US upfront over UFOs

THE US Defence Department has confirmed it quietly investigated reports of unexplained phenomena in the air under a program that operated from 2007-12 inside the Pentagon, The New York Times reported.

The so-called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program spent $US22 million ($A31 million) a year investigating reports of unidentified flying objects.

The newspaper attributed the creation of the program to Nevada senator Harry Reid, who led the Democrats in the upper chamber for 12 years.