In April 2019, the United States Navy declared that it was establishing formal guidelines to encourage pilots and servicemen to report UFO sightings, indicating a significant change in protocol.

The Navy officials vowed to take all such reports seriously and to investigate them thoroughly. While officials are quick to dismiss the notion that these sightings have anything to do with extraterrestrial life, military personnel have long been reporting encounters with strange craft around military bases and particularly nuclear weapons facilities.

There is evidence that UFO sightings have been documented for centuries, but the detonation of the atomic bomb at Trinity in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in July 1945, marked a significant turning point in the UFO phenomenon. Witness accounts describe bizarre sightings of green fireballs at the Trinity test site, which were seen flying at incredible speeds, and despite being investigated by the Air Force and world-renowned physicists, no scientific explanation was found.

Ancient astronaut theorists argue that the modern UFO phenomenon took hold and escalated dramatically in the weeks and years following the Hiroshima atomic bombing. The theory is that there is something about nuclear weapons facilities that attract UFOs, and the sudden rapid acceleration of the pace of events suggests that something significant is happening. This latest move by the US Navy to formally investigate UFO sightings is a welcome development for those interested in the phenomenon, and it remains to be seen what new insights the data collection and investigation will bring.