Washington: The Pentagon has been running a secret multi-million dollar programme to investigate Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), according to a US media report. Only a small number of officials were aware of the programme, which began in 2007 and was reportedly closed in 2012. The New York Times says documents from the operation describe strange speeding aircraft and hovering objects. But scientists were doubtful, stressing that unexplained happenings were not necessarily proof of alien life. The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme was the brainchild of Harry Reid, a retired Democratic senator who was the Senate majority leader at the time.
The programme is reported to have cost the Department of Defense more than $20 million (£15m) before it was shut down in order to save costs. Although its funding ended in 2012, officials have reportedly continued to investigate sightings of unusual aerial phenomena and suspicious objects alongside their daily duties. Earlier this year, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released millions of pages of declassified documents online. The records included UFO sightings and a collection of reports on flying saucers, reports BBC.
One of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s most provocative — and most derided — campaign pledges was her vow to “get to the bottom” of the UFO controversy. That pledge reportedly came at the urging of her campaign chairman, John Podesta, a long-time advocate for UFO disclosure. At the time, the UFO comments were lost in the maze of other campaign issues.
The Trump administration hasn’t said much about UFO investigations, but current Pentagon officials acknowledged that the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was in existence between 2007 and 2012. James Oberg, a former NASA engineer who has long looked at UFO controversies with a critical eye, noted that seemingly out-of-this-world observations usually have a more down-to-Earth explanation. “There are plenty of prosaic events and human perceptual traits that can account for these stories,” Oberg told the Times. “Lots of people are active in the air and don’t want others to know about it. They are happy to lurk unrecognized in the noise, or even to stir it up as camouflage.”
An unnamed former congressional staffer said the UFOs may have been experimental aircraft incorporating technologies that could threaten the United States. “Was this China or Russia trying to do something or was it some propulsion system we are not familiar with?” the staffer said.
