WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's latest report on UFOs has revealed hundreds of new reports of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena but no indications suggesting an extraterrestrial origin.

The review includes hundreds of cases of misidentified balloons, birds and satellites as well as some that defy easy explanation, such as a near-miss between a commercial airliner and a mysterious object off the coast of New York.

While it isn't likely to settle any debates over the existence of alien life, the report^[1] reflects heightened public interest in the topic and the government's efforts to provide some answers^[2]. Its publication comes a day after House lawmakers called for greater government transparency during a hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — the government's term for UFOs.

Federal efforts to study and identify^[3] UAPs have focused on potential threats to national security or air safety and not their science fiction aspects. Officials at the Pentagon office created in 2022 to track UAPs, known as the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office^[4], or AARO, have said there's no indication any of the cases they looked into have unearthly origins.

“It is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology,” the authors of the report wrote.

The Pentagon’s review covered 757 cases from around the world that were reported to U.S. authorities from May 1, 2023, to June 1, 2024. The total includes 272 incidents that occurred before that time period but had not been previously reported.

The great majority of the reported incidents occurred in airspace, but 49 occurred at altitudes estimated to be at least 100 kilometers (62 miles), which is considered space. None occurred underwater. Reporting witnesses included commercial and military pilots as well as ground-based observers.

Investigators found explanations for nearly 300 of the incidents. In many cases, the unknown objects were found to be balloons, birds, aircraft, drones or satellites. According to the report, Elon Musk's Starlink satellite system^[5] is one increasingly common source as people mistake chains of satellites for UFOs.

Hundreds of other cases remain unexplained, though the report's authors stressed that is often because there isn't enough information to draw firm conclusions.

No injuries or crashes were reported in any of the incidents, though a commercial flight crew reported one near miss with a “cylindrical object” while flying over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New York. That incident remains under investigation.

In three other cases, military air crews reported being followed or shadowed by unidentified aircraft, though investigators could find no evidence to link the activity to a foreign power.

For witnesses who provided visual descriptions, unidentified lights or round, spherical or orb-shaped objects were commonly reported. Other reports included a witness who reported a jellyfish with flashing lights.

During Wednesday's hearing on UAPs, lawmakers heard testimony from several expert witnesses who have studied the phenomena, including two former military officers. The discussion included fanciful questions about alien intelligence and military research using alien technology^[6] as well as concerns that foreign powers may be using secret aircraft to spy on U.S. military installations.

Lawmakers said the many questions about UAPs show the need for the government to closely study the issue — and share those findings with Americans.

“There is something out there,” said Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee. “The question is: Is it ours, is it someone else's, or is it otherworldly?”

Suicides increased among U.S. military personnel last year, an ongoing trend Pentagon officials say they plan to address with a $125 million investment in prevention and mental health programs next year.

The rate for active-duty personnel rose to 28.2 per 100,000 members in 2023, from 25.1 per 100,000 members during the previous year^[1], according to new data released by the Pentagon on Thursday. That year-to-year increase is not statistically significant but when compared with the past 12 years, shows long-term "real change," defense officials said.

"We continue to see a gradual, statistically significant increase in the active component suicide rates from 2011 to 2023. This tells us that it's most likely a real change. Stated differently, there is a low likelihood that this change is due to natural variation or chance," Liz Clark, director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, said Thursday on a call with reporters.

Read Next:'He's Going to Have to Explain It': Surprise Defense Secretary Pick's History Takes Center Stage^[2]

The Defense Department's annual suicide report for 2023^[3] found that the suicide rate also increased among reserve members, but it decreased slightly for the National Guard^[4].

According to the report, 363 active-duty troops died in 2023 by suicide, up 32 service members from last year, while 69 reserve members took their own lives, compared with 65 in 2022.

Ninety-one Guard members died by suicide in 2023, down from 99 in 2022.

The deaths occurred despite concerted efforts in 2022 by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who ordered the department and the services to make suicide prevention a top priority.

In the past year, DoD has been working to implement initiatives recommended in 2022 by a suicide prevention review board, completing 20 of the board's 83 recommendations so far, said Dr. Timothy Hoyt, deputy director of the Office of Force Resiliency, on the call.

