UFOs: Investigating the Unknown

In 2008 in Stephenville, Texas a local pilot sees lights in the sky over his ranch coming from something huge. He is not alone: hundreds of people saw the craft, and a local reporter makes it her life’s work to tell their stories. From this classic encounter we head back several decades to the beginning of the UFO phenomenon in America and the launch of Project Blue Book to study the country’s growing “UFO problem.”

Project Blue Book and the investigation into UFOs closes. There is no evidence that mysterious objects represent any threat to U.S. national security. But harrowing incidents of UFO sightings continue and the unexplained malfunction of U.S. nuclear missiles after an incursion leave the U.S. defenseless. Three former Air Force officers who served at nuclear weapons bases in the late 1960s break two decades of silence to tell their story.

From a 1986 sighting over Alaska by Japanese Airline pilots, to a 1997 UAP sighting over Phoenix Arizona and a flying disc over the Chicago O’Hare airport in 2008, hundreds of witnesses come forward without any official feedback from the US government. Years later many of the pilots and government officials who witnessed these sightings come together for the first time to share their story in a 2007 press conference.

Area 51, a military outpost in the desert, shrouded in secrecy for decades, has long been the focus of many Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or “UAP” rumors. A pop culture phenomenon, Area 51 prompted one Facebook group to suggest storming the facility in search for answers. Civilian UAP groups continue making progress in providing those answers. For the first time since 1969, Congress questions high level officials in the Pentagon on UAPs.

An explosive congressional hearing reignites a decades-long fight for government transparency on UFOs. A whistleblower provides explosive testimony. Fighter pilots and military personnel describe strange sightings, and the U.S. government is forced to consider a new approach to how they analyze and make public UFO sightings.