It Was Us: How Spy Planes and Black Projects Explain Some UFOs, and Where That Breaks Down

In August 1955, a strange new aircraft started flying over the American West.

It had wings like a glider and could climb to 60,000 feet, at a time when most airliners cruised between 10,000 and 20,000. Its early versions were silver. At sunrise and sunset, catching light the ground had already lost, it could look like something on fire.

Its name was the U-2. And according to a CIA historian writing four decades later, it was about to become one of the most prolific UFOs in American history.

This is the "it's us" hypothesis: that a big slice of the UFO record is secret American technology, seen by people who were never supposed to see it. Unlike most UFO theories, this one has government paperwork behind it.

The CIA's own admission

In 1997, the CIA's journal Studies in Intelligence published "CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90," by Gerald K. Haines, the National Reconnaissance Office's historian. It grew out of a review of all Agency UFO files ordered by CIA Director R. James Woolsey in late 1993.

Most of it is a bureaucratic history. But one section, titled "CIA's U-2 and OXCART as UFOs," landed like a bomb.

Haines wrote that once the U-2 started test flights, "commercial pilots and air traffic controllers began reporting a large increase in UFO sightings." Air Force Project Blue Book investigators who knew about the secret plane checked reports with the CIA's U-2 Project Staff in Washington and were able to attribute many sightings to U-2 flights. "They were careful, however, not to reveal the true cause of the sighting to the public," he added.

Then came the number that's been quoted ever since. According to later estimates from CIA officials who worked on the U-2 and OXCART projects, Haines wrote, "over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the United States."

The cover story

The Air Force didn't just stay quiet. Haines says it went further.

"This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project."

Blue Book investigators, he wrote, tried to explain away U-2 sightings with natural phenomena such as ice crystals and temperature inversions.

Haines didn't excuse it, exactly. "While perhaps justified," he wrote, "this deception added fuel to the later conspiracy theories and the coverup controversy of the 1970s."

That sentence is the whole paradox of this hypothesis. The government's secrecy was real, and it really did hide something. It just wasn't aliens.

Area 51 steps out of the shadows

The U-2 needed somewhere to hide. In April 1955, officials flying over the Nevada desert spotted an airstrip by a salt flat called Groom Lake. It became known by its map designation, Area 51.

For decades, the government wouldn't say the name. That changed in August 2013, when the National Security Archive at George Washington University published a CIA history of the U-2 and OXCART programs, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, with the Area 51 references restored.

NBC News reported the history's account of an "unexpected side effect" of the U-2 flight tests: "a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects." According to the history, Blue Book investigators "regularly called on the Agency's Project Staff in Washington to check reported UFO sightings against U-2 flight logs."

The U-2's successor was even stranger looking. The CIA's A-12 OXCART, which became fully operational in 1965, sustained Mach 3.2 at 90,000 feet, according to the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). It was later replaced by the SR-71, a modified version of the A-12. (Haines' article lumps them together as "OXCART (SR-71, or Blackbird).")

From stealth jets to drones

The pattern didn't stop with the U-2. In its 2024 historical review, AARO laid it out plainly.

"AARO assesses that some portion of sightings since the 1940s have represented misidentification of never-before-seen experimental and operational space, rocket, and air systems, including stealth technologies and the proliferation of drone platforms," the report said.

Its list runs from the Manhattan Project to the F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter and the B-2 bomber. On drones, AARO was blunt: their development and operation "almost certainly resulted in reported sightings of UAP," and some "had a 'saucer' or triangle-shaped appearance."

And sometimes the military fed the myth on purpose. In June 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported that AARO had found a retired Air Force colonel who, in the 1980s, gave doctored photos of flying saucers to the owner of a bar near Area 51. He confessed to Pentagon investigators in 2023. The goal, the Journal reported, was to protect stealth fighter development, so that a glimpse of something like the F-117 would be blamed on aliens.

The Journal also described "Yankee Blue," a fake briefing in which some newly inducted officers were shown a picture of a supposed flying saucer and told they were joining a reverse-engineering program. It was a hazing ritual. Many never learned it was fake.

Where "it's us" stops working

Now the other side. Steelmanning this theory means admitting where it runs out.

The timeline. The modern UFO era started on June 24, 1947, when pilot Kenneth Arnold reported nine objects near Mount Rainier, as Haines himself notes. The huge wave of 1952, including radar blips over Washington National Airport, came three years before the U-2 flew. Spy planes can't explain sightings that came before them.

The Air Force looked at this in 1952. According to Haines, Air Force briefers that year said they could account for about 90 percent of reports. The other 10 percent were "incredible reports from credible observers," and the Air Force "rejected the theories that the sightings involved US or Soviet secret weapons development."

The "over half" figure is an estimate. Haines' footnote cites a CIA history and a 1994 phone interview with the official who oversaw OXCART's day-to-day affairs. It's a recollection by program insiders, not a published case-by-case audit of the Blue Book files.

Modern cases. In its 2021 preliminary assessment of 144 military UAP reports, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said some observations "could be attributable to developments and classified programs by U.S. entities." But: "We were unable to confirm, however, that these systems accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected."

Behavior. A silver plane at 60,000 feet looks strange. It doesn't stop dead, reverse direction or drop into the ocean. The secret-tech theory explains odd-looking objects much better than it explains reports of seemingly impossible flight.

What would prove or disprove it

This is the most testable UFO theory on the board, which is why it's so strong where it works.

The proof is in matching: flight logs, test schedules and launch records lined up against specific sightings. Declassified U-2 and OXCART records already allow some of that. A full release of Blue Book's U-2 cross-checks would let researchers measure the "over half" claim directly.

What would weaken it is just as clear. Well-documented cases from times and places where no classified program could have been flying, with multiple sensors and witnesses, are where the hypothesis has nothing left to say.

What we know, and what we don't

What we know

• A 1997 CIA study said U-2 and OXCART flights accounted for many 1950s and 1960s UFO reports, and that the Air Force misled the public about them.
• The U.S. government acknowledged Area 51 by name in CIA history released in 2013.
• AARO's 2024 report says stealth aircraft and drones likely account for some sightings, and the WSJ reported deliberate disinformation near Area 51.

What we don't

• The real share of UFO reports caused by classified programs, decade by decade.
• How many Blue Book "explanations" were cover stories for U-2 flights.
• What explains the modern military cases that ODNI said it couldn't tie to U.S. programs.

The best answer to part of the question

The "it's us" hypothesis has something no other UFO theory can claim: the government has confessed to parts of it. Spy planes caused sightings. Officials lied. Somebody hung fake saucer photos in a Nevada bar.

But a theory that explains some sightings doesn't explain all of them. And the same secrecy that hid the U-2 is what makes people wonder what else is still hidden.

So where do you come down: is secret military technology the answer to most UFOs, or just a convenient explanation for the easy ones?

Sources

• CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 — Gerald K. Haines, Studies in Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1997
• The CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 (article page) — Central Intelligence Agency
• The Secret History of the U-2, and Area 51 (Electronic Briefing Book No. 434) — National Security Archive, George Washington University, 2013
• Area 51 and its purpose declassified: No UFOs, but lots of U-2 spy planes — Alan Boyle, NBC News, 2013
• Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Volume I — All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, 2024
• The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America's UFO Mythology — Joel Schectman and Aruna Viswanatha, The Wall Street Journal, 2025
• Pentagon fueled UFO rumors for decades, WSJ reports — Semafor, 2025
• Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena — Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2021