"While some progress has been made, Secretary Austin has been clear that there's still much work to do and that we won't let up," Hoyt said.

Regarding the individual services, the suicide rate remained steady in the Marine Corps^[5] over last year, but it continued to have the highest rate among the services^[6], losing at least 64 Marines to suicide for a rate of 35 per 100,000 members.

The Army^[7] rate increased significantly from 27 per 100,000 to 32.7 per 100,000 soldiers, with 158 deaths. The Air Force^[8] had 70, its rate slightly higher in 2023 at 20.5 per 100,000 airmen, and the Navy^[9]'s rate was 19.3 per 100,000 members, with 69.

The Space Force^[10], the smallest branch of the armed services, had two deaths by suicide. The Coast Guard^[11], which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, was not addressed in the DoD report.

"The Department mourns our teammates whom we've lost to suicide. And through our actions -- by taking care of our people, and prioritizing the health, well-being, and morale of our force -- we honor their memories," Austin said in a statement Thursday.

Firearms remained the leading means of suicide among the active-duty, reserve and National Guard components in 2023, with upward of 65% taking their lives with a gun, compared with 50% of suicides in the U.S. population.

The commission recommended that the department raise the age for service members to buy guns to 25, require those living in military housing to register all privately owned weapons and restrict storage of personal firearms in barracks.

The DoD did not adopt those policies but instead launched public awareness campaigns and has been working with businesses located near military installations to provide storage devices at a discount to gun owners, Hoyt said.

The DoD also is working with the military exchange system to provide vouchers for storage devices for those who buy a firearm on base, he added.

"We're continuing to promote this culture of lethal means safety, incentivizing secure firearm storage and really promoting safety across the installation and particularly in our barracks and dorms, to make sure that we are securely storing firearms when we're off duty and in our homes," Hoyt said.

The $125 million in programs in 2025, up from $17 million this year, will go toward recruiting and retaining mental health professionals; implementing the Brandon Act, the legislation that allows service members^[12] to request a mental health assessment without interference from commands; revising suicide prevention training; and fostering a culture of firearms safety, according to DoD.

The commission's firearms recommendations are unlikely to be implemented under the incoming administration, and service members may even see an expansion of their gun rights on base should Fox News host and former Army National Guard Maj. Pete Hegseth -- the nominee to head the department -- be confirmed.

Noting in a May 2023 interview with the National Rifle Association^[13] that most installations prohibit concealed carry, Hegseth said it "doesn't make sense."

"If you can't trust people who have been recruited, trained to use firearms and entrusted with so much responsibility, then something is very wrong," Hegseth said.

As with previous years, the military population most at risk for suicide, according to the report, are young, male enlisted troops under age 30, accounting for 61% of the deaths. The most common stressors seen in those who died were relationship problems, 44%, or who had a mental health diagnosis within the year before they died, 42%.

For the first time, the Defense Department analyzed trends in suicide among military family members based on the most recently available data from 2022. According to the report, 146 family members -- 93 spouses^[14] and 53 dependents under age 23 -- died by suicide, a drop of 9% from 2021. Over time, however, the rate among military families has increased overall since 2011, trends that are also seen in the U.S. among the general population and adolescents.

If you are a service member or veteran who needs help, it is available 24/7 at the Veterans and Military Crisis Line. Dial 988 Press 1, text 838255 or use the online chat function atwww.veteranscrisisline.net^[15].

Related: Pentagon Watchdog Will Assess Navy's Suicide Response and Prevention Efforts Following Spate of Deaths^[16]

The email came through one day in January 2015, according to Tim Gallaudet, during a pre-deployment exercise off the East Coast that included the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group.

The subject line read, in all caps, “URGENT SAFETY OF FLIGHT ISSUE,” recalls Gallaudet, then commander of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command. In his telling, the email from an operations officer asked for any information on a series of unknown objects disrupting the exercise. Attached was a now declassified video of what the Navy would later confirm were unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs^[1].

But the email had disappeared by the next day, Gallaudet testified Wednesday before two subpanels of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

“Moreover, the Commander of Fleet Forces Command and the operations officer never discussed the subject, even during weekly meetings specifically designed to address issues affecting exercises like the one in which the Theodore Roosevelt Strike Group was participating,” Gallaudet told lawmakers and a packed room full of members of the media and the public. Outside the hearing room, a line of hundreds waiting to get in snaked through the Rayburn House Office Building hallway.

