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On November 13, 2024, journalist Michael Shellenberger published a report attributed to an anonymous Pentagon source describing an alleged Special Access Program code-named 'Immaculate Constellation' purportedly tracking and recovering UAP.

On June 5, 2023 The Debrief published a story by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal reporting that intelligence officials had told Congress the U.S. had retrieved craft of non-human origin, citing former intelligence officer David Grusch as the named source.

In fiscal year 2022–2023, Japan's Air Self-Defense Force scrambled fighters against unidentified aerial phenomena 53 times, more than quadruple the prior year's total and the highest figure since JASDF record-keeping began. In September 2020, Defense Minister Taro Kono had already issued standing orders requiring SDF personnel to photograph and document any unidentified object and to immediately halt training exercises if one is encountered.

In August 2023, the U.S. Defense Department's new UAP transparency website formally designated Japan as a global hotspot for unidentified aerial phenomena, based on trend analysis of sightings logged between 1996 and 2023. Japan's parliament responded by forming an 80-member bipartisan research group in 2024, including former defense ministers, to lead the country's first systematic institutional investigation.

CBS 60 Minutes aired a UAP segment on May 16, 2021 featuring former Navy pilots Lt. Ryan Graves and Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich describing repeated 2014-2015 daily encounters off the East Coast and the 2004 Nimitz Tic-Tac incident.

On September 14, 2020, Japanese Defence Minister Tarō Kōno announced that the Japan Self-Defence Forces had adopted a formal protocol requiring SDF pilots to photograph, record, and report any encounter with unidentified aerial phenomena. The directive was Japan's first standing order on UAP encounters and was modelled in part on the U.S. Navy's 2019 reporting guidelines.

On November 9, 2018, commercial pilots flying for British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and a Norwegian carrier reported very bright, fast-moving objects passing their aircraft off the southwest coast of Ireland. Shannon Air Traffic Control confirmed nothing showed on military radar, and the Irish Aviation Authority opened a formal investigation under its confidential occurrence reporting process.

To The Stars Academy (TTSA) launched on October 11, 2017 as a private entity claiming to bridge defense, science, and entertainment, with co-founders including former Pentagon AATIP director Luis Elizondo, former Lockheed Skunk Works executive Steve Justice, and Blink-182 musician Tom DeLonge.

In January and February 2015, Navy F/A-18 pilots attached to the USS Theodore Roosevelt Strike Group operating off the U.S. East Coast recorded two FLIR videos, Gimbal and GoFast, showing objects exhibiting no visible propulsion or control surfaces; one object rotated against the wind while the other tracked at low altitude over ocean at speeds the pilots could not explain.

In late 2014, three former U.S. Army cavalrymen reported observing eight bright objects hovering and accelerating at extreme speed from a Multinational Force observation post in the Sinai Peninsula on the Israeli-Egyptian border. The Times of Israel reported the accounts with the veterans' names; all three stated the objects moved in silence and performed maneuvers beyond known aircraft capability.

On November 11, 2014, two Chilean Navy officers in an Airbus Cougar AS-532 helicopter filmed an unidentified object for nine minutes using a Wescam MX-15 HD infrared camera west of Santiago. The object was invisible to the naked eye and emitted two separate thermal plumes. Neither on-board radar nor two ground radar stations detected it. CEFAA's two-year investigation concluded unanimously: cause unknown.

In April 2013, four technicians at the remote Collahuasi copper mine in Chile's Atacama highlands, at over 14,000 feet elevation, observed a brilliant disc-shaped object approach slowly, hover for more than an hour, then depart eastward. One technician photographed it with a Samsung S860 camera. CEFAA's subsequent analysis ruled out meteorological phenomena, aircraft, weather balloons, and drones.

On October 23, 2013, the Peruvian Air Force (Fuerza Aérea del Perú) relaunched its Department of Investigation of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena under the new acronym DIFAA, after the original OIFAA office created in 2001 had gone dormant for several years. The department's mandate was framed by its leadership as grounded in the Peruvian Constitution's assignment of sovereign aerospace responsibility to the FAP.

On April 25, 2013, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection aircraft departing Aguadilla Airport in Puerto Rico captured infrared video of a small object flying at low altitude, passing through restricted airspace, appearing to enter the ocean, and then re-emerging, behavior analyzed in a 165-page report by the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies that concluded the object's performance exceeded known aerial systems.

Between August and October 2012, an Indo-Tibetan Border Police unit near Pangong Lake, Ladakh, logged over 100 sightings of luminous yellowish spheres rising from the Chinese side of the line and traversing the sky for three to five hours. A mobile radar unit and spectrum analyzer deployed to the site detected no metallic signature and no electromagnetic emissions. Indian astronomical observers confirmed the objects were 'non-celestial.'

