Has the U.S. government confirmed aliens are real?

“No U.S. government agency has confirmed extraterrestrial origin for any UAP. The Pentagon's position as of 2026: many UAPs remain unresolved, but none have been attributed to extraterrestrial intelligence.”

As of May 2026, no U.S. government agency has confirmed that any UAP has extraterrestrial origin. The Pentagon's official position, articulated by AARO in PURSUE Release 01, is that of the 162 declassified files and 400+ catalogued incidents, the majority resolve to known phenomena (drones, balloons, sensor parallax, ice crystals) and a minority remain unresolved or anomalous. The most direct on-record speculation from a government source comes from a 1994 State Department cable: a PanAm pilot at 41,000 feet over Tajikistan reported an object making circles, corkscrews and 90-degree turns under high G-loads, and the cable records the pilot's personal assessment that the object was "possibly extraterrestrial and under intelligent control." That is a witness assessment recorded in a diplomatic cable, not a government conclusion. AARO continues to investigate.