DENVER—Last month, President Donald Trump took to social media with an announcement that he would direct the Pentagon and other federal agencies to “begin the process” of disclosing government files related to alien life and UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena). It was the latest chapter in a yearslong slow burn of sensational claims, congressional hearings, and yes, the military’s release in 2020 of intriguing videos that do, indeed, appear to show things that defy simple explanations.
Subsequent reports from NASA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) did not find any link between the unexplained phenomena and aliens, but that didn’t stop enthusiasts from wanting to know more.
“To date, in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, there is no conclusive evidence suggesting an extraterrestrial origin for UAP,” a NASA blue-ribbon panel wrote in a 2023 report. “The limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of UAP,” the DNI report stated in 2021.
Government officials have said little about Trump’s most recent social media post on the matter. The president cited “tremendous interest” in the files, whatever they might contain. Perhaps the most famous UAP videos released by the Pentagon to date were captured by cameras on Navy fighter planes operating over the sea.
“No personal experience”
If these things are coming from distant worlds, shouldn’t we be seeing them in space? The military has a network of exquisite radars and optical sensors, both on the ground and in space, monitoring the ever-growing amount of traffic whizzing around the Earth. So far, defense officials have not released any UAP-related imagery from the most sophisticated of these sensors.
Judging from recent comments from Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of US Space Command, we shouldn’t expect anything like that in whatever the government might release in response to Trump’s pending order.
“I can say, I, personally, was very interested in the president’s announcement,” Whiting told reporters last week at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Warfare Symposium in Colorado. “I look forward to seeing what data does come out. I can also tell you, as a space operator now of 36 years, having spent a lot of time with space domain awareness sensors, tracking things in space, I’ve never seen anything in space other than manmade objects, so I am not aware of anything that is extraterrestrial, other than comets and things like that.
“But I’m fascinated in the topic,” he continued. “And if something’s revealed, I’ll be interested as an American citizen.”
Space Command’s charge includes an area of responsibility (AOR) that extends from the top of Earth’s atmosphere to the Moon and beyond. One of its missions is to track, monitor, and catalog objects in space. Whiting suggested that everything he’s seen in orbit is attributable to a human-made or natural origin.
“We will respond to any presidential direction to go look at our files, but I think the term of art now is UAP, and the A is aerial, so these are things that are below the Kármán line (100 kilometers), that are in the atmosphere,” Whiting said. “I’ve seen some of the same videos and radar data that all of you have, and my guess is those relevant services and combatant commands will turn that data over. I’m very interested in the topic, but I have no personal experience with any of those phenomena.”
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