In April 2020, the Pentagon declassified and released three U.S. Navy videos that show “unexplained aerial phenomena” that fighter pilots saw during training flights in 2004 and 2015.
Despite sensational headlines, the videos were neither new nor particularly mysterious. They had been leaked (and even reported on, for example in The New York Times) in 2007 and 2017 (see SI, March/April 2018; May/June 2018) and much ballyhooed by UFO groups. The videos were released, according to a Navy spokesperson, “to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real or whether or not there is more to the videos.”