New Zealand’s Military Searched 16 Years of Records for ‘UFO.’ The Answer Was ‘Nil Results.’

CASE FILE: RW-DAILY-2026-1111-PM

Subject: New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) Official Information Act response reporting no UFO/UAP correspondence, January 2010 to June 2026

Reported: RNZ, 10 November 2026, 1:01 p.m. NZDT (7:01 p.m. EST, 9 November)

Location: Wellington, New Zealand

Status: “Nil results” response CONFIRMED as reported · “No UFOs over New Zealand since 2010” DEBUNKED as a reading · Cover-up UNVERIFIED

The claim

New Zealand’s armed forces say they have no record of a single piece of correspondence about unidentified flying objects in more than 16 years.

According to RNZ on 10 November 2026, the NZDF searched all of its correspondence from January 2010 to June 2026 in response to an Official Information Act (OIA) request. The search was “undertaken using the terms ‘UFO’, ‘UAP’, ‘Unidentified Flying Object’, ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’ to identify if any had been sent to relevant authorities,” the Defence Force said. “This produced nil results.” The request, RNZ reported, covered military sightings, radar observations, photos or videos, and communications with New Zealand’s Five Eyes intelligence partners.

Online, the answer travelled in two directions at once. To some it was proof that New Zealand’s skies have simply gone quiet. To others, a military that cannot produce one UFO email in 16 years, while Washington publishes tranche after tranche, looked like a door being shut. The record supports neither reading. It points to something much duller: where the paperwork goes.

The video evidence first

There is no official NZDF video of this response; it is a written OIA reply. The relevant footage is the news coverage of the original 2010 file release, the short explainer on this week’s answer, and New Zealand’s most famous case, which is in those 2010 files.

1. “New Zealand military declassifies UFO files,” Al Jazeera English

• Uploaded: 23 December 2010
• Length: 1:36
• What it covers (per its description): files “just released by New Zealand’s air force” revealing “dozens of suspected UFO sightings,” declassified under freedom-of-information law, including “some fairly outlandish accounts.” Reported by Suranjana Tewari.

2. “NZ Military Search Finds Zero UFO Files Since 2010,” UAP America

• Uploaded: 10 November 2026
• Length: 0:50
• What it covers (per its description): the RNZ report, the keyword search, the 15 volumes released in 2010, and the contrast with the U.S. PURSUE archive. Its own description adds the key caveat: “A keyword search only finds records filed under those words. It doesn’t establish what happened in the skies.”

3. “The Kaikoura UFOs – 1978,” Marlborough Video Vault

• Uploaded: 13 May 2020
• Length: 37:00
• What it covers (per its description): the night of 30 December 1978, when the Argosy freighter ZK-SAE, with two pilots and a three-person television crew aboard, reported unexplained lights off the Kaikoura coast while ground radar tracked returns and the cameraman filmed, “told by the people who were actually there.”

Timeline

• 30 December 1978: The Kaikoura lights are filmed from an Argosy cargo aircraft off the South Island coast and make international headlines.
• 22 December 2010: The NZDF releases about 2,000 pages of UFO files dating back to the 1950s, with names and identifying details removed, the BBC reported. They include drawings of flying saucers, alleged samples of alien writing, and the Kaikoura file. An official report of the time said the Kaikoura lights might be boat lights reflected in clouds or an unusual view of Venus. An air force spokesman, Kavae Tamariki, told the Dominion Post: “We have just been a collection point for the information. We don’t investigate or make reports, we haven’t substantiated anything in them.” The original documents remained sealed in the national archive.
• July 2023: In OIA-2023-4763, the NZDF tells a requester it “is not undertaking any research or programmes, or generating data” on UAP. It describes the 2010 release as fifteen volumes of “all accumulated correspondence then held” from 1952 to 2009, sent to the Dunedin and Hamilton public libraries, Marlborough District Libraries, the Alexander Turnbull Library and Infofind, RNZ’s library. It adds that any UFO reports it receives are “to be referred to the Civil Aviation Authority” and that the NZDF “neither investigates nor maintains records relating to UAS/UFO sightings.”
• 30 May 2024: In OIA-2024-5048, answering a request about January to May 2024, the NZDF says it “has no role or responsibility” for UFO reports and “holds no relevant information.” The Minister of Defence also passed that request to the Civil Aviation Authority.
• 8 May to 23 October 2026: In the United States, the Department of War publishes seven tranches of UAP records under the presidential PURSUE program; the most recent is dated 23 October.
• 10 November 2026: RNZ reports the new NZDF answer: a 2010 to June 2026 search with “nil results.”

What believers claim

The cover-up reading runs like this: New Zealand is a Five Eyes member, the request explicitly asked about Five Eyes communications, and allied militaries are now publishing UAP files on presidential order. A “nil” return from a whole defence force over 16 years, on this view, means the records are being held under other labels, inside intelligence channels, or not being searched at all.

What the research found

1. The “nil results” answer is consistent with what the NZDF has said for years. The 2023 and 2024 replies, signed by the NZDF’s chief of staff, say the same thing in plainer words: the Defence Force does not investigate UFO reports, keeps no records of them, and forwards anything it receives to the Civil Aviation Authority. A keyword search of a filing system that, by policy, does not keep UFO reports will return nothing. That is a finding about where records live, not about the sky.