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Sci-Fi Government The Military United States

Experts Testify US Is Running Secret UAP Programs (npr.org) 131

Posted by BeauHD from the behind-the-scenes dept.
During a public joint hearing today titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," four experts testified that the U.S. is running secret UAP programs, including crash retrieval and reverse-engineering programs for advanced nonhuman technology. Although the Pentagon maintains there's no evidence of alien spacecraft, witnesses like Luis Elizondo and Michael Gold argue that UAPs represent an intelligence enigma and call for open, stigma-free study to address potential security concerns and unknown scientific possibilities. NPR reports: Tim Gallaudet, retired rear admiral, U.S. Navy; CEO of Ocean STL Consulting, LLC
"Confirmation that UAPs are interacting with humanity came for me in January 2015," Gallaudet said in his written testimony (PDF). He describes being part of a pre-deployment naval exercise off the U.S. East Coast that culminated in the famous "Go Fast" video, in which a Navy F/A-18 jet's sensors recorded "an unidentified object exhibiting flight and structural characteristics unlike anything in our arsenal." He was among a group of commanders involved in the exercise who received an email containing the video, which was sent by the operations officer of Fleet Forces Command, Gallaudet said. "The very next day, the email disappeared from my account and those of the other recipients without explanation," he said.

Luis Elizondo, author and former Department of Defense official
Elizondo's written testimony (PDF) was brief and alleged that a secretive arms race is playing out on the global stage. "Let me be clear: UAP are real," he wrote. "Advanced technologies not made by our Government -- or any other government -- are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe. Furthermore, the U.S. is in possession of UAP technologies, as are some of our adversaries." Elizondo is a former intelligence officer who later "managed a highly sensitive Special Access Program on behalf of the White House and the National Security Council," according to his official bio (PDF). "By 2012, [Elizondo] was the senior ranking person of the DOD's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a secretive Pentagon unit that studied unidentified anomalous phenomena," his bio states, adding that he resigned in 2017.

Michael Gold, former NASA associate administrator of space policy and partnerships; member of NASA UAP Independent Study Team
Gold's written testimony (PDF) stressed the need for government agencies and academics to "overcome the pernicious stigma that continues to impede scientific dialogue and open discussions" about unexplained phenomena. "As the saying goes, the truth is out there," Gold said, "we just need to be bold enough and brave enough to face it."

Michael Shellenberger, founder of Public, a news outlet on the Substack platform
Shellenberger's testimony (PDF) ran to some 214 pages, including a lengthy timeline of UAP reports from 1947 to 2023. Shellenberger pressed the White House and Congress to act, calling for the adoption of UAP transparency legislation and cutting funds for any related programs that aren't disclosed to lawmakers. "UAP transparency is bi-partisan and critical to our national security," his written testimony stated. You can watch the proceeding here.

Experts Testify US Is Running Secret UAP Programs More | Reply

Experts Testify US Is Running Secret UAP Programs

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  • What nonsense. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Thursday November 14, 2024 @02:03AM (#64944563)
    Show some real evidence or stop wasting the people's time.

    • Re:What nonsense. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by phayes ( 202222 ) on Thursday November 14, 2024 @03:00AM (#64944637) Homepage

      I recall reading a definitive debunking of the "go fast" video by an optics expert with intimate knowledge of the F18 gun camera. Every claimed "anomalous" movement was explained as being a particular kind of "sun dog" (those ghost suns you can see on complex multi-component lenses that are pointed facing the sun).

      So Tim Gallaudet's "proof" of aliens boils down to "an unknown higher ranked officer told the mail system admin to junk the conspirationist bullshit we were trying to circulate".

      Proof that higher ranked officers are aliens... /s

      • The go fast video can be debunked by a 15 years old with basic trigonometry knowledge. No need to be an expert, the video has all the info needed about the speed and heading of the aircraft, the angle of the camera, the distance of the target, and the timestamps.

        With that, you can easily calculate the end position of the target relative to its start position. If I recall, the "ufo" was going around 50kph. It's all parallax.

