Page 10 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - September 2023
P. 10

10          Pentagon’s Effort to Identify Track &UFOs






            A Brief History Of The

             Pentagon’s Efforts To

         Track And Identify UFOs



          From Project Blue Book to the
         All-domain Anomaly Resolution

                           Office.




        The U.S. military’s history of encounters

        with unidentified flying objects goes
        back to  World  War II. One of the first
        major UFO sightings came in 1942, when
        anti-aircraft batteries around Los Angeles
        opened fire at objects in the sky that they
        thought were Japanese aircraft. The Army
        determined later that a lost weather
        balloon had caused a false alarm.


        Later in the war, pilots with the Army’s
        415th Night Fighter Squadron reported

        seeing strange discs of light over expertise for advanced aerospace detect, analyze, and catalog reports of
        Germany, which they dubbed “Foo technologies,” said Defense Department Unidentified Aerial Phenomena — a new
        Fighters” — a term that came from the spokeswoman Sue Gough. “The goal was term for UFOs. The task force fell under
        Smokey Stover firefighter cartoon.               to help understand the threat posed by the Navy’s office of the undersecretary of
                                                         unconventional or leap-ahead aerospace defense for intelligence and security.
        Over the next 22 years, the  Air Force vehicles and technologies that could have
        investigated 12,618 sightings of UFOs, of national security implications for the “The Department of Defense and the

        which 701 remained unidentified when United States.”                                              military departments take any incursions
        the service closed the project in 1969.                                                           by unauthorized aircraft into our training

                                                         The Defense Intelligence  Agency ranges or designated airspace very
        The Air Force ended Project Blue Book awarded a contract to Bigelow Aerospace seriously and examine each report,” an
        after the University of Colorado Advanced Space Studies, LLC, which August 2020 Defense Department news
        determined that none of the UFOs worked with academics and scientists to release says.
        investigated by the service had posed a provide a total of 38 technical reports
        threat to national security; none of the between 2008 and 2012 that looked at The new task force was not a
        UFOs showed evidence of technology several                    issues      associated      with continuation of  AATIP, Gough said.
        that was more advanced than modern unidentified aircraft, including their Since naval aviators had filed most of the
        science; and investigators found no methods of propulsion and power reports of unidentified aircraft sightings,

        evidence that any of the UFOs were generation as well as their armaments, the Department of the Navy had taken the
        extraterrestrial craft, according to the Air Gough told Task & Purpose.                           lead in investigating UFO incursions into
        Force.                                                                                            military training ranges and designated
                                                         But in 2009, a review determined that the airspace starting in 2018.  The Defense
        With the military no longer looking into reports from  AATIP were “of limited Department began taking steps the
        sightings of unidentified airborne objects, value” to the Defense Intelligence following year to formalize the Navy’s
        the task of investigating UFOs fell to Agency, and the program ended when its work tracking unidentified aircraft.
        local law enforcement.                           funding expired in 2012, Gough said.
                                                                                                          By the time the Unidentified  Aerial

        But years later, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) For the next six years, the Defense Phenomena Task Force was established,
        helped to secure Congressional funding Department did not have a formal the Pentagon had already released three
        for  the Advanced Aerospace  Threat program to examine reports of unclassified videos in  April 2020 that
        Identification Program, or AATIP, which unidentified aircraft, she said. During that showed three separate encounters
        investigated       unidentified       aircraft time, the military services dealt with between Navy pilots and UFOs: One in
        sightings for the Defense Intelligence reports of UFOs the same way they did November 2004 and the other two in
        Agency from 2008 until 2012.                     with reports of other safety or operations January 2015.  The  War Zone had also
                                                         security incidents.                              revealed that Navy pilots filed eight
        “The purpose of the Advanced Aerospace                                                            hazard reports between 2013 and 2019
        Threat Identification Program (AATIP) The U.S. military got back into the about encounters with unidentified
        was to investigate foreign advanced business of investigating unidentified aircraft in restricted airspace off the East

        aerospace weapon system applications, airborne objects in  August 2020 when Coast.
        with future technology projections over then-Deputy Secretary of Defense David
        the next 40 years, and to create a center of Norquist established a task force to                                     (Continued of Page 11)
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