A screenshot of the video shows the U.S. Navy's F/A-18 Super Hornet colliding with an unidentified object. The video was released by the U.S. Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Project.
According to the New York Times reported on December 16, the $22 million for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program is barely discoverable in the Department of Defense's annual $600 billion budget. This is exactly what the Pentagon expects.
Based on statements by U.S. Defense Department officials, interviews with project participants, and records obtained by The New York Times, the project has been investigating reports of UFOs for years. Located on the fifth floor of the Pentagon's C-Ring, tucked away in the depths of this labyrinthine building, the project is managed by Luis Elizondo, a military intelligence officer.
The Defense Ministry has never previously acknowledged the existence of the project, saying it was terminated in 2012. Still, its proponents say it survived despite the Pentagon's halt to funding the project at the time. Over the past five years, officials on the program have continued to investigate incidents reported by service members while performing other Defense Department duties, they said.
Parts of the mystery project remain confidential. It began in 2007 and was initially funded primarily at the request of Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. He was the Senate majority leader at the time and had long been interested in the space phenomenon. Much of the money went to an aerospace research company run by robert Bigelow, a billionaire entrepreneur and reed's old friend. Bigelow is currently working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to produce expandable vehicles for human use in space.
In May, Bigelow said on CBS's "60 Minutes" show that he was "convinced" of aliens and that UFOs had visited Earth.
Former Senate Majority Leader Haririe Reed has always been interested in the space phenomenon.
In working with Bigelow's company in Las Vegas, the project produced documents about people who witnessed some aircraft flying at high speeds without obvious external propulsion, or hovering in the air without obvious external lift.
Officials on the project also studied videos of unidentified objects encountering U.S. military aircraft, including a 2004 video released in August. In the video, two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets take off from the Nimitz aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego, chasing a white oval object the size of a commercial aircraft.
Reid, who retired from Congress this year, said he was proud of the project. "I'm not embarrassed, ashamed or sorry to push this," Reed said in a recent interview in Nevada. "I think it's one of the good things I did when I was in Congress. I did something that no one had done before. ”
Two other former senators and senior members of the Defense Spending Subcommittee — Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, and Senator Daniel Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii — also supported the project. Stevens died in 2010 and Inoue in 2012.
While Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, did not mention the value of the project, she said not knowing the origin of an object did not mean it came from another planet or galaxy. "When people claim to observe truly unusual phenomena, sometimes it's worth seriously investigating," she said. But she adds, "People sometimes don't understand that in science, we often encounter unexplained phenomena. ”
Former NASA space shuttle engineer James M. James E. Oberg and the authors of 10 books on revealing UFO sightings cast doubt on such incidents. "There are a lot of bland events and human sensibilities that illustrate these stories," Auberg said, "and a lot of people are active in the air, but they don't want others to know." They are happy to lurk in the noise, or even use blindfolds to incite the wind and ignite. ”
But Mr Auberge said he welcomed people to study it. "There's a chance that there will be major discoveries," he said.
This month, Pentagon officials acknowledged the existence of the project, which was originally a project of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in response to questions from The New York Times. Officials insist the project ended five years ago, in 2012.
"We believe there are other issues with higher priorities that are more worthy of investment, and it is in the best interest of the Department of Defense to make this change," Thomas Crosson, a Pentagon spokesman, said in an email interview.
But Mr. Elisando said it was only government funding that ended in 2012. Mr. Elisando said in an interview that he has since worked with officials in the Navy and the Central Intelligence Agency. He worked in the Pentagon's own office until he resigned in October to protest what he said was excessive secrecy and internal opposition.
"Why don't we spend more time and effort on this issue?" Elizandor asked in a letter of resignation to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
Pentagon officials said the project ended in 2012, five years after its inception, but officials leading the project said it was only the end of government funding.
Elisando said the operation continued and was replaced by someone, but he declined to name his successor.
UFOs have been investigated by various parties in the United States, including the military, for decades. In 1947, the U.S. Air Force began a series of studies investigating more than 12,000 incidents of allegedly seeing UFOs until the study officially concluded in 1969. These included a study that began in 1952, code-named Project Blue Book, and concluded that most of the sightings involved stars, clouds, conventional aircraft or spy planes, though 701 were unexplained.
Then-Secretary of the Air Force Robert E. Lee Jr. In a memo announcing the end of Project Blue Book, Robert C. Seamans Jr. claimed that the program's existence "can no longer be justified for national security or scientific purposes."
Reed said his interest in UFOs came from Mr Bigelow. In a 2007 interview, Mr. Reed said Bigelow told him that a Defense Intelligence Agency official had approached Bigelow to visit the Utah ranch that Bigelow used to work on.