In May 2011, Argentina's Air Force officially launched the Commission for the Investigation of Aerospace Phenomena (CEFAe), headquartered at FAA headquarters in Buenos Aires. Its first public report, released in 2015, analyzed multiple documented cases from Argentine airspace. Argentina thereby joined Chile, Uruguay, Peru, and Brazil as Latin American nations with active, institutionalized military UFO investigation bodies.

On July 7, 2010, an unidentified aerial object forced Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport to halt all departures; 18 flights were grounded or diverted to Ningbo and Wuxi. A flight crew first detected the object at 8:40 p.m. during approach. Chinese authorities concluded it 'may have been an aircraft, possibly military,' but never issued a definitive identification.

At an air show over El Bosque Air Force Base in Santiago on November 5, 2010, an object moving too fast to be seen by spectators or pilots passed near three separate jet formations. Halcones, F-5s, and F-16s. Seven video recordings from different angles captured it. CEFAA photogrammetric analysis by Air Force and Army technicians estimated its velocity at 4,000 to 6,000 miles per hour.

In 2009, Brazil became the first country to institutionalize ongoing military UFO disclosure, releasing over 2,200 pages of formerly classified documents to the Arquivo Nacional and issuing Ordinance 551/GC3 requiring all armed forces branches to forward UAP reports to the national archive annually. The files span 1952 to 2015 and include radar data, photographs, and pilot reports from the FAB's SIOANI investigation system.

DIA awarded the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) contract to Bigelow Aerospace's BAASS subsidiary in September 2008, beginning what would later become AATIP. The contract award itself was not publicly disclosed at the time.

Between 2008 and 2013 the UK Ministry of Defence transferred nearly 60,000 pages of UFO investigation files to the National Archives, making them freely downloadable. The releases covered every recorded sighting from 1953 to 2009, more than 12,000 reports, and included the complete case files for Rendlesham, Cosford, and West Freugh. The MoD formally closed its UFO desk in November 2009.

On January 8, 2008, hundreds of witnesses near Stephenville, Texas, observed a large silent object traveling at high speed toward the Crawford Ranch; MUFON obtained FAA radar data via FOIA showing an unidentified target moving at up to 532 mph with no transponder signal, performing maneuvers inconsistent with any known conventional aircraft.

Between 2007 and 2009, night security guard Yalcin Yalman filmed roughly 25 video sequences of unidentified objects over the Sea of Marmara near Kumburgaz, Turkey. Turkey's national scientific authority TÜBİTAK and the national observatory TUG reviewed original footage and stated it showed 'a physical structure' inconsistent with CGI, balloons, or known aircraft.

On April 23, 2007, Aurigny Airlines captain Ray Bowyer, en route from Southampton to Alderney over the Channel Islands, observed two stationary bright yellow objects stretching what he estimated at roughly a mile in width at 40 miles' distance. A second aircraft from Blue Islands Airlines independently reported the same objects from a different approach vector. Jersey Airport radar recorded faint primary contacts for 55 minutes.

On May 15, 2006, the UK Ministry of Defence released the previously SECRET-classified Condign Report under the Freedom of Information Act. The report was a 400-page study commissioned by the Defence Intelligence Staff (DI55) and conducted between 1997 and 2000, assessing the air-defence implications of unidentified aerial phenomena over UK airspace.

On November 7, 2006, at least twelve United Airlines employees, including pilots, mechanics, and supervisors, observed a silent, dark metallic disc hovering above Gate C-17 at O'Hare International Airport for approximately five minutes before it shot upward through solid cloud cover, leaving a circular hole that closed behind it.

On March 5, 2004, a Mexican Air Force C-26A Merlin conducting drug surveillance over Campeche state detected 11 objects on its FLIR infrared camera that were entirely invisible to the naked eye. Three of the objects also registered on radar. The Secretary of National Defense officially released the footage and crew reports to the media, calling the objects unidentified.

On November 14, 2004, Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich of the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group visually observed a 40-foot white object shaped like a Tic Tac candy hovering above a churning patch of ocean southwest of San Diego; the USS Princeton's Aegis radar had been tracking objects descending 80,000 feet in under a second for days prior.

Between 2000 and 2010, the international EMBLA research program, led by Østfold University College (Norway) and the Italian National Research Council, returned to Hessdalen with modern spectroscopy and image analysis. Researchers measured radiant power up to 19 kW from free-floating luminous bodies and published peer-reviewed findings in Acta Astronautica confirming the phenomena are not artifacts of instrumentation.

