There’s a chart doing the rounds that shows pilot UAP reports climbing steadily over the last few years, and it’s being waved about as evidence that the skies are getting busier with the unexplained. Maybe. But there’s a much less thrilling explanation that deserves equal airtime: the reporting got easier.
The stigma tax
For decades, a commercial pilot who filed a report about something they couldn’t identify was effectively volunteering for a career headache. The professional cost of being “the UFO pilot” was real, and the rational move was to say nothing. When you make reporting expensive, you get fewer reports — not fewer events.
Over the last few years, that stigma has softened considerably, and formal channels for logging these encounters have been publicised and, crucially, de-stigmatised. Lower the cost of reporting and the reports go up. That’s not a mystery; it’s basic incentive design.
Separating signal from paperwork
None of this means the increase is entirely an artefact. It’s genuinely possible that more drones, more balloons, and more satellites in low orbit are producing more things to misidentify — the airspace really has got busier. The point is simply that a rising report count is a measurement of the reporting system, not a clean measurement of the phenomenon. The inverse trap is just as real: when a channel returns almost nothing, that can mean the channel is broken rather than the sky is quiet — which is roughly the problem with the solitary maritime case in AARO’s latest annual report.
The UAP Times take
When you see the “sightings are surging” headline, ask one question first: did the number of events go up, or did the number of people willing to fill in the form go up? Usually it’s some of both, and the honest reporting is the reporting that admits it can’t yet tell you the split.
Related: the same logic applies to witnesses inside government, where the cost of speaking up is being lowered by directive and by statute — see The House Just Voted for UAP Disclosure.
Source: Aviation safety reporting analysis