Navy holds unseen videos of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) — or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), as the Department of Defense (DOD) prefers to call them — but will not release the footage publicly because it would “harm national security,” a Navy spokesperson wrote recently, according to Science Live

The disclosure came in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by The Black Vault, a website dedicated to government openness, which has previously disclosed thousands of pages of UFO-related papers obtained through FOIA requests to the CIAand other government agencies.

In April 2020, The Black Vault requested information from the U.S. Navy under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), only one day after the Navy released three now-famous films taken by Navy pilots that showed advanced aircraft maneuvering in seemingly inconceivable ways.

All additional footage pertaining to UFO must now be provided, according to a request from The Black Vault.

A threat to national security

“The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities,” Gregory Cason, deputy director of the Navy’s FOIA office, wrote in a response letter. “No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.”

The three UFO tapes that were released in April 2020, according to Cason, were only able to be declassified by the Navy because they had already been “extensively discussed in the public domain” and had already been leaked to the media.

According to Cason, the Navy determined that the tape could be publicly released “without further damage to national security.”

It’s interesting that the Navy made no attempt to hide the existence of more UFO videos in its response to The Black Vault’s request. There are undoubtedly more videos of puzzling UFO sightings in the Navy’s archives.

The U.S. military clearly takes the possible danger posed by UFO seriously, though. The DOD convened its first UFO public hearing since the 1960’s in May 2022.

The hearing mainly focused on a Pentagon study from June 2021 that stated 144 UFO sightings had been reported by American Navy pilotssince 2004. More recently, the DOD revealed that it would get funding from the government to establish a new office solely dedicated to handling reports of UFO sightings made by the American Army, Navy, and Air Force.