World UFO Day Approaches, See What’s Been Spotted Over Washington

SEATTLE — World UFO Day is coming up on July 2 and this year's celebration is one for the books: The Defense Department has finally acknowledged UFOs — or UAP, unidentified aerial phenomena — are real, which may explain what thousands of Washingtonians have seen in the skies over the past year.

In May, during the first public hearing on UFOs in half a century, a top Navy intelligence official told lawmakers the military has added more than 250 reports of aircraft flying at mysterious speeds and trajectories to its database in the past year, bringing the total to about 400.

In May, during the first public hearing on UFOs in half a century, a top Navy intelligence official told lawmakers the military has added more than 250 reports of aircraft flying at mysterious speeds and trajectories to its database in the past year, bringing the total to about 400.

What lawmakers didn't hear is evidence of extraterrestrial life. They also didn't receive any reassurance they shouldn't worry about the unexplained sightings.

What are folks reporting in the skies above Washington? The crowd-sourced list from the National UFO Reporting Center includes some strange things, indeed. For example:

• In March, a Silverlake resident reported seeing a glowing, spinning starlike shape floating above a lake near Mt. St. Helens for up to five hours.
• A stargazer says they saw a helicopter following a black, rectangular aircraft over Tacoma last June. A similar reporting of a helicopter and black rectangle was reported in Camas as well.
• A chevron shaped object was reported hovering over Centralia last September. The witness says it was a "gigantic silent craft" with several dim spotlights.

World UFO Day on July 2 commemorates the Roswell crash, which more or less made it safe for Americans to talk about strange occurrences in the sky. The crash occurred at the dawn of the Cold War, a time of escalating tension over the arms race when school children were taught duck-and-cover drills to protect themselves in a nuclear attack, fueling wild speculation about the object’s origins.

• Related: UFO Hearings: 5 Things U.S. Intelligence Officials Said

The Roswell Army Air Field announced in a July 8, 1947, news release that it had recovered the wreckage of a “flying disc” from W.W. “Mac” Brazel’s ranch about 75 miles north of Roswell.

The release was straightforward, noting:

“The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County.”

Earlier that summer, on June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold, a businessman piloting a small plane, filed the first well-known report of a UFO over Mount Rainier in Washington, according to History. Arnold claimed he saw nine high-speed, crescent-shaped objects zooming along at several thousand miles per hour “like saucers skipping on water.”

The Roswell Army Air Field mentioned nothing in its press release about alien life, but people were already growing uneasy about what might be circling overhead. Brazel was among them.

He thought the object he found on his ranch was similar to what Arnold had seen, or to the objects described stories about flying saucers and discs, so he gathered some of the material from the wreckage, including rubber strips, tinfoil and thick paper, and deposited them with Sheriff George Wilcox, who in turn turned it over to the commanding officer of the Roswell Army Air Field.

Although the objects Arnold claimed to see weren’t saucer-shaped at all, his analogy led to the popularization of the term “flying saucers.” And since then, Americans have been more or less obsessed with the idea that alien life is among us. That brings us to the May hearings.

The Defense Department was loathe for many years to even acknowledge the existence of UFOs — or, as they're referred to in military and spy agency circles, UAP. But the Pentagon had to walk back years of public denial after a shadowy five-year program to investigate UFOs was exposed in 2017 by The New York Times and Politico.

The intelligence gathered over the five years of the program, which was initiated in 2007, included former Naval Cmdr. David Fravor's account of an other-wordly encounter with an oblong, Tic Tac-shaped aircraft flying erratically through his airspace at an incredible speed, defying accepted principles of aerodynamics.

"I can tell you, I think it was not from this world," Fravor told ABC News in 2017. "I'm not crazy, haven't been drinking. It was — after 18 years of flying, I've seen pretty much about everything that I can see in that realm, and this was nothing close."

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, now a ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called on the Pentagon in late 2020 to investigate the UFO sightings.

The military said in its 2021 report to Congress on UFOs that investigators found no evidence supporting alien life, a finding Scott W. Bray, the deputy director of Naval intelligence, repeated in the hearings in May, telling lawmakers the investigation hadn't turned up anything "extraterrestrial in origin," and that none of the documented objects had attempted to make contact with U.S. aviators.

All of the unexplained sightings appeared to be unmanned, Bray said.

Still, the sightings are of great concern both to the military and to members of Congress from both parties, who worry about threats to national security. Some of the sightings of aircraft flying without a discernible means of propulsion have been reported near military bases, raising concerns they are the stealth spy aircraft of U.S. adversaries.

The U.S. government is believed to be withholding technical information about the sightings of the mysterious aircraft near military bases and coastlines, raising concerns about Chinese or Russian spy technology.

"We are also mindful of our obligation to protect sensitive sources and methods," Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie said in his opening remarks. "Our goal is to strike that delicate balance — one that will enable us to maintain the public's trust while preserving those capabilities that are vital to the support of our service personnel."

Indiana Congressman Andre Carson, a Democrat who chairs the subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee that held the hearing, has previously said that pilots too often are reluctant to come forward for fear they'll be ridiculed.

"We want to know what's out there as much as you want to know what's out there," Moultrie told lawmakers, adding that he was a fan of science fiction himself. "We get the questions, not just from you. We get it from family, and we get them night and day."

The move to destigmatize UFO reports appears to be contributing to an increase in reports, and detection capabilities are improving, Bray said. For example, he said, Navy and Air Force pilots and crews "now have step-by-step procedures for reporting UAPs," using onboard technology. Also, sensors have been improved, and more drones and other non-military aerial systems are in the skies, which could account for some of the increased sightings.

Another possible culprit, Bray said: Mylar balloons.