Are UAP Sightings Increasing Over Time

Government UAP reports surged from 144 to over 1,600 in four years, but independent databases tell a different story about whether the rate of sightings is actually rising.

Are UAP sightings increasing over time? The answer depends on what you count, how you count it, and which dataset you trust. Between June 2021 and November 2024, the U.S. government’s documented count of unidentified aerial phenomena reports grew from 144 cases to more than 1,600. That tenfold increase dominated headlines and fueled public perception that something unprecedented was happening in the skies. Yet the two largest independent civilian UFO databases in the country tell a strikingly different story: one shows distinct peaks and valleys rather than a steady climb, and the other reports that case submissions have actually declined in recent years. The gap between what the Pentagon counts and what civilian trackers report reveals that the infrastructure of reporting has changed far more than the rate of what people see overhead.

This article examines both datasets side by side. It traces the government’s rising case numbers from the 2021 preliminary assessment through AARO’s 2024 annual report, then compares those figures against independent tracking databases maintained by the National UFO Reporting Center and the Mutual UFO Network. The data shows that at least five documented factors, from internet access to satellite launches to institutional destigmatization, explain most of the apparent surge without requiring an increase in actual anomalous phenomena. The evidence permits multiple interpretations, and this article presents them without resolving the debate.

This 2023 report from NBC News covers the Pentagon’s annual UAP report findings, including the jump in documented cases and what officials said about the increase.

Timeline

• June 24, 1947 – Kenneth Arnold reports nine crescent-shaped objects near Mount Rainier; media coins the term “flying saucer”; more than 800 reports follow within weeks.
• July 1952 – A massive UFO wave overwhelms Project Blue Book; jets scramble over Washington DC twice in two weeks; 754 cases logged in July alone.
• March 1966 – Michigan “swamp gas” flap triggers congressional hearings; Project Blue Book is closed in 1969 after cataloging 12,618 cases.
• March 13, 1997 – The Phoenix Lights mass sighting occurs; the National UFO Reporting Center launches its online reporting database, transitioning from a phone hotline.
• 2014 – NUFORC logs approximately 8,800 reports, the all-time single-year peak in the database.
• 2020 – NUFORC records a second peak at approximately 7,400 reports; pandemic lockdowns drive increased skygazing activity; SpaceX Starlink trains complicate the data.
• June 25, 2021 – The Office of the Director of National Intelligence releases its Preliminary Assessment on UAP, documenting 144 cases collected between 2004 and March 2021; only one case is resolved.
• January 12, 2023 – The ODNI’s 2022 Annual Report counts 510 total UAP reports, with 366 new cases arriving in 18 months; 171 remain unexplained.
• November 14, 2024 – AARO’s FY2024 report documents 757 new reports filed between May 2023 and June 2024; the cumulative total exceeds 1,600; 118 cases are resolved, all found to have prosaic explanations; 21 cases are characterized as “truly anomalous.”
• First half 2025 – NUFORC logs 2,174 new sightings; the UFO Data Live database reaches 122,983 U.S. reports.

The Government’s Rising UAP Case Count

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s June 2021 Preliminary Assessment documented 144 UAP reports collected between 2004 and March 2021. The assessment, mandated by Congress, marked the first time the U.S. government publicly acknowledged a formal caseload of unidentified aerial phenomena. Of those 144 reports, only one was resolved with high confidence, and that resolution identified a deflating balloon. The remaining 143 cases lacked sufficient data for definitive attribution. The report’s release prompted widespread media coverage and led to the establishment of formalized reporting channels for military personnel who had previously lacked any official avenue for submitting UAP observations.

By January 2023, the ODNI’s second annual report, covered by NPR and CBS News, counted 510 total UAP reports, with 366 new cases arriving in just 18 months. The Pentagon attributed the steep rise to reduced stigma around reporting and improved awareness of potential threats to aviation safety. Military Times reported that over 800 sightings had been analyzed across three annual reports spanning 2021 to 2023, with 291 new reports analyzed between August 2022 and April 2023 alone. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, established under the Department of Defense, took over as the primary body for evaluating these submissions.

