Pentagon planted UFO myths to hide secret weapons programs?
A new Department of Defense (DoD) report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal reveals that the U.S. military deliberately fueled
UFO conspiracy
theories—including those linked to Area 51—to conceal top-secret weapons programs such as the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter during the Cold War.
The report, compiled by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), found that the Pentagon spread disinformation, including doctored photographs of flying saucers, and intentionally withheld information from witnesses who had unknowingly seen classified military tests.
One striking example uncovered in the 2024 report involves a retired Air Force colonel who, during the 1980s, visited a bar near Area 51 and handed the owner fabricated images of flying saucers. The colonel later admitted to Pentagon investigators that he was acting under official orders to spread false information and divert attention from the F-117 stealth jet tests being conducted at the site.
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The AARO, created in 2022 to investigate decades of UFO-related claims, discovered a culture of misinformation and even internal pranks. Its first director, Sean Kirkpatrick, led a wide-ranging investigation into decades of Defense Department memos, briefings, and classified communications.
Among the findings: Air Force officers routinely hazed new recruits with fake briefings about a fictional unit called 'Yankee Blue' tasked with investigating alien spacecraft. The briefings came with strict orders never to speak about them. Many recipients believed the stories for years, unaware it was an elaborate ruse. The Pentagon only issued an order to end the practice in 2023.
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The motive behind the fake briefings remains unclear, though some speculate it was used as a loyalty test or a deeper tactic to seed confusion and misdirection.
The report also highlights how real eyewitnesses were misled. Former Air Force captain Robert Salas, for example, has long claimed he saw a UFO hover over a Montana nuclear missile silo in 1967, disabling all 10 warheads and shutting down electrical systems. He was later ordered to remain silent about the incident.
Kirkpatrick's team found that what Salas actually witnessed was an early electromagnetic pulse (EMP) test intended to evaluate whether U.S. silos could withstand nuclear radiation and still retaliate. The test failed—and rather than admit to the vulnerability, officials opted to let witnesses draw their own, more otherworldly conclusions.
The AARO report also confirms that several well-known UFO rumors, including the Area 51 legend, were seeded to distract the public and foreign adversaries from ongoing experimental aircraft development. These revelations explain why last year's transparency report from the Pentagon omitted crucial details about the origins of these myths.
The Department of Defense has acknowledged that not all AARO findings have been made public but has pledged to release a follow-up report later this year.
'The department is committed to releasing a second volume of its Historical Record Report, to include AARO's findings on reports of potential pranks and inauthentic materials,' the Pentagon said in a statement.
While the revelations help explain the origins of several Cold War-era conspiracies, they also cast doubt on the authenticity of more recent UFO footage released by the military, including the viral 2020 Navy pilot videos.
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