US Navy refuses to share UFO footage due to national security threat

U.S. Navy officials have confirmed that they have video footage of UFOs (or unidentified aerial phenomena, as the U.S. Department of Defense calls the phenomenon), which are still classified. The military does not intend to release these materials to the general public, as this could "damage national security", - according to LiveScience.

The statement was made in response to a request filed under the US Freedom of Information Act by the government website The Black Vault. Previously, this resource shared thousands of pages of UFO-related documents that were obtained through similar requests to the CIA and other agencies. The request to the US Navy was filed in April 2020, a day after the military declassified three videos of alleged UFOs filmed by Navy pilots. The Black Vault has asked the Navy to release all other UFO videos for publication.

More than two years later, a response was received in which Navy representatives confirmed that they had several more UFO videos in their possession, and at the same time rejected a request for them to be released to the public. “Disclosure of this information would be detrimental to national security as it could provide adversaries with valuable information about Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities and/or capabilities,” the letter said. The three videos, which appeared in April 2020, were only declassified because, the letter says, they had already been leaked to the media and "widely discussed".

In May 2022, the US Department of Defense held its first public hearing on UFOs since the 1960s. The main discussion there was a Pentagon report from June 2021, which stated that since 2004, US Navy pilots have reported 144 sightings of unidentified flying phenomena. The US Department of Defense recently announced that it would receive federal funding to open a new office dedicated solely to the study of reports of UFO sightings by the US Army, Navy and Air Force.