Pentagon’s UFO hunting department was NOT disbanded in 2012 and could now give public reports

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The Pentagon’s once secret department that hunts and investigates UFOs has continued to operate over the past decade despite previous claims it was disbanded. 

The Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force has been tucked away inside the Office of Naval Intelligence, and is now being called on to reveal at least some of its findings to the public every six months, according to the New York Times.

Information on mysterious encounters with unidentified aerial objects has formerly only been discussed in classified briefings, and Pentagon officials are still not at liberty to discuss the program, which deals with classified matters.  

The new calls for greater transparency come as officials who previously worked with the unit reveal some of the objects discovered in their investigations were items humans ‘couldn’t make ourselves’ and ‘vehicles not made on this earth’.  

Last month, US senators demanded to see the Pentagon’s UFO files as they pushed for influence over the secretive Navy program. 

The Senate Intelligence Committee wanted defense chiefs to publish a report on the Pentagon’s UFO program and any phenomena it observes.

The committee says it ‘supports the efforts of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force’ – appearing to confirm that such a program still existed.  

In 2017, the Pentagon acknowledged funding a secret multi-million dollar program named the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program to investigate UFO sightings, although defense chiefs claimed it had ended in 2012. 

‘It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,’ a spokeswoman said at the time.

But the Pentagon had been less clear about whether the UFO program continued to hover somewhere in the vast universe of the US defense establishment.

‘The DoD takes seriously all threats and potential threats to our people, our assets, and our mission and takes action whenever credible information is developed,’ the spokeswoman said. 

People who worked with the UFO program through to 2017 and beyond have now confirmed to the New York Times that it continued to exist, but under a different name and a different office. 

The program first began in 2007 under the the Defense Intelligence Agency but has now moved to the Office of Naval Intelligence, where last month the Senate Intelligence Committee revealed it to be called the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force.

‘It no longer has to hide in the shadows,’ Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence official and the program’s previous director, told the New York Times. 

The force was revealed in a Senate bill in June as senators now want to regulate the program, saying the public should be better informed of its activities. 

The Senate’s focus on the program stems less out of a concern over extraterrestrials, however, and more from the threat posed by real-world US adversaries such as China.

The Pentagon admitted in June that a nuclear detonation in space by Russia or China was among the possible threats to US interests. 

The US is particularly worried about China’s espionage capabilities, including use of drones and other aerial technology. 

Earlier in July, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told CBS that he was concerned about unidentified aircraft flying over US military bases. 

He claimed that China or Russia may have made ‘some technological leap’ that ‘allows them to conduct this sort of activity’. 

‘Maybe there is a completely, sort of, boring explanation for it. But we need to find out,’ he added. 

The UFO program is responsible for ‘collection and reporting on unidentified aerial phenomenon, any links they have to adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to US military assets and installations’.

But senators said that information sharing had been ‘inconsistent’ and called for a detailed report on the program’s progress and any phenomena it observes.  

The provision is part of the 2021 intelligence authorization bill. If it passes, the Pentagon will have 180 days to submit a report to Congress. 

Yet, despite the push from senators for intelligence on US adversaries, there are reports that the unit may have discovered some items in its investigations that are more extraterrestrial. 

Elizondo is among those who told the New York Times that he believed ‘objects of undetermined origin’ have been found during the study. 

It some cases, an earthly explanation had been found and even when one isn’t, experts say that it does not make an extraterrestrial explanation more likely. 

Yet Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader who pushed for the initial creation of the UFO program, is convinced that vehicles from other worlds have crashed into the US and have been retrieved and investigated. 

‘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 said to the Times. 

‘It is extremely important that information about the discovery of physical materials or retrieved craft come out.’

‘We couldn’t make it ourselves,’ Eric W. Davis, an astrophysicist who previously worked as a consultant on the program, added of some of the items. 

Davis claims he gave a briefing to a Defense Department agency in March about ‘off-world vehicles not made on this earth’ that have been retrieved. 

He told the Times he also gave two other briefings on unidentified objects to Senate committees in October 2019.  

No evidence has been produced, however, with some blame placed on the constraints of discussing classified material.

There have already been moves this year to improve the level of information provided to the public from the UFO intelligence unit, a step which was welcomed by Senator Reid. 

In April this year, the Pentagon released three videos taken by US Navy pilots showing mid-air encounters with unexplained objects.

The grainy black and white footage had previously been leaked and the Navy had acknowledged they were genuine videos. 

One of the videos was shot in November 2004 and the other two in January 2015.

In one, a weapons sensor operator appears to lose lock on a rapidly moving object which seconds later suddenly accelerates away to the left and out of view.

In another video which is tracking an object above the clouds, one pilot wonders if it is a drone.  

The Department of Defense said it was ‘releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos.’

‘The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified,” the Pentagon statement said. 

Retired US Navy pilot David Fravor, who saw one of the ‘UFOs’ in 2004, said the object he saw had been moving erratically.

‘As I got close to it … it rapidly accelerated to the south, and disappeared in less than two seconds,’ Fravor told CNN in 2017.

‘This was extremely abrupt, like a ping pong ball, bouncing off a wall. It would hit and go the other way.’

Former Nevada senator Harry Reid, whose state hosts the top secret Area 51 Air Force facility, welcomed release of the videos.

‘I’m glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available,’ he tweeted.

‘The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications. The American people deserve to be informed.’ 

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