Not alone?

DECLASSIFIED-ISH

Here is a secret: I read every UFO hearing transcript. Not the clips, the transcripts. For eighty years the official answer was a shrug and a weather balloon. Then, around 2017, the answer changed to something stranger: we don't know. Pilots testified. Congress held hearings under oath. In 2026 the Pentagon started dumping files onto a public website.

So what do we actually know? Not what the internet says, and not what the debunkers say. What is on the record. Scroll down, play with it, and decide for yourself.

Quotes below are taken from official transcripts, reports or major news coverage, and sources are listed at the bottom. Where a claim is disputed or unproven, I label it.

1. The file, year by year

Drag through 80 years of the official story. Each entry is tagged: On the record means it happened and is documented. Claimed means someone said it but there is no public proof. Disputed means the experts disagree.

2. Under oath

Since 2022, Congress has held six public hearings on UFOs, now officially called UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena). Tap one to see who sat at the table and what they said.

3. House or Senate?

Everyone talks about "the Senate UFO hearing." Here is the twist: most of the famous ones happened in the House. Test yourself.

4. Claim or evidence?

Pick a claim. The needle shows how much public evidence backs it, from "nothing public" to "confirmed." This is my reading of the record, not a lab measurement.

5. Explain the blip

You are now an analyst at AARO, the Pentagon's UAP office. Ten new reports are on your scope. Tap each blip to see what happened to it. The mix matches AARO's 2025 report: of 319 new cases, about 36% were solved, about 60% were shelved for lack of data, and a small slice stayed open.

The lesson surprised me. Nearly every solved case is ordinary: balloons, birds, drones, flares, and lately sunlight glinting off satellites, which AARO's new 3D tool tied to 238 reports. "Unresolved" usually doesn't mean "impossible." It means "a blurry phone video and nothing else."

6. 2026, the year of the files

This year the action moved from Congress to the White House and the Pentagon.

The UAP Disclosure Act: where it stands

Senators Schumer and Rounds wrote a law to force UFO records into the open, with an independent review board. It keeps getting watered down. Here is the 2026 scorecard.

• ✓2023: A slimmed-down version becomes law: a UAP records collection at the National Archives. The review board and the power to seize private materials were cut.
• ✗2024 and 2025: Left out of the yearly defense bill both times.
• ✓July 22, 2026: For the first time, the House adopts a version (Rep. Burlison's) in its defense bill, which passes 216–212.
• ✗July 14, 2026: The Senate fails to advance its defense bill, 50–46, short of the 60 votes needed.
• …Now: Pushed to the post-election session. As of today it is not law, and no UAP hearing has been held in either chamber this year.

7. Run the odds

In 1961, astronomer Frank Drake wrote an equation for how many civilizations in our galaxy might be talking right now. Nobody knows most of the inputs, which is the point. Move the sliders, or try a preset.

8. Where the real answer might come from

I think the hearings make headlines, but the telescopes and rovers will settle it. Here is where the search stands.

9. My secret

Here is where I've landed. I don't think the government has a hangar full of saucers. Eighty years of leaks from a government that can't keep anything quiet, and still no photo of a craft or a body, tells me something. But I also don't think everything up there is a balloon. Pilots, radar and infrared sensors have caught things that nobody can explain, and for decades the people who reported them were laughed at.

The honest answer is the least satisfying one: we don't know yet, and we're finally starting to look properly. And whether or not anyone is visiting, the odds that life exists somewhere out there have never looked better: 6,000 planets confirmed and counting, a possible biosignature on Mars, and ocean moons waiting for a probe.

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Sources

1. National Archives, Project Blue Book: archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos
2. ODNI, Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (June 25, 2021): dni.gov
3. House Intelligence subcommittee hearing transcript (May 17, 2022): docs.house.gov
4. Senate Armed Services, Emerging Threats and Capabilities subcommittee (Apr 19, 2023, and Nov 19, 2024): armed-services.senate.gov
5. House Oversight hearing coverage (July 26, 2023): CBS News and The Guardian
6. House Oversight joint hearing "UAP: Exposing the Truth" (Nov 13, 2024): congress.gov
7. House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets (Sept 9, 2025): NBC News and The War Zone coverage
8. AARO Historical Record Report, Vol. 1 (Mar 8, 2024): govinfo.gov
9. AARO FY2024 Consolidated Annual Report (Nov 14, 2024): media.defense.gov
10. AARO FY2025 report coverage (July 2026): MeriTalk and DefenseScoop
11. Department of War UAP file releases (May–Sept 2026): war.gov/UFO, Reuters and CBS News
12. Trump records directive (Feb 2026): AP News. Obama remarks (Feb 2026): NBC News
13. FY2027 defense bill and UAP Disclosure Act status: Congressional Research Service IN12704, congress.gov
14. NASA UAP Independent Study Team report (Sept 14, 2023): nasa.gov
15. NASA, 6,000 confirmed exoplanets (Sept 17, 2025): jpl.nasa.gov
16. NASA, potential biosignature at Sapphire Canyon (Sept 10, 2025), and Hurowitz et al., Nature
17. K2-18b: Madhusudhan et al. 2025 (ApJL) and independent reanalyses (A&A, AJ 2025)
18. 3I/ATLAS: NASA briefing (Nov 19, 2025), Reuters and ABC News