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Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program
In the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was almost impossible to find. Which was how the Pentagon wanted it. For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects, according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants and records obtained by The New York Times. It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon's C Ring, deep within the building's maze.
The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties.
The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid's, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space. On CBS's "60 Minutes" in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was "absolutely convinced" that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.
Working with Mr. Bigelow's Las Vegas-based company, the program produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift. Officials with the program have also studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and American military aircraft — including one released in August of a whitish oval object, about the size of a commercial plane, chased by two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Nimitz off the coast of San Diego in 2004.
[...] Under Mr. Bigelow's direction, the company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes. In addition, researchers spoke to military service members who had reported sightings of strange aircraft.
Article comes with attached 34s (with audio) and 1m16s (no audio) videos.
Politico's coverage of this story was published nearly simultaneously with the New York Times.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday December 17 2017, @07:16PM (6 children)
You would expect the military to be watchful of such thing. Especial if they actually recovering metals of non earth origin. (which I sincerely doubt).
They know the military's capability of operating un-detected over foreign countries, why should the assume some other country doesn't have similar capabilities? They are just doing their job.
As long as it doesn't become another tail chasing operation like Project Bluebook, where every hoaxter was trying to get attention.
Its also amazing, now that everyone has a camera in their pocket all the time, how few times UFOs are ever reported and photographed.
(The 34seconds of helmet/gun-camera video is so perfectly tracked through steep turns, you can tell it was an on-board anomaly of their own camera system, probably a badly sun burned CCD on the camera if not outright faked after the fact. )
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Gaaark on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:52PM
I wonder if it is because people spend more time inside watching TV, are on the computer/game console, texting with eyes off the sky, etc
Back in the 50's, people were outside more, sitting and talking and looking at 'the weather'.
I dunno. I don't believe in aliens visiting us, but I WANT TO BELIEVE.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:56PM (3 children)
The pilots discuss seeing a fleet of the things. I don't think you can simply dismiss it as an anomaly. Although it's not like the full details of either incident (the two videos in the article are from two separate incidents) have been released.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday December 17 2017, @11:10PM
No, ONE pilot says there was a fleet, and another pilot asks him "are you sure this isn't our [garbled]?". No show showed this whole fleet.
The black center core looks like an after the fact edit, probably because the military already knew what it was.
Further, the camera tracks it perfectly, even though the aircraft is maneuvering in steep turns. You expect that on a ground/bomb camera. Pilot puts a joy stick on a land mark and the camera follows it and tries to keep it centered, regardless of maneuver. However the tracking here is too perfect. Way better than a ground cam. Its not evading, not out running, and not out turning the camera aircraft.
The last few seconds look like an F22 from behind and below. [military.com] Or maybe the RQ 170 Drone [thesop.org] from below.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 18 2017, @06:52PM (1 child)
If he had said that the entire sky was blotted out by UFOs, would that make it even more credible? The problem is not whether it is an anomaly, a UFO is an anomaly almost by definition (you do need the truism that genuinely unidentifiable flying objects are scarce - the observer might not be able to identify the phenomena responsible, but it is rare for everyone else to have the same problem). But there's a huge variety of ways that one can see things (and sometimes even photograph/video them!) that aren't particularly remarkable.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 18 2017, @07:13PM
We haven't been given the full context. If the location and date were known, it could be compared with witness reports on the ground if there were any. There's probably more video+audio that hasn't been released since all we see is a short clip.
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:43AM
FWIW my phone camera is quite good for stuff that's up close like food or people in the same room but if I take a photo/video of a bird in the sky it's just a pixel or a smudged speck. Even a bird sitting on a powerline above doesn't have much detail compared to what I can see with my crappy eyes+corrective optics in daylight.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by linkdude64 on Sunday December 17 2017, @07:49PM
This is clearly where the aliens have their HQ - why else would their offices be so deep within the complex instead of on the probably less-secure outside?