AARO’s FY2024 consolidated annual report, unveiled by the new AARO chief according to DefenseScoop, pushed the cumulative total past 1,600 reports. Between May 2023 and June 2024 alone, AARO received 757 new submissions. Universe Today and EarthSky both covered the report’s findings: of the 118 cases resolved during the review period, every single one was attributed to prosaic objects such as balloons, drones, or airborne clutter. Twenty-one cases were characterized as “truly anomalous,” meaning AARO’s analysts could not identify a conventional explanation based on available data. The report also prompted a Senate hearing, as EarthSky reported.

The critical context these numbers require is that the government’s UAP reporting pipeline did not exist in any formalized sense before 2021. Military personnel previously had no standardized channel for submitting UAP observations, and career stigma actively discouraged such reports. The numbers that AARO publishes reflect the construction and activation of a reporting infrastructure, not necessarily a surge in the underlying phenomena. As Military Times confirmed, the Pentagon’s own assessment concluded that none of the analyzed reports identified a threat to national security. The cumulative count of 1,600-plus represents the total intake of a pipeline that began at zero and has been growing as more service members become aware of and use the system. The distinction between a reporting increase and a sighting increase is not semantic. A reporting increase means more cases are entering the system, which can happen for reasons entirely unrelated to what is in the sky. A sighting increase would require evidence that the rate of anomalous observations, corrected for reporting behavior and awareness, has risen. No such correction has been published by AARO or any independent research body.

NUFORC and MUFON Data: Peaks, Not a Surge

The National UFO Reporting Center has collected over 170,000 reports since its founding in 1974, making it the largest independent sighting database in the world. Science News reported that NUFORC logged approximately 123,000 sightings from June 1930 through June 2022, drawing from both its own intake and historical records. The center transitioned from a phone hotline to an online submission form around 1997, a shift that fundamentally altered the reporting rate by lowering the barrier to entry. Before the internet, filing a report required calling a phone number during business hours. After the web form launched, anyone with an internet connection could submit a sighting at any time.

NUFORC’s yearly data, visualized in a Statista chart covering global UFO sightings from 1990 to 2022, shows two distinct peaks rather than a continuous climb: approximately 8,800 reports in 2014 and 7,400 in 2020. Between those peaks, the database recorded dips, including a notable decline in 2018 and 2021. By 2022, the count had settled to roughly 5,000. UFO Data Live, which tracks the NUFORC dataset in real time, showed 2,174 new reports in the first half of 2025, a pace that, if sustained, would land well below the 2014 peak. These peaks and valleys do not match the narrative of a steadily increasing phenomenon. Instead, they suggest periodic surges driven by specific events, media coverage, or environmental factors.

MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network and the largest independent investigation body in the United States, tells an even more pointed story. According to Astronomy.com, MUFON’s data shows no dramatic uptick in recent years and, in fact, an approximately 20 percent decline in case submissions. MUFON operates differently from NUFORC: it employs trained field investigators who vet reports through a structured case management system, providing a more rigorous filter than NUFORC’s self-report model. The divergence between MUFON’s declining numbers and AARO’s rising count underscores how much the method of collection shapes the apparent trend. MUFON requires trained investigators to review each case, which creates a natural filter that reduces the number of accepted reports. NUFORC accepts all submissions with minimal filtering. AARO accepts reports primarily from military personnel who are now required to submit observations. Three different collection methods, three different trend lines. The data collection methodology may be the single most important variable in understanding whether sightings are increasing.

Peer-reviewed research supports the interpretation that increased reporting rates reflect infrastructure changes rather than more phenomena. A study published in Nature Scientific Reports analyzed approximately 98,000 NUFORC reports from 2001 to 2020 and concluded that internet access is “likely responsible for the increase in sighting reports over time.” The RAND Corporation, in its analysis of 101,151 NUFORC reports from 1998 to 2022, found that geographic patterns in reporting were driven by environmental factors such as sky visibility and proximity to military installations, not by the distribution of anomalous activity. Together, these independent datasets suggest that what has increased is the capacity and willingness to report, not necessarily the frequency of what is being observed.

