OIn recent months, officials responsible for the federal government’s investigation of “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAP—the new term for UFOs—have spoken publicly about their findings. In March, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) released its first report on historical UFO sightings, concluding that it “found no empirical evidence that any of the UAP sightings represented alien technology or that a secret program existed that was not properly reported to Congress.” AARO’s acting director, Tim Phillips, reiterated that point in a press conference. Meanwhile, former director Sean Kirkpatrick has publicly criticized conspiracy theorists for their baseless claims and expressed anger at threats against him and his family in a recent interview. None of this, however, has appeased calls from some members of Congress and information disclosure advocates that the U.S. government release all of its classified documents on unidentified flying objects.
How did this happen? For over a decade and a half, hardly any, if any, mainstream media or politicians had mentioned UFOs. But after a December 2017 article in the New York Just claimed that the Department of Defense had a secret UFO investigation program between 2007 and 2012, but that changed. Since then, the issue has been covered in congressional hearings and has featured prominently on social media, podcasts, and cable television.
To explain this shift, one must look back at the history of interest in UFOs. UFOs first became part of popular culture after a private pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted some disk-like objects in formation near Mount Rainier in Washington state in June 1947. Newspapers at the time called them “flying saucers,” and over the course of that summer, hundreds of Americans reported seeing them.
World War II had just ended. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was underway. It would soon entail an unprecedented arms race that included nuclear weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles, surveillance balloons, high-altitude aircraft, and satellites. Much was happening above the heads of people around the world, and for most of them, this was a disturbing development.
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So when speculation arose about who might be behind the mysterious flying saucers, attention initially focused either on the US and Soviet military or on the possibility that it was all due to war hysteria. As the 1950s progressed, however, more and more people came around to the idea that aliens were responsible, given the remarkable shapes and bizarre properties of the objects being reported. The widely accepted explanation for the unusual timing of their visits was that extraterrestrial beings had been observing Earth from afar, had seen that we on Earth had unlocked the secret of nuclear power, and were now concerned about the dangers it posed to us and the entire solar system.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force began investigating sightings shortly after the Arnold sighting. It would continue to do so until 1969. Time and again, officials told the public that UFOs posed no threat to national security and dismissed witnesses’ reports as cases of misperception. Venus, lenticular clouds, temperature inversions, birds, weather balloons: all were named as likely culprits.
UFO enthusiasts didn’t think so. Since the 1950s, civilian groups researching the phenomenon insisted that authorities were hiding the truth, that flying saucers were the work of aliens and that the government might well be keeping spacecraft and their occupants in custody. And so efforts by ufologists, as they were called, began to clamor for full disclosure and to persuade Congress to hold public hearings. Some officials and experts testified on the subject twice in the 1960s, and in 1994 the Air Force released a detailed report on claims of a saucer crash in Roswell, NM, in 1947. Despite this fact, and the release of thousands of formerly secret documents by the United States, Britain and numerous other countries since the beginning of the new century, advocates of greater transparency are still unconvinced by government denials.
At the same time, civilian researchers began to investigate the cases themselves. In the 1960s and 1970s, some believed that a pattern was emerging in reports of UFO sightings near military bases and nuclear facilities, and that witnesses were being intimidated by ominous “men in black” to change their statements. Then, in the 1980s and 1990s, alien abduction stories became increasingly popular, with individuals being taken from their homes and subjected to examinations, experiments, and even insemination. These dark stories eventually became a staple of the hit television series The X-Files begins in 1993 and describes an elaborate conspiracy between the US government and evil aliens.
The X-Files was less a symbol of the heyday of fascination with UFOs than of their swan song. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, general interest in unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrial visitors waned. From the late 1990s through the first twelve years of the 21st century, membership in UFO organizations declined, some groups closed, and newsletters and publications disappeared. The rise of the Internet redirected interest in UFOs to niche online forums. At the same time, fears of nuclear winter and secret espionage from 9/11 and its legacy were replaced by fears of unpredictable acts of terror and sleeper cells. In film and television, aliens gave way to vampires and zombies, creatures that could be – or once were – humans like us and did not require complex technology to pose a threat. In 2012, even enthusiasts were openly wondering if the UFO obsession was finally over.
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And now they’re back, this time against a backdrop of drone warfare, science skepticism, and criticism of the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The name may be different, but the UFO brand is the same.
These mysteries seem to be expressions of our own earthly concerns: that national security may be threatened by foreign adversaries with advanced technology. At the same time, we wonder if beings from other worlds are watching us—for what purpose, no one knows. And the government’s demands for clarification are just as shrill as they were decades ago. The designation “UAP” may have been created to escape the associations “UFO” had with wild speculation and pop culture, but the story is not so easily erased or left behind.
What connects today’s passion for UFOs with that of the past is an overwhelming sense of vulnerability among many Americans. World War II and the Cold War gave the world not only powerful weapons of mass destruction, but also government programs designed to build them while keeping them secret. This sense that irresponsible, threatening powers can invent technologies that neither we nor they can control — think of today’s artificial intelligence — is both the past and present of the UFO phenomenon. And probably its future, too.
Greg Eghigian is Professor of History and Bioethics at Pennsylvania State University and author of After the arrival of the flying saucers: A global history of the UFO phenomenon.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME hereThe opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors..