If the aliens needed to visit their UFOs to "recharge" their gizzards, this way they would be able to access their Las-Vegas based hangars in broad daylight, as well as interview the members of the army (witnesses) who reported sightings to re-flash their brain BIOS to protect themselves from harm. It's the perfect cover.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:16PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMINVIp_U-k [youtube.com]
Basically a fancy quad-copter with jets. Big whoop.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday December 17 2017, @11:10PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf1uLwUTDA0 [youtube.com]
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(Score: 5, Funny) by jelizondo on Monday December 18 2017, @12:01AM (4 children)
TFA and TFS go on about Mr. Elizondo this and Mr. Elizondo that.
Hereby, this Mr. Elizondo denies any and all allegations of any involvement in the search of extraterrestrial intelligence, visitors or artifacts.
Clearly all this is the product of people with overactive imaginations and has no factual basis.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 18 2017, @12:10AM (2 children)
Is that an attempt at humor? If not, dafuq are you talking about?
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(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday December 18 2017, @05:23AM (1 child)
Check GP's name - J. Elizondo. No relation to the Elizondo in TFA.
Damn, now that I've had to explain it, I've ruined the joke.
(Score: 1) by takyon on Monday December 18 2017, @06:45AM
I figured that out like 5 hours ago.
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 18 2017, @12:48AM
Give us the docs, doc.
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday December 18 2017, @05:39AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @12:59PM
Full Disclosure by Hon. Paul T Hellyer - Former Defence Minister of Canada [youtube.com]
Make your own mind up.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @06:56PM (2 children)
one always assumes that a whole gigantic socio-economic conglomeration of humanoids is required to get off this stinking rock.
but maybe this stinking rock is contaminated by a gigantic pile of lies, deception and regular puss that has accumulated
more then all great wonders constructed by human kind over the eons.
the "great ball of puss" is thus actually a contamination of the regular human brain and thus we all live in a glorified world of
"would be", with people-representation, required taxes and a military.
so once in a while a daughter or son is born, that is magically shield from this contamination, discovers duct-tap, welding, copper, magnets and some other cool stuff and basically, in the backyard, from scrap, build a interstellar spaceship.
thus the UFOs observed are mere normal humans leaving the planet, or in seldem cases, returning for the left behind teddy-bear, or book or some other trinket.
the whole UFO conspiracy is just the "pussy filled" and contaminated population being angry about losing so much innocence (to think straight) with financing a socio-happiness-supressing-and-regular-puss-multiplying department to understand the simple life of nature of how to cruise thru the outer spaces?
example: the latest pencil shaped rock "skirting" earth was a rock shield captured via a "higgs-field" and accelerated by a warp-bubble all emitted by a tiny spacecraft made from some auto-part scrap metal yard ...non?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 18 2017, @07:29PM (1 child)
Sure. Since the dawn of aviation, or even centuries prior, lone individuals have been building Bean-with-Bacon megarockets in their spare time, coming up with more advances independently across a variety of disciplines than someone like Galileo did, and bringing them to fruition in the form of usable personal space transportation. All without being killed by chemicals, radiation, launch failure, the vacuum of space, etc.
The better explanation is that aliens who may have developed space travel hundreds of thousands or millions of years before us have sent probes to check out any planet within a thousand light years of them that might look habitable. Or every planet, including the hot and cold ones. They just spam the probes, and the probes can autonomously check out the situation on Earth-like planets. They could even send spacecraft capable of replicating themselves using the materials in the dusty outskirts of our solar system, in order to regularly spawn more probes that only have to travel a relatively short distance to reach Earth. None of this requires faster-than-light travel, although it may require patience and reliable hardware.
Throwing in some time travel would make your scenario more plausible. Time-traveling tourists are just popping themselves into existence in our timeline, skewing everything. But we don't live in the timeline in which someone traveled back and co-opted an existing empire, installing themselves as a never aging god-emperor with advanced technologies. Or someone did do that but got their clock cleaned by time travelers from the resulting future.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @09:52PM
Berenstein? Berenstain?
WHAT IS REALITY?
(Score: 1) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday December 19 2017, @01:38AM (1 child)
To me it makes sense that we'd investigate unidentified flying objects from the perspective that they may be a new type of foreign aircraft.
Imagine seeing an AWACS plane or a B-2 for the first time, or catching a glimpse of a U2 zipping by 10 miles above you. If you didn't have intel on them already what would you call those?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 20 2017, @05:17AM
Angels. Youkai. Valkyries. Etc.
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