The Reporting Revolution: Five Drivers of the Apparent Surge

The single largest driver of increased UAP reports is the transition from phone-based to internet-based reporting that began around 1997. NUFORC’s shift from a phone hotline to an online submission form removed the practical barriers that had limited who could file a report and when. The Nature Scientific Reports paper explicitly stated that internet access is “likely responsible for the increase in sighting reports over time.” A Datafloq article covering a Boston College study on sampling bias found that NUFORC’s reporting method change from phone intake to online form fundamentally altered the dataset’s composition, making pre- and post-internet era comparisons unreliable.

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation, launched starting in late 2019, introduced thousands of new “string of lights” reports into sighting databases. Astronomy.com documented Starlink as a significant driver of false reports, noting that satellite trains visible to the naked eye generated waves of submissions from observers unfamiliar with the pattern. The Scientific Inquirer covered a study published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration that identified Starlink launches as a complicating factor in sighting data. Popular Mechanics reported on Mick West’s debunking methodology, which connected many satellite passes to specific report spikes through time-matched orbital data.

The Pentagon’s decision to actively encourage UAP reporting after 2021 removed the career stigma that had suppressed military reports for decades. Before the establishment of formal channels, service members who reported unidentified objects risked professional consequences. Science News covered the timeline of AARO’s establishment and the Pentagon’s messaging that UAP reports were not only welcome but expected. The contrast between pre-2021 risk and post-2021 obligation to report created a sudden inflow of cases that had always existed but had never entered official channels.

Media coverage creates a feedback loop that amplifies reporting rates. Each government report generates press attention, which raises public awareness, which in turn generates more reports. The CNET coverage of the 2020 pandemic spike documented an approximately 16 percent increase in NUFORC submissions, driven partly by increased skygazing during lockdowns. The Scientific Inquirer reported approximately 600 additional reports in 2020 across both major databases. A 2024 study published in Nature Humanities and Social Sciences Communications found that UAP reports correlate with Google search interest and media events, suggesting that attention cycles, not phenomena cycles, drive when people look up and report.

The proliferation of smartphone cameras since the 2010s means more objects in the sky get photographed and subsequently reported. Mick West, interviewed in Popular Mechanics, identified camera phones as a key report driver: objects that went unnoticed or unrecorded decades ago are now captured on high-resolution phone cameras and submitted to databases. The compounding effect of better cameras, social media sharing platforms, and simplified reporting forms means that the threshold for filing a report has dropped dramatically. What once required a phone call, a letter, or a personal visit to a reporting center now requires a few taps on a screen. Each of these five drivers is independently documented and accounts for a measurable portion of the reporting increase. Together, they explain the bulk of the apparent surge without requiring any increase in the underlying rate of anomalous phenomena. The question for researchers is not whether reports are increasing, but whether the increase reflects more objects in the sky or more people looking up, equipped with better tools, and less afraid to file a report.

Geography of Sightings: Military Proximity and Dark Skies

The RAND Corporation’s 2023 analysis of 101,151 NUFORC reports found that UAP sightings are 1.2 times more likely to occur within 18 miles of military operations areas. Military Times and PopSci both covered the findings, which included geographic clustering analysis across the continental United States. The lead researcher noted that the proximity pattern suggests many reports may be misidentified military aircraft or training activity. The RAND report recommended that outreach and reporting infrastructure be concentrated near military operations areas, not because more anomalous activity occurs there, but because the existing reporting patterns are already concentrated in those zones. The military proximity factor held after controlling for population density, meaning it was not simply that more people lived near bases. The correlation persisted across different reporting eras, from the pre-internet phone hotline period through the modern online submission period.

A peer-reviewed environmental analysis confirmed that approximately 98,000 NUFORC reports from 2001 to 2020 cluster in the western United States. The University of Utah published a summary of the study, which found that western US dominance is tied to dark skies, open terrain, and more military installations. The study documented an inverse correlation between light pollution and reporting rates, meaning areas with darker skies produce more reports. Reports were less likely near weather stations and civilian airports, a pattern the researchers interpreted as evidence that people familiar with aircraft appearances report fewer misidentifications. The paper identified sky view potential as a key variable, with reports clustering in regions where observers had wide, unobstructed views of the sky, regardless of whether those regions had any history of anomalous activity.

A 2024 study added an unexpected dimension to the geographic analysis: UAP reports correlate with macroeconomic conditions and Google search interest. The finding that economic downturns and pandemic lockdowns drove reporting spikes suggests that psychological and social factors play a measurable role in when people look up and what they choose to report. This counter-cyclical pattern with economic conditions implies that reporting behavior is influenced by factors beyond what is actually in the sky, including public attention, available leisure time, and media saturation. The study also found that regions with higher internet penetration rates showed stronger correlations between search interest and report volume, reinforcing the infrastructure-driven interpretation of rising numbers.

These geographic patterns carry an important implication for evaluating whether sightings are increasing. If UAP reports cluster near military zones and dark-sky areas, and if those clusters correlate with economic and media conditions rather than with the frequency of anomalous events, then the geographic data further supports the interpretation that reporting behavior, not sighting frequency, drives the numbers. The western US dominance, the military proximity factor, and the economic correlation all point to the same conclusion: where and when people report UAP depends on environmental, institutional, and psychological conditions, not on what is or is not in the sky. If the phenomenon itself were increasing uniformly, the geographic distribution would not show these predictable patterns tied to infrastructure, environment, and social conditions.

UFO Flaps Are Not New: A Century of Cyclic Reports

The pattern of concentrated UAP report surges, known in the UFO research community as “flaps,” predates the modern UFO era by at least fifty years. The Wikipedia article on UFO flaps documents the 1897 airship wave across the American Midwest, the 1946 “ghost rockets” reported over Scandinavia, and the 1947 flying disc craze that produced more than 800 reports in the weeks following Kenneth Arnold’s June 24 sighting near Mount Rainier. Each of these historical waves followed a similar pattern: an initial prominent sighting, a burst of media coverage, and a cascade of additional reports that eventually tapered off. The 1897 airship wave, for example, produced reports across multiple states over several months, with witnesses describing objects ranging from dirigibles to cigar-shaped craft. Newspapers published daily updates, and the wave eventually faded without any definitive explanation. The parallel to modern UAP report surges is striking: a prominent initial sighting, media amplification, public attention, and eventual decline as news cycles moved on.

Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force’s official UFO investigation program, tracked 12,618 cases between 1952 and 1969. Major waves occurred in 1952, when radar anomalies and visual sightings over Washington DC prompted jets to scramble twice in two weeks, and in 1965 to 1966, when the Michigan “swamp gas” flap triggered congressional hearings. Science News covered the historical pattern of these waves, noting that each was driven by the contemporary triggers of its era: Cold War anxiety in the 1950s, space race fascination in the 1960s. Blue Book’s closure in 1969 did not end the phenomenon of flaps; it merely ended the government’s formal documentation of them for several decades. When government attention returned to the topic in the 2010s with the establishment of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program and later AARO, report volumes climbed again, following the same pattern of institutional attention driving public reporting. The Nimitz encounter in 2004 served as a modern equivalent of the Kenneth Arnold sighting: a credible military observation that legitimized subsequent public reports.

Some researchers have proposed cyclical patterns in sighting frequency, including a 61-month wave theory that attempts to predict the timing of report surges. The RAND report noted that media coverage of one wave often seeds the next, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of attention and reporting. AARO’s Historical Record Report Volume 1, released in March 2024, documented the government’s perspective on this cyclic pattern across decades of collected data.

The historical record demonstrates that each era’s technology and social conditions shape what people report seeing. In the 1940s and 1950s, “flying discs” matched Cold War anxieties about foreign technology. In the 1990s, triangular craft reports coincided with public awareness of stealth aircraft designs. In the 2010s and 2020s, lights in the sky reports have multiplied alongside the proliferation of Starlink satellites and commercial drones. The pattern suggests that reporting reflects the observer’s technological and media environment at least as much as whatever may or may not be in the sky. For more on prosaic explanations commonly cited in UAP reports, see our coverage of scientific explanations for UAP sightings.

Opposing Perspective: The Case That Sightings Are Actually Increasing

The strongest counter-argument to the “reporting artifact” explanation is that sensor technology has fundamentally improved. According to Scientific American, experts have noted that modern detection capabilities, including advanced radar systems, forward-looking infrared cameras, satellite tracking networks, and upgraded Aegis combat systems, now capture objects that pre-2014 technology would have missed entirely. The 2004 USS Nimitz encounter, one of the most well-documented military UAP incidents, was detected on advanced radar precisely because the ship had recently received upgraded systems. If sensor capability increases, the number of detections should increase even if the underlying rate of anomalous phenomena remains constant. The argument holds that dismissing rising numbers as purely a reporting artifact ignores the possibility that improved sensors are capturing a real increase, or at minimum, a previously invisible baseline.

AARO’s own data acknowledges cases that resist prosaic explanation. DefenseScoop reported that the new AARO chief characterized 21 cases in the FY2024 report as “truly anomalous,” meaning the office’s analysts, with access to classified sensor data and expert consultation, could not identify conventional explanations. EarthSky covered the Senate hearing that was prompted by the FY2024 report’s findings, noting that lawmakers expressed concern about the unresolved cases. Even Metabunk, the skeptical analysis community led by Mick West, acknowledged in its review of the AARO report that while 118 of 118 resolved cases had prosaic explanations, the 21 anomalous cases remain open and have not been debunked. The existence of unresolved cases, even if small relative to total reports, suggests that not everything can be attributed to satellites, drones, or misidentified aircraft.

If military career stigma suppressed reporting for decades, the current increase may represent a suppressed baseline finally entering the record. The logic is straightforward: if service members were discouraged from filing reports before 2021 due to professional risk, the pre-2021 baseline was artificially low. The post-2021 numbers, then, might be closer to the true rate of observations rather than an inflated artifact. Scientific American noted that expert perspectives on pilot witness credibility remain high, as trained observers with technical instrumentation are generally considered reliable reporters of aerial phenomena, even when they cannot identify what they observed.

International data challenges the US-centric “reporting infrastructure” explanation. The EuroUFO Barometer documented more than 31,500 reports across 16 European countries from 2019 to 2024. The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence, France’s GEIPAN investigation unit, and Brazil’s military have all reported rising numbers. If the increase were purely an artifact of US reporting infrastructure changes, it would not appear in independently operated foreign databases that use different collection methods and have different institutional histories. The global pattern suggests that whatever is driving increased reports is not limited to American institutional changes.

The quality of available evidence has also increased, not just the quantity. Pilot testimony from trained military observers, multi-sensor radar data corroborated across platforms, FLIR footage such as the GoFast and Gimbal videos released by the Pentagon, and corroborating eyewitness accounts from independent locations represent a qualitative improvement over historical UFO reports that relied on single-witness visual observations. Whether this improved evidence indicates an increase in anomalous phenomena or simply better documentation of a constant baseline remains an open question. The data permits both interpretations, and neither can be ruled out based on currently available evidence. The data permits multiple interpretations, and neither can be ruled out based on currently available evidence. What can be said with confidence is that the quality of evidence has improved substantially since the era of single-witness visual reports. Multi-sensor corroboration, trained military observers, and standardized reporting procedures represent a genuine advancement in how UAP data is collected, even if the underlying rate of phenomena remains unknown.

YouTube Videos

This report covers the Pentagon’s findings on rising UAP case numbers and the official assessment of what the data shows.

A data-driven analysis of NUFORC and government UAP report trends, examining what the numbers actually indicate about sighting rates over time.

Sources

Documents

• 2022 Annual Report on UAP (ODNI, January 12, 2023)
• FY2024 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP (AARO/ODNI, November 14, 2024)
• AARO Historical Record Report Volume 1 (March 8, 2024)
• FY2023 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP (October 25, 2023)

Source Links

• NUFORC Data Bank: Largest independent UAP sighting database (ongoing)
• CNET: UFO sightings spiked dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic (April 14, 2021)
• Datafloq: What Big Data and UFOs Have in Common (April 11, 2023)
• University of Utah: The West is best to spot UFOs (February 27, 2024)
• EarthSky: New Pentagon UAP report prompts Senate hearing (November 19, 2024)
• Universe Today: Pentagon’s Latest UFO Report Identifies Hotspots (June 13, 2025)

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