Page 10 - The 'X' Chronicles - September 2023

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)