Govt: 70% of Debunked ‘Alien Spaceship’ Sightings Actually Something You Use Every Year
In 2022, the U.S. government formed the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to comb through UFO sightings—from decades past to more recent years—and debunk as many as possible. From supposed alien spacecraft shaped like flying saucers to mysterious hovering lights, AARO studies it all.
This office filed a 2024 year-end report claiming it had essentially debunked 292 cases of unidentified aerial object sightings. And 70% of those sightings were explained by—drumroll, please—balloons.
Why balloons fool even trained observers
I know what you’re thinking: Just balloons? AARO points out that from a fast-moving airplane, it’s very hard to tell whether a flying object is floating slowly or moving rapidly. A partially deflated balloon can even look like a flying saucer. Balloons come in all kinds of unexpected shapes and colors. And with a shiny foil coating, they may reflect enough light they may appear much larger than they are. You can see an example of a flying saucer debunked as a balloon in the video embedded at the end of this article.
Here’s what the report said: All fully resolved cases (118), and cases “queued for closure, pending a final review” (174), “resolved to prosaic objects such as various types of balloons, birds, and unmanned aerial systems (UAS).” Other objects the report calls out include satellites and aircraft.
Many of these reports came from active-duty military personnel. Service members “over the East Asian Seas” filed 100 reports. AARO immediately identified 40 of these as just balloons. Meanwhile, 57 reports came from the Middle East, where AARO identified 13 more as balloons.
Note that not every case has been resolved by AARO. It claims 444 are in “Active Archive” status and another 21 are “Undergoing Analysis.” All told, AARO believes 70% of the cases resolved as of the 2024 report were just balloons of various types. Of course, this can range from huge weather balloons to escaped birthday balloons.
Does this mean 70% of all UAPs are just balloons? No, just 70% of the sightings AARO was able to resolve in its first two years. The misidentified balloons in their batch of cases may have simply been the easiest and quickest sightings to debunk.
Without further ado, here’s an example of a viral alien spaceship sighting that a hobbyist was quickly able to debunk as just a balloon. See the video embedded below:
