Both The New York Times and Politico recently published stories about the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a $22 million Pentagon initiative that ran from 2007 to 2012 and investigated potential UFO sightings. The Times article included some bombshell quotes from Department of Defense (DOD) officials, including the claim that “what was considered science fiction is now science fact,” and an assertion that “the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered.” (Emphasis mine.)
But America is so damn deep into 2017 that we all just collectively shrugged and said, “We got bigger problems.”
In a recent interview with CNN, former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo spoke about the nature of the “unidentified aerial phenomena” that the government was investigating. “These aircraft – we’ll call them aircraft – are displaying characteristics that are not currently within the US inventory,” he said, “nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of … [They] don’t have any obvious flight services, any obvious forms of propulsion, and [are] maneuvering in ways that include extreme maneuverability beyond, I would submit, the healthy G-forces of a human or anything biological.”
Politico’s sources similarly reported that these aircraft “maneuvered so unusually and so fast that they seemed to defy the laws of physics.”
The program “collected video and audio recordings of reported U.F.O. incidents,” as well as testimony from current and former military pilots who experienced something strange while in flight. In his resignation letter from heading the program, Elizondo referenced “many accounts from the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond-next-generation capabilities.”
Obviously, all of these reports come with a serious grain of salt. The program was initiated by Harry Reid (D-NV), who was reportedly persuaded to start it by one of his regular campaign donors, Bob Bigelow. A Nevada hotel and real estate magnate who also started his own aerospace company, Bigelow has previously stated that he’s “absolutely convinced” aliens exist, and that “there has been and is an existing presence, an ET [extraterrestrial] presence” on Earth.
In addition, many of the program’s investigations were centered on the testimony of military pilots who “had reported seeing aircraft they could not identify or explain.” These phenomena could be explained in a variety of ways, from poor visibility conditions to foreign aerospace innovations to evasive flying maneuvers. The explanation is not necessarily alien.
In addition, some of Politico’s sources also expressed skepticism about the program’s usefulness and findings, stating that they were “unnerved by the implication that the incidents involved aircraft that were not made by humans.” And Elizondo also told CNN that he resigned in protest over “excessive secrecy,” and now works at the for-profit To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences – a project that’s dedicated to promoting “exotic sciences,” so this may also be a particularly personal cause for him.
But, still.
The New York Times, the arguable paper of record, published a story where multiple sources said we’d found alien tech we couldn’t fight, and America was just like … yeah, and? Are the aliens going to start a nuclear war? Are they robbing kids of health care? We’ve got way nastier villains to deal with right now. Come back at me when these aircraft start sympathizing with white supremacists.
(Via The New York Times, Politico, and CNN; image via 20th Century Fox)
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