Reid said that shortly after meeting With Bigelow, he met with Defense Intelligence Agency officials and learned they wanted to start a research program on UFOs. Reed then summons Stevens and Inoue to a safe house at the Capitol.
Reid said: "I used to talk to John Glenn a few years ago. He was referring to Ohio astronaut and former Senator John Glenn, who died in 2016. Glenn told Reid that he believes the federal government should take the UFO incident seriously and should talk to service members, especially pilots, who have reported seeing unrecognizable or unexplained aircraft.
Luis Elisandor led the Pentagon's investigation into UFO's project until October, when he resigned to protest what he said was excessive secrecy and internal opposition to the project.
Reid said sightings often did not come from the military chain of command because service members feared they would be ridiculed or humiliated.
Reid said the meeting with Stevens and Inoue "was one of the most relaxed meetings I've ever been involved in." ”
He added: "Stevens said, 'Ever since joining the Air Force, I've been looking forward to doing this.'" (The Alaska senator was a former Army Air Force pilot who flew to China during World War II.) ）
During the meeting, Stevens said a strange plane of unknown origin had been targeted and followed for miles, Reid said.
None of the three senators wanted to have a public debate in the Senate about funding for the program, reid said, "There's so-called dark money here, Stevens knows, Inoue knows, that's the case, and we think so." Reed was referring to the Pentagon's budget classification scheme.
Much of the Pentagon's grant for the project went to Robert Bigelow, a well-to-do entrepreneur and reed's longtime friend. In May, Bigelow said on CBS's "60 Minutes" show that he was "convinced" that aliens existed and that UFOs had visited Earth.
The New York Times contract showed a slightly less than $22 million in congressional appropriations, starting in late 2008 and working until 2011. The money was used to manage the project, study and assess the threat posed by these unidentified objects.
The money went into Bigelow Aerospace, Bigelow Aerospace, a company that hired subcontractors and recruited research teams for the project.
Under Bigelow's guidance, the company remodeled some of its Las Vegas buildings to store metal alloys and other materials. Elizando and the project contractor said the materials came from an unknown aerial phenomenon. The researchers also studied people who claimed their bodies were affected after encountering the object in question and examined whether their physiological condition had changed. In addition, the researchers interviewed service members who claimed to have seen strange flying machines.
"Imagine you give Leonardo da Vinci a garage door remote control switch, what he would do, and we work like this," said Harold Vinci, an engineer who studied supersensory intuition for the CIA and later became a contractor for the project. Harold E. Puthoff said. "First, he'll try to figure out what this plastic thing is. He knew nothing about the electromagnetic signals and functions involved. ”
The project collected a variety of reported video and audio productions of UFO incidents, including a set of footage captured by a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet aircraft. The footage shows a flying machine surrounded by some kind of high-speed moving and constantly rotating emitting body. Voiceovers can be heard as Navy pilots try to understand what they see. "There's a whole fleet," one of them exclaimed. Defense officials declined to say exactly where and when the incident occurred.
"Internationally, we are the most backward country in the world on this issue," Bigelow said in an interview. "Our scientists are afraid of being ostracized, and our media are afraid of this stigma. China and Russia are much more frank, and they work with large domestic institutions. Smaller countries like Belgium, France, and the United Kingdom, as well as South American countries like Chile, are also more open. They are willing to take the initiative to discuss the topic, rather than being subject to a childish taboo. ”
By 2009, Reid believed the program had made astonishing discoveries and needed to strengthen security protections. In a letter to then-Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn III, Reed wrote that "we have made significant progress in identifying several highly sensitive, unconventional, and aerospace-related findings," and called for them to be designated as a "restricted access special program" accessible only to a few officials.
In a 2009 Pentagon brief outline written by the then-head, it was concluded that "science fiction is now considered a scientific fact," while the United States cannot face up to some of the technologies it has discovered. Reid's request for special visits was denied.
In his Resignation Letter on Oct. 4, Elisando said it was necessary to pay more serious attention to "numerous descriptions from the Navy and other forces about unusual air systems interfering with military weapons platforms and demonstrating capabilities beyond the capabilities of the next generation." Expressing disappointment at the limitations imposed by the program, he told Mattis that "there is an urgent need to identify the capabilities and intentions of these phenomena for the benefit of the military and the state." ”
Now, Elisaando has joined Pathof and another former Defense official, Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Intelligence, Christopher M. Christopher K. Mellon has started a new commercial venture called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, hoping to raise funds to educate the public about their efforts by raising funds to study UFOs.
In the interview, Elisando said he and his government colleagues had determined that the phenomenon they were studying did not appear to come from any country. "In this way, it will not be classified as a public secret by any government or agency," he said. ”
Reid said he didn't know where the objects in question came from. "If someone says they know the answer now, they're fooling themselves," he said, "and we don't know." ”
But he said, "We have to start somewhere." ”