighter pilot left baffled by such an object. In a September appearance on Fox News, Trump stated that he interviewed several Air Force pilots who encountered spherical objects performing extraordinary maneuvers. According to Trump, the pilots told him, “All I know, sir, there was a round object that was going four times faster than my F-22.”

“Four or five guys [that] I’ve interviewed, solid people, great pilots for the U.S. Air Force,” Trump continued, have “seen things that they cannot explain, so there’s something.” Trump also told podcaster Joe Rogan that the pilots observed objects “like a round ball, but it wasn’t a comet or a meteor.”

Timothy Phillips, the former deputy director of the Department of Defense’s UFO analysis office, stated in June that the Pentagon is perplexed by “fiery orbs.”

Such phenomena have been reported since at least World War II. “Balls of Fire Stalk U.S. Fighters” read the headline of a frontpage Jan. 2, 1945, New York Times article describing the mysterious “foo fighters” that toyed with American pilots in the European and Pacific theaters.

The late Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), as a wartime transport pilot in Asia, encountered such an object, which conducted extraordinary maneuvers around his plane. The experience led him to enthusiastically support then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) establishment of a secret Pentagon UFO program in 2008. A 2017 New York Times story revealing that program spurred a sweeping congressional investigation into the UFO phenomenon. This led to the introduction of extraordinary legislation and the establishment of the Pentagon’s analysis office.

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Canadian Government Releases Report on UFOs

A new report issued by the Canadian government details the results of its three-year-long investigation into the UFO phenomenon. According to a local media report, the paper was produced by the Sky Canada Project, which was launched in 2022 under the auspices of the country’s Office of the Chief Science Advisor to examine “current practices surrounding public reporting of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) in Canada.” Following a preliminary report released earlier this year, a more robust version of the group’s findings was issued to the public earlier this week and contained some interesting insights and recommendations.

Not unlike similar government projects conducted in the United States, the exhaustive study of how and where UFO reports are collected in Canada identified “several gaps and areas for potential improvements” in the process. Specifically, the report noted that all manner of agencies and offices receive sighting accounts because there is no centralized body responsible for the sizeable task. The paper also observed that these cases are rarely investigated “unless they are deemed to pose safety or security risks,” and scientists are generally not enlisted to help. Additionally, the report lamented that there is no public-facing government platform dedicated to the oft-ridiculed subject.

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Surge in UFO Sightings: Over 2,000 Reports in First Half of 2025

More than 2,000 unidentified flying objects have been spotted across the United States in just the first six months of 2025, according to data from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC).

This marks a significant uptick from the 1,492 sightings logged in the same period last year.

The NUFORC, a nonprofit dedicated to collecting and investigating these mysterious reports, tallied exactly 2,174 sightings from January through June 2025. That’s slightly higher than the 2,077 reported in early 2023, signaling a potential escalation in unexplained aerial phenomena (UAPs), the government’s preferred term for what many believe could be extraterrestrial visitors or advanced secret tech.

Witnesses have described a wide array of shapes and behaviors that defy conventional explanation, such as glowing orbs zig-zagging at impossible speeds, massive triangle-shaped crafts hovering silently over homes “the size of a tennis court or a football field,” metallic discs, cigar-like objects, and even shape-shifting lights that accelerate sharply or make right-angle turns.

The Hill reports:

Whistleblower David Grusch came forward in 2023, alleging a secret UFO-retrieval program was being operated by the Pentagon. His testimony sparked congressional hearings and increased public attention to the issue of unexplained sightings.

Since then, others connected with the government have come forward to support Grusch’s claims, saying the Defense Department has not been honest with the public or Congress about the subject.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has remained firm in saying that there is no evidence unexplained sightings are extraterrestrial in nature and disavowing the existence of UFO-retrieval programs.

NUFORC’s chief technology officer, Christian Stepien, estimates that only about 5 percent of actual sightings ever get reported, due to lingering stigma and fear of ridicule.

“There are so many things being seen by so many people. And if it’s a secret block project, you’re not flying it over highly populated neighborhoods where everybody can see it, and even these days, have pictures of it,” Stepien said, according to The Hill’s report.

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FOIA Crack Opens: ‘Mosul Orb’ UFO Video Finally Goes Public

A four-second clip of the ‘Mosul Orb’ Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) has finally surfaced after investigative journalist Dustin Slaughter won a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and its National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC).

In 2023, journalists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp released a still image from the four-second video, showing the UAP above the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in 2016, reportedly from a CIA spy plane.

The video was filmed at 9:47 am Coordinated Universal Time on 16 April 2016, according to its timestamp.

During an appearance on Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp’s WEAPONIZED podcast, Slaughter said his 2023 FOIA filing hadn’t singled out the Mosul Orb; instead, he’d submitted a broad request for any UAP-related videos.

After what he described as stonewalling by the USAF and NASIC, Slaughter and his legal team filed suit in 2024.

The footage captures a mysterious sphere gliding right-to-left above Mosul’s rooftops. 

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