On October 19, 1998, four Chinese military radar stations in Hebei province simultaneously tracked an unidentified object hovering above a PLA aviation training base near Changzhou. A Jianjiao-6 interceptor pursued the object for nearly an hour; when the jet closed to 4,000 meters, the craft shot upward at a speed that outpaced the fighter entirely. At least 140 ground observers reported a mushroom-shaped craft with rotating multicolored lights.

In 1997, twenty years after commanding Operação Prato, Captain Uyrangê Hollanda gave a filmed interview to Brazilian UFO researchers Ademar Gevaerd and Marco Petit, stating that his team had directly observed the objects, photographed them close-up, and believed them to be intelligently controlled. He described the classification order and his own growing conviction that the phenomenon was real. Three months later he was found dead.

On March 13, 1997, thousands of Arizona and Nevada residents observed two separate events over Phoenix: a silent V-shaped formation of lights traversing the state at low altitude, and a stationary arc of brilliantly lit objects visible for 106 minutes; then-Governor Fife Symington mocked witnesses publicly but stated in 2007 that he personally witnessed 'something otherworldly.'

On January 20, 1996, three young women in Varginha, Minas Gerais, encountered a crouching creature with red eyes and a large domed head in a vacant lot. Within hours, military police and firefighters moved through the city; multiple witnesses reported seeing beings transported under military guard to local hospitals. Military police officer Marco Eli Chereze died twenty-six days later under disputed circumstances.

On the night of July 31, 1995, Aerolíneas Argentinas captain Jorge Polanco and his crew, approaching Bariloche Airport with 102 passengers aboard flight 674, observed a luminous disc-shaped object flying parallel to the aircraft for approximately 17 minutes. When the object appeared, all airport runway lights and surrounding city power failed simultaneously. Control tower instruments behaved erratically throughout.

On January 6, 1995, a British Airways Boeing 737 approaching Manchester Airport at 13,000 feet over the Pennines had a near-miss with an unlit wedge-shaped object that flashed silently past the cockpit. Captain Roger Wills and First Officer Mark Stuart filed reports with the Civil Aviation Authority. After a year-long inquiry the CAA's Joint Air Miss Working Group found no likely explanation.

Spain began declassifying Air Force UFO files in 1992 and completed a staged public release through 1997, depositing physical copies in the Central Library of the Air Force. The Manises 1979 incident file, declassified August 1994, was among the most significant, including the Mirage F1 pilot's debriefing, radar logs from two separate tracking stations, and the airline crew's signed statements.

On the night of March 8, 1994, more than 300 callers across 42 Michigan counties reported multicolored cylindrical objects performing erratic maneuvers over Lake Michigan; a National Weather Service radar operator at Muskegon County Airport tracked fast-moving returns that could not be attributed to any weather phenomenon.

On the night of March 30-31, 1993, more than a hundred witnesses across central England, including an MoD police patrol at RAF Cosford and a meteorological officer at RAF Shawbury, reported a vast triangular craft flying at low altitude and firing a beam of light at the ground. MoD UFO desk officer Nick Pope called the case of 'considerable defence significance.'

On August 17, 1992, Garry Wood and Colin Wright were driving along the A70 near Tarbrax, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, when a black disc hovering above the road dropped a curtain of white light in front of their car. A journey that should have taken 30 minutes took two and a half hours. The MoD received a formal two-page report on the incident in 1996.

Following the 1989-1990 Belgian UFO wave, the Société belge d'étude des phénomènes spatiaux (SOBEPS) published a 500-page scientific report, Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique (1991), compiling approximately 2,600 witness accounts, gendarmerie files, and air force radar data, the most comprehensive official UFO wave report produced by any European nation.

During the July 11, 1991 total solar eclipse over Mexico City, at least 17 independent video recordings captured a stationary, silvery disc-shaped object hovering in daylight while millions watched the eclipse from rooftops and streets. Journalist Guillermo Arreguin's footage was broadcast on national television, triggering a wave of additional witness submissions.

On October 24, 1991, the KGB released a 124-page 'Blue Folder' covering Soviet UAP observations from 1982 to 1990 across 17 regions, including military depositions, informer notes, and witness sketches. Test pilot Colonel Marina Popovich separately stated Soviet crews had logged 3,000 sightings and that five craft fragments were in state custody.

At 1:34 a.m. on April 12, 1991, an explosion near Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, gouged a 28-meter-wide crater with no trace of conventional explosive residue, detonator hardware, or blast shrapnel. Witnesses had observed large glowing spheres drifting over the site hours earlier, and a tree ten meters from the epicenter was unscathed.

