Using UFO stories to keep military projects secret

Mark Pilkington, a British journalist and filmmaker, claims in his new book that the U.S. military has been responsible for seeding stories about UFOs to the public for the purpose of concealing secret military projects.

In Mirage Men: An Adventure into Paranoia, Espionage, Psychological Warfare, and UFOs, Pilkington puts forth the claim that UFO stories have been used as a pretense for the flight-testing of experimental and/or secret aircraft. In an interview with U.S. News and World Report, Pilkington explained, “Just about everything that is popularly believed about UFOs has been exploited, shaped, and, at times, generated by people working for the U.S. Air Force and the intelligence community.” He also acknowledges that, through pop culture and paranoia, UFO stories tend to generate themselves, thanks to the initial seeding by the military.