UFOs: New Pentagon program will reveal more on what the U.S. government actually knows

A U.S. government program known as the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, previously thought disbanded, has caused a stir after re-appeared in a Senate committee report last month.

The report, regarding spending on intelligence services, revealed details on the program, and about how U.S. officials are still actively trying to solve the mysteries of military pilots meeting unusual, unidentified flying vehicles, according to a New York Times report .

The Pentagon, the Times reports, will not discuss the program in question. But the report said the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force — falling under the Office of Naval Intelligence — is set to begin making public at least some findings on unidentified aerial vehicles, every six months.

Its main recent focus has been whether nations are using aviation technology that could threaten the U.S. But some politicians, such as former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, hope the Pentagon will also look harder into evidence of UFOs, and whether they have fallen to earth.

Three years ago, the Times revealed the existence of a predecessor unit focused on such matters, dubbed the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Luis Elizondo, who once led that program, himself believes unidentified objects have indeed crashed here.

“(The program) no longer has to hide in the shadows,” Elizondo told the New York Times. “It will have a new transparency.”

Although no such space artifacts have ever been publicly produced, two months ago the Pentagon did declassify three videos from 2004 — clips which showed unidentified aerial objects. Reid feels that if objects and materials have indeed fallen to earth, this should be looked at.

“ After looking into this, I came to the conclusion that there were reports — some were substantive, some not so substantive — that there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession,” Reid told the Times. 

According to unclassified briefing documents, the program has been giving classified briefings to government committees, aerospace companies and other members of the government.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio opined, in an interview with CBS, that some of the unidentified vehicles may have exhibited technology previously unknown to U.S. authorities. “Maybe there is a completely, sort of, boring explanation for it. But we need to find out,” he said.

Astrophysicist Erik W. Davis, who worked as a consultant for the Pentagon program before moving to the private sector, told the Times that some of the materials that he said were found on discovered vehicles had led him to feel that “we couldn’t make it ourselves.” As recently as March, Davis said he had given classified briefings to a Defence Department agency on “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.”