Middle East UFO cases included in Pentagon report

'Cylindrical object' had a near miss with commercial flight off New York

One unsolved case involved a commercial aircrew reporting a near miss with a 'cylindrical object'. PA

A special office at the Pentagon probed hundreds of UFO sightings during a single year, including dozens from the Middle East, but so far none have been determined to be extraterrestrial in origin.

According to a report released on Thursday by the Pentagon's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which investigates sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs, many of the cases involved balloons or birds, but only a fraction of the cases have been definitively solved.

One unsolved case involved a commercial aircrew reporting a near miss with a “cylindrical object” while over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New York. Three reports from US military aircrews described pilots being trailed or shadowed by an unidentified object.

And 18 reports involved unidentified drones flying over or loitering above US nuclear facilities.

The Pentagon office, known as Aaro, investigated 485 cases that were reported between May 1, 2023 to June 1, 2024 and also looked into another 272 older reports from 2023 and 2022.

Of these, US military assets deployed to the Middle East provided 57 reports. Aaro said it resolved 13 of these cases as balloons, drones or satellites.

“Aaro reached a preliminary assessment on two of the Middle East cases as possible satellite flares and is working with [other agencies] to finalise these assessments through the use of advanced modelling,” the report states.

On Wednesday, a US congressional hearing heard from a journalist who said he had heard of the existence of a video of a “white orb” rising from the ocean off Kuwait.

The US government for a long time largely dismissed UFO sightings but over the course of this decade has begun to track them much more closely amid concern that adversaries are using unknown aircraft to spy on US assets.

This image shows the geographic distribution of UAP sightings. Photo: Department of Defence

Forty-two Middle East cases remain in an “active archive” due to insufficient information to resolve them, the report adds.

Of the 757 cases looked at across the globe, Aaro resolved 118 of them and another 174 are pending closure. The cases typically involved “prosaic” objects such as drones, satellites, birds and aircraft.

“Many other cases remain unresolved and Aaro continues collection and analysis on that body of cases,” the report states. “It is important to underscore that, to date, Aaro has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology.”

Aaro is continuing its research into the cigar-shaped object spotted over the Atlantic. It notes that none of the incidents involved any threats to human health and said there was no indication that the objects following US planes were from foreign adversaries.

This video grab image obtained April 28, 2020 courtesy of the Pentagon shows part of an unclassified video taken by Navy pilots that have circulated for years showing interactions with 'unidentified aerial phenomena'. AFP