AARO: Report on U.S. Govt. Involvement with UAP [pdf]
aaro.mil
aaro.mil
It seems to have gone a bit too far. Elizondo and his cohorts really latched onto that stuff and energized the UFO "community" which has a religious level of fervor about these conspiracies. They leaked the Navy "tic-tac" video, and managed to float a NYTimes story about it in 2017 that was very high profile.
Things really went over the top last summer after David Grusch testified to congress about "biologics" (aliens) in possession of the US government as well as UFO crash retrieval programs. That momentum continued with some (in)famous ufologists forming a think-tank called "The Sol Foundation". It's purpose is, presumably, to rake in government contracts to "study" this stuff.
I guess it was a wild ride while it lasted, I don't think there's going to be any consequences for the UFO conspiracy loons that started this latest UFO craze, but maybe there should be given all the attention it drew when there's more serious things to worry about?
Because that's what happens when you release classified info without authorization, right?
I do wonder, though, if Fravor, Graves, Deitrich, etc are in on this (psyop), were themselves duped by a classified program they were unwittingly helping to test, or something actually strange and as yet unexplained went on.
To date, AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP
represented off-world technology or the existence a classified program that had not been
properly reported to Congress. Investigative efforts determined that most sightings were the
result of misidentification of ordinary objects and phenomena. Although many UAP reports
remain unsolved, AARO assesses that if additional, quality data were available, most of these
cases also could be identified and resolved as ordinary objects or phenomena.
AARO researched and interviewed numerous people, programs, and leads. It has
determined that modern allegations that the USG is hiding off-world technology and beings
largely originate from the same group of individuals who have ties to the cancelled
AAWSAP/AATIP program and a private sector organization’s paranormal research efforts.
These individuals have worked with each other consistently in various UAP-related efforts.
[1] https://nypost.com/2023/03/21/ufo-believing-pentagon-bosses-...
https://www.bigelowaerospace.com/pages/news/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bigelow
Does the report claim all sightings can be definitely explained? The very small percentage that cannot is where efforts should be focused.
Anomalies like to that could lead to really interesting discoveries. Maybe there's a lot we don't know about how plasma forms and behaves, for example.
I find this area really interesting as a pop culture phenomenon. Even Carl Jung weighed in on it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosocial_UFO_hypothesis
The military, at least, is very interested in being able to identify anything picked up by their sensors. But it's hard for them to publicly acknowledge this stuff because then it means they need to talk about the exact nature of the classified systems which they used to detect whatever the unknown phenomena was.