More than fifty years after shelving the Blue Book project in 1969, the Pentagon is going to systematically re-investigate observations of unidentified flying objects . It was announced on June 25 by the United States Undersecretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks, following the publication of a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence according to which unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP, for its acronym in English) “ they pose an aviation security problem and can pose a challenge to the national security of the United States. ” It is the conclusion reached by researchers from the Department of Defense (DoD) after examining 144 sightings carried out by military pilots since 2004, of which they have only managed to explain one. Are the UFOs returning? Not quite.
Although in these pages I use the terms UFO and UAP interchangeably, and in essence they are the same, for the US military they are not. By talking about unidentified aerial phenomena and not about unidentified flying objects, they try to move their concern away from the myth of extraterrestrial visitation. UAP is what they have called for years “ unauthorized or unidentified objects or aircraft that have been observed entering or operating in the airspace of various military-controlled training grounds,” explained Joseph Gradisher, spokesman for the United States Navy. , to Time magazine in 2019. That is, to intruders in its airspace . In fact, the investigated cases took place in the vicinity of military installations or during maneuvers.
Ordinary citizens learned of the existence of UAPs in December 2017. Reports from The New York Times and Politico revealed that, between 2007 and 2012, the Pentagon spent $ 22 million investigating UFO observations by the military. through the so-called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AAITP). The secret project was an initiative of Democratic Senator Harry Reid, and most of the money went to an aerospace technology company owned by Robert Bigelow, a Nevada hospitality entrepreneur. Coincidences of life, Bigelow is not only a fan of the paranormal, but has also financially supported Reid’s political career. Defense cut off the tap to the AAITP in 2012 for lack of results.
The news that the Pentagon was once again interested in UFOs came in 2017 accompanied by three videos recorded by fighters and leaked to the press by the Academy of Arts and Sciences to the Stars (TTSA). Founded that same year, the TTSA is directed by Tom DeLonge, former guitarist of the band Blink-182, and is dedicated to the sale of books and the production of documentaries on paranormal mysteries. Its media star, who has recently left the organization, is Luis Elizondo, a former intelligence agent who is presented in the media as the director of the AAITP, something that official sources deny. Like his former TTSA partners, Elizondo believes UAPs are a demonstration of technologies “that go beyond this generation.” Aliens, come on. “Aliens are right under our noses,” agrees businessman Robert Bigelow. The eccentricity of this millionaire is beyond all doubt. In 1995 he founded the National Institute for the Science of Discovery, which until 2004 studied cattle mutilations, UFO sightings, and other supposedly supernatural events, and in June of last year created the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies to investigate life. after death.
After three years with Elizondo, Bigelow and company filling the media with aliens, the Senate in December asked the Pentagon for an assessment of the potential danger from UAPs. The response to that commission is the report of June 25, which includes the preliminary conclusions of a task force created by the DoD in August 2020 to determine whether the new UFOs pose a threat. After analyzing 144 incidents registered since 2004, the researchers conclude that UAPs are a danger. “Incursions into our training camps and airspace pose flight and operational safety problems, and can be a national security challenge,” the Pentagon confirmed minutes after the document was published. Said like that, it sounds impressive, but is it?
Despite the fact that the authors maintain that the majority of UAPs appear to be “physical objects”, since they have been captured through multiple detectors – infrared, radar, weapons finders … -, they acknowledge that there are only a small number of reports. with high quality and that prevents drawing “firm conclusions about the nature or intentions of the UAP”. And they suspect that, when each of the 143 objects pending explanation is identified, it will fall into some of the following five categories: aerial confusion – birds, balloons, airplanes … -, meteorological phenomena, secret programs of the US government and industry, sugar mills. of rival powers and others. Regarding eighty cases in which the UAPs appear to make unusual maneuvers, they believe that it may be due to “sensor errors, falsification or erroneous perception of the observer”. Oh, and there is no allusion to aliens in the report . None.
The document of the US intelligence leadership – seventeen agencies have collaborated in its preparation – also makes clear the scant preparation of military investigators. When they have enough data, the most rigorous ufologists explain around 90% of UFO cases and “researchers from the Group for the Study and Information on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (GEIPAN) – dependent on the French National Center for Space Studies (CNES) – have solved 98% of the events they have studied in the last ten years “, highlights Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, main architect of the UFO declassification in Spain, who is feared” that it will be years before the new working group reaches the know-how of the researchers of the Blue Book project ”. That is, until the same conclusion as in 1969 is reached: that behind the UAP there is nothing new for science.