That experience led Gallaudet to believe that some in the government may know more about UAPs, colloquially known as UFOs, than they were letting on. And it convinced him, as well as other panelists who testified Wednesday, of a potential “constitutional crisis” and a fundamental lack of transparency from the executive branch, the military and the intelligence community that leaves Congress in the dark.

“The continued overclassification surrounding UAPs has not only hindered our ability to effectively address these phenomena, but it has also eroded trust in our institutions,” Gallaudet said.

Congress in recent years has been hot on the UAP trail, as a bipartisan but still somewhat fringe-y coalition of lawmakers has held hearings and applied pressure on other government entities to release information, particularly about any clandestine programs using taxpayer money. They’ve encountered some resistance.

“I’m not going to name names, but there are certain individuals who didn’t want this hearing to happen because they feared what might be disclosed,” said South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, who chairs Oversight’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology and Government Innovation.

But the intrigue on Capitol Hill has been fueled by increased public interest in the topic, as some videos of UAPs have become public. A subject once confined to sci-fi films and conspiracy theorists has begun to enter the mainstream. UFO enthusiasts attended the hearing, posting selfies and photos of themselves with the panelists.

“The boys. #ufotwitter,” one user posted to X^[2], accompanying a photo of the four witnesses.

Last year, David Grusch, a former military and intelligence officer, claimed in bombshell testimony to a House Oversight subcommittee that the U.S. government had recovered “non-human” material^[3] and has a secret program to recover and reverse-engineer crashed aircraft. Luis Elizondo, an author and former Department of Defense employee who testified Wednesday, said he was aware during his time at the Pentagon of reports of “biologics” recovered.

“Was anything described … that we have possession of bodies?” Missouri Republican Rep. Eric Burlison asked.

“Yes. Yes,” Elizondo responded.

“Is it multiple types of creatures?” Burlison continued.

“Sir, I couldn’t answer that. I can tell you anecdotally that it was discussed quite a bit when I was at the Pentagon. The problem is, the supposed collection of these biological samples occurred before my time — in fact, before I was even born,” Elizondo said.

Alien fever hasn’t yet broken. President-elect Donald Trump, during an October appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, spoke about interviews he’d had with former military pilots who observed mysterious spherical objects. And Kirk McConnell, a former House and Senate staffer, sparked buzz in September when he was seen in the trailer of the James Fox documentary “The Program” making startling claims.

“We have sources who have asserted not only that there have been crashes, but there have been crash retrievals,” McConnell says in the clip^[4].

The uproar has led to legislation as well.

Last year, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., backed an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act directing the National Archives and Records Administration to create a collection of UAP-related records that would carry the presumption of immediate disclosure. But the language included in the final package fell short of what some advocates had urged, and subsequent bills have followed.

Earlier this year, Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett and a group of his Oversight Committee colleagues — including Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz and Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, both of Florida, along with Burlison — introduced legislation^[5] that would require the declassification of federal documents related to UAPs.

And on Tuesday, Burchett introduced a bill^[6] that aims to provide protections for whistleblowers who come forward with information about federal programs studying UAPs — a response to reports that whistleblowers have been stigmatized and targeted for making information public.

Another bill^[7], led by California Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, would require the Federal Aviation Administration to establish reporting requirements for UAP incidents.

“It’s incredibly important that civilian pilots have the opportunity to safely report the UAPs that they’re seeing or encountering in the air,” said Garcia, ranking member on Oversight’s Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs.

The position of the Department of Defense’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, is that there is no evidence that any government “investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology,” according to a February 2024 report^[8].

AARO concluded that “most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” and that claims of evidence being hid from Congress were the result largely of “circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence.”

But Michael Shellenberger, a free speech activist and founder of the Substack newsletter “Public,” pushed back on Wednesday against those kinds of dismissals, testifying that he stands by his reporting about a supposed special access program called “Immaculate Constellation” despite the Department of Defense denying any record of it.

“The Pentagon, the intelligence community, is treating us like children. It’s time for us to know the truth about this,” Shellenberger said.

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