The US Navy's new guidelines will require pilots and other staff to report encounters with unidentified flying objects, but has no plans to make the data available to the general public, according to the Washington Post.
"Military aviation safety organisations always retain reporting of hazards to aviation as privileged information in order to preserve the free and honest prioritization and discussion of safety among aircrew," stated Joe Gradisher, a spokesman for Vice Admiral Matthew Kohler, the deputy chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare.
Gradisher added that any report resulting from these investigations will contain "classified information".
The navy's decision to revise the UFO-reporting guidelines came to light last month. The spokesman explained back then that the navy had received "a number of reports of unauthorised and/or unidentified aircraft" flying into military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years.
It emerged in late 2017 that the Pentagon had run a secret office tasked with investigating military reports about UFO sightings. The effort was called the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Programme, which purportedly ran between 2009 and 2012, and had an annual budget of $22 million.
Despite reports that the government cut the funding for the secret study, its former head, Luis Elizondo, reportedly said the project had never actually stopped and that he continued to manage that programme until October 2017, when he resigned due to internal pressure that hampered its functioning.
