Science 4 min read

What did the U.S. Secret UFO Program Reveal Exactly?

Ursatii | Shutterstock.com

Ursatii | Shutterstock.com

After years of endless denial, the U.S. government is now under public scrutiny after a former Pentagon official revealed the existence of a secret UFO program.

“My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone.” These are the words of Luis Elizondo in an interview on Monday’s CNN program, Erin Burnett OutFront. Elizondo was a former Pentagon official who allegedly headed the government’s secret UFO program, Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program.

According to reports, it was the then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who ordered the creation of the program. It was also said that the Senator helped shore up funding for it after talking to billionaire entrepreneur and political donor Robert Bigelow, who owns an aerospace company and is a believer in extraterrestrial life. The program was able to obtain $22 million USD in funding for the Pentagon, but it was kept a secret until now.

For years, the AATI program allegedly investigated countless reports of unidentified flying objects and was run from the 5th floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze. The Department of Defense remained mum about the existence of the program which it said it shut down in 2012. However, many people who have knowledge of the secret unit said that it continues to operate even without funding from Pentagon.

Former #Pentagon officials revealed the existence of a secret #UFO programClick To Tweet

Investigating “Flying Saucers”: The Pentagon’s Secret UFO Program

The secret UFO program began its operation in 2007 after Reid obtained the necessary funding, part of which reportedly went to Bigelow’s aerospace research company. The effort was able to produce documents that described sightings of an aircraft that travels at extremely high speeds with no visible signs of propulsion.

“If China, Russia, Japan, other countries are doing this and we’re not, then something is wrong because if the technology, as described and the way people see this movement took place in anything we have available to us, it would kill everybody. They couldn’t withstand the G-forces. Something sitting there, whom, down it goes,” Reid said in an interview.

In a story published by The New York Times over the weekend, a declassified footage from a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter’s AN/ASQ-228 sensor display as it followed an apparently unidentified flying object over the Pacific near San Diego on November 2004.

The footage was said to be the same incident that Navy Pilot veteran, Cmdr. David Fravor, encountered while on a training mission off San Diego.

“It was a real object, it exists, and I saw it,” Frevor said in an article from the Washington Post. “Something not from the Earth.”

Elizondo further implied that the government obtained enough evidence for him not to rule out the possibility that alien aircraft indeed visited Earth.

These aircraft — we’ll call them aircraft — are displaying characteristics that are not currently within the U.S. inventory nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of,” Elizondo said referring to the UFO.

He said that the secret UFO program then aimed to identify what had been seen, either by eyewitness accounts or through tools, then confirm if the object was a potential threat to national security. However, Elizondo resigned from the Department of Defense in October due to the excessive secrecy surrounding the program and after the funding for the effort ceased in 2012.

For his part, Reid continues to defend the UFO program. In a statement released last Monday, he was quoted as saying:

“I’m proud of this program, and its ground-breaking studies speak for themselves. It is silly and counterproductive to politicize the serious scientific questions raised by the work of this program, which was funded on a bipartisan basis.”

Do you believe that the U.S. government is indeed involved in some secret UFO program? Do you believe that extraterrestrial life exists? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!

First AI Web Content Optimization Platform Just for Writers

Found this article interesting?

Let Chelle Fuertes know how much you appreciate this article by clicking the heart icon and by sharing this article on social media.


Profile Image

Chelle Fuertes

Chelle is the Product Management Lead at INK. She's an experienced SEO professional as well as UX researcher and designer. She enjoys traveling and spending time anywhere near the sea with her family and friends.

Comment (1)
Most Recent most recent
You
  1. Malcolm J. Brenner December 22 at 11:53 am GMT

    Who ever said that UFO’s have to be alien spacecraft? There are at least two competing theories, one being that they are some kind of natural phenomenon (possibly electrical) that we don’t understand, the other that UFO’s are some kind of transdimensional phenomenon. Or we may be confusing incidents of all three, because of similar characteristics. Just because the ET alien theory is enormously popular and leads to good Hollywood movies doesn’t mean we should accept it blindly! We need to keep an open mind until we can collect enough data to make a rational, informed decision. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2eb810e9350c5b519e1df45ffaf8077d6d395b73e412eb9d6aac7a626a1d659a.jpg

share Scroll to top

Link Copied Successfully

Sign in

Sign in to access your personalized homepage, follow authors and topics you love, and clap for stories that matter to you.

Sign in with Google Sign in with Facebook

By using our site you agree to our privacy policy.