The Pentagon has admitted it is still investigating reports of UFOs, announcing the revelation after years of "ambiguous" official statements.
The US Department of Defense confirmed that a secret government initiative called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program investigated "unidentified aerial phenomena".
In an exclusive statement to the New York Post, spokesman Christopher Sherwood said investigations into claimed alien aircraft sightings still continue, even after the Department of Defense shut down the AATIP in 2012.
He said: "The Department of Defense is always concerned about maintaining positive identification of all aircraft in our operating environment, as well as identifying any foreign capability that may be a threat to the homeland.
"The department will continue to investigate, through normal procedures, reports of unidentified aircraft encountered by US military aviators in order to ensure defense of the homeland and protection against strategic surprise by our nation’s adversaries.
Nick Pope, who covertly investigated UFOs for the British government during the 1990s, told the newspaper that Mr Sherwood's comments were a “bombshell revelation.”
Pope, a former UK defence official, said: “Previous official statements were ambiguous and left the door open to the possibility that AATIP was simply concerned with next-generation aviation threats from aircraft, missiles and drones — as skeptics claimed.
“This new admission makes it clear that they really did study what the public would call ‘UFOs,’ ” he said.
“It also shows the British influence, because UAP was the term we used in the Ministry of Defence to get away from the pop culture baggage that came with the term ‘UFO.’
