UFO sightings in 1960s were secret aerospace tests - Pentagon report

In a report submitted to Congress on Friday, the US government concluded that there was "no evidence" that the US government had interacted with aliens, according to American media.

The report created by the All-domain Anomaly Research Office (AARO) at the request of Congress found that most sightings of UFOs or "unidentified anomalous phenomena" (UAP) were ordinary objects or explainable phenomena.

"AARO found no empirical evidence for claims that the USG and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology," the report said.

The report also called allegations of reverse-engineered "extraterrestrial technology" inaccurate.

They blame the inaccurate reports on US government officials who viewed "authentic USG classified programs" without proper knowledge of them and then mistakenly associated them with extraterrestrial activity.

Some of the reports of UFOs were due to the rapidly expanding flight technology of the 1960s, which led some people to misidentify never-before-seen experimental technology as extraterrestrial.

Challenging public skepticism

The report took time to address the obvious skepticism from the public, saying, "A consistent theme in popular culture involves a particularly persistent narrative that the USG—or a secretive organization within it—recovered several off-world spacecraft and extraterrestrial biological remains, that it operates a program or programs to reverse engineer the recovered technology, and that it has conspired since the 1940s to keep this effort hidden from the United States Congress and the American public."

The report said, "The proliferation of television programs, books, movies, and the vast amount of internet and social media content centered on UAP-related topics most likely has influenced the public conversation on this topic and reinforced these beliefs within some sections of the population."

Maj.-Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said they approached the report with an open mind and no preconceived idea but found no evidence to back up claims of secret programs, hidden alien technology, or anything else extraterrestrial.