Britannica Sources used in this answer

How did U-2 and OXCART spy plane flights contribute to UFO reports?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Declassified U.S. military video of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) — unidentified flying object Learn about an unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) sighting from this video (known as the Gimbal video) captured by fighter pilots associated with the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group. The video shows instrument detections of unknown aerial objects, which the pilots were unable to identify, off the East Coast of the United States, 2014–15.

Declassified documents from the Central Intelligence Agency have clarified that a significant portion of reported unidentified flying object sightings during the late 1950s and 1960s were actually secret military test flights.12

Specifically, the U-2 spy plane and the subsequent Lockheed A-12, known as OXCART, were responsible for more than half of all UFO reports during that era. These aircraft were tested at Area 51, a remote facility in Nevada. Because the U-2 could fly at altitudes far exceeding those of any other aircraft at the time, observers on the ground were often unable to identify the high-altitude objects, leading them to report the sightings as UFOs.12

Project Blue Book investigators, who were tasked with analyzing these reports, frequently consulted with the CIA to cross-reference sightings with these classified flight schedules, revealing that many "unidentified" events were simply advanced, secret human-made technology.12