On September 10, 1990, approximately 25 witnesses, including schoolchildren and a photojournalist, observed a spherical metallic object with legs hovering near Alfena, Portugal. The photojournalist Manuel Gomes captured four photographs; forensic examination by Portugal's CNIFO and later by NASA consultant Richard Haines found no evidence of tampering.

On March 30-31, 1990, the Belgian Air Force scrambled two F-16s from Beauvechain to intercept an unidentified radar return tracked by NATO ground stations. Chief of Operations General Wilfried De Brouwer publicly released the radar data at a NATO headquarters press conference on July 11, 1990.

On August 24, 1990, hundreds of tourists and residents across the German Baltic coast, including a school group of 40 boys and several teachers, observed and filmed multiple luminous spheres in Y-formation near Greifswald. The event was captured on videotape by independent witnesses and remains unexplained.

When SETKA ended in 1990–1991, Yuli Platov published findings in the Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: of roughly 3,000 cases analyzed over 13 years, over 90% were explained by rocket launches and balloons, while approximately 300 cases remained scientifically unresolved.

In August 1990, two hillwalkers near Calvine, Perthshire, Scotland, photographed a large diamond-shaped object hovering silently before ascending vertically. The MoD obtained the negatives, classified them, and suppressed the story for over thirty years. In 2022, researcher David Clarke located the last surviving print held by a retired RAF press officer and donated it to Sheffield Hallam University.

Bob Lazar appeared in a 1989 KLAS-TV interview with reporter George Knapp claiming employment at a classified facility near Area 51 called S-4, where he alleged he reverse-engineered recovered non-human craft and described an antimatter reactor powered by 'Element 115.'

On November 29, 1989, at least 143 witnesses, including 13 on-duty police officers, reported a massive silent triangular craft with white lights at each corner hovering over Eupen, Belgium. The Belgian Gendarmerie formally documented the accounts the same night.

On July 28–29, 1989, seven military personnel at Kapustin Yar observed a phosphorescent green disc hover over the weapons arsenal for nearly two hours and project a bright beam at the munitions stores. Their handwritten KGB-supervised depositions became part of the 124-page 'Blue Folder' declassified in 1991.

Kapustin Yar, the Soviet rocket range established near Volgograd in 1946, produced the densest cluster of military UAP reports of any Soviet installation. A single July 1989 incident there generated seven KGB-processed depositions; the range features prominently across the declassified 'Blue Folder' covering eight years of anomalous phenomena.

On September 27, 1989, children and a police lieutenant witnessed a large red sphere land in a Voronezh park. TASS issued an official report on October 9, unprecedented for Soviet state media, citing Genrikh Silanov of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory, who documented a 20-meter depression and four landing dents.

In the early hours of January 20, 1988, Faye Knowles and her three adult sons reported a glowing object that descended onto the roof of their car on the Nullarbor Plain, lifting the vehicle before dropping it and bursting a tyre. Truck driver Graham Henley independently spotted the object from behind and confirmed four indentations in the car's roof.

The Knowles family encounter on the Nullarbor Plain generated same-day international wire coverage, with UPI filing on January 21, 1988. The story was significant enough that police at Ceduna took statements and UFO Research South Australia dispatched investigators within days.

On the night of May 19, 1986, Brazilian Air Defense radar tracked 21 unidentified objects moving at estimated Mach 15 across São Paulo, Goiás, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais. Two F-5Es and three Mirage IIIs were scrambled; pilots reported objects surrounding their aircraft before vanishing. Four days later the Minister of the Air Force held an unprecedented public press conference confirming the events.

On January 29, 1986, a silent reddish sphere roughly three meters across crashed into Height 611 near Dalnegorsk, Primorsky Krai, burning for two days. Scientists at the USSR Academy of Sciences Far Eastern Branch recovered metallic residue with gold concentrations 250 times local levels and 17-micrometer mesh threads inconsistent with known 1980s technology.

On November 17, 1986, Japan Air Lines Cargo Flight 1628 crew reported that two small craft and then a massive walnut-shaped object shadowed their Boeing 747 for approximately 50 minutes over Alaska; FAA Division Chief John Callahan later testified that CIA officers attended the classified debrief and instructed participants the meeting had never occurred.

In October 1983, Perm geologist Emil Bachurin found a 62-meter circular impression in a plowed field near Molyobka village in the Ural foothills, now called the M-Triangle, and documented persistent luminous objects, equipment malfunctions, and psychological disorientation among dozens of subsequent visitors including scientific expedition members.

Between 1982 and 1986, more than 5,000 residents of New York's Hudson Valley and Fairfield County, Connecticut, reported observing a massive, silent, boomerang-shaped craft carrying bright multicolored lights; J. Allen Hynek co-authored an investigation published as 'Night Siege' (1987), and law enforcement officers submitted independent reports.