        The mention of the go fast video is a simple marker that the real field of expertise

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by angel'o'sphere ( 80593 )

        That is bogus.
        There are plenty of videos that can not be explained that way.
        And: such sun ghosts in a gun camera, would not be on radar of the carrier and the escorts. Facepalm.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          These UFOs could be all sorts of things, but they aren't aliens. Hypersonic missile tests gone wrong, drones, reflections, problems with the optics... I recall one was due to lights from a moving train reflecting off clouds.

          Obviously the military and CIA has to look into them to make sure they aren't some new weapon or someone spying on them (I hear they use weather balloons for that, and if you can't tell I'm rolling my eyes)... But they definitely aren't aliens.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by MrKaos ( 858439 )

            These UFOs could be all sorts of things, but they aren't aliens.

            There are plenty of photos of very odd things in the UAP space, on Earth, the moon and under the ocean and essentially unknowable to anyone here. What is truly disturbing is how Youtube can shut so much of it down, I accept that I don't know what I am looking at, only that it's really interesting and I object to censorship. NASA's work on standardizing inter-departmental information exchange on UAPs a few years ago was a big step forward for examining the phenomenon.

            I hope that there are aliens out the

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              I think most of the "censored by YouTube" ones are just deleted by the uploader, who then follows up with a video about how YouTube is censoring them for even more views.

            • There are probably other civilizations out there. They probably can't get here, though.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by unrtst ( 777550 )

              If humanity is the *ONLY* being solely responsible for keeping the dim candle of consciousness alight in the universe not only is it an almost overwhelming responsibility, it's simultaneously mind-numbingly terrifying that we are alone.

              Relax. We've only been around for about 300k years. Dinosaurs were here for about 65 million years. And the earth is around 4.5 billion years old. Even if we are the sole beings around with consciousness across all of space (which, "is big. You won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-boggingly big it is." - D. Adams), it would be a massive leap to say we are the only ones across all of space _AND__TIME_. And time is quite relative - we're looking into the VERY distant past when we look at distant stars. We h

          • No one called them aliens.
            At least not me.

            It is pretty clear that they are man made.

            If some allies would be here, we either would know it, or they would not show us their toys.

        • There are plenty of videos that can not be explained that way.

          Name one.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          Links or it didn't happen.

      • Re:What nonsense. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by cuda13579 ( 1060440 ) on Thursday November 14, 2024 @05:54AM (#64944843)

        Mick West on youtube, has a lot of good debunking videos...he goes through all the steps, and shows all the tools he uses, and explains how a lot of camera/optical hardware works...and how they can create odd effects that people use as "evidence"...and will often even demonstrate how those effects can be reproduced. He has videos on the "evidence" from previous government hearings....those people should be ashamed of themselves for even presenting that as legitimate evidence.

        I know it's touchy, and people don't want to admit it....but a lot of pilots are basically pretty dumb. Speaking from experience...flying a plane is just learning a different piece of transport machinery...it doesn't mean you're smart. People give their observations way too much credit. There are also a lot of other military reports, that just end up being dumb military kids with night vision, getting very confused looking at stars.

        I fully believe in the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe...but I think 99% of the "evidence" we see, is fairly easily explained. But, I also fully believe that what we're seeing, is different agencies trying to justify their budgets.

        • Mick West on youtube, has a lot of good debunking videos...he goes through all the steps, and shows all the tools he uses, and explains how a lot of camera/optical hardware works...and how they can create odd effects that people use as "evidence"...and will often even demonstrate how those effects can be reproduced. He has videos on the "evidence" from previous government hearings....those people should be ashamed of themselves for even presenting that as legitimate evidence.

          Seconded ...

          Here is Mike West's [youtube.com]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tom ( 822 )

          People give their observations way too much credit.

          That, and memory.

          We have tons and tons of evidence on how unreliable eye witnesses are and how selective our memory of events can be. From not remembering blatantly obvious things to false memories of things that were never there.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by RobinH ( 124750 )
          To be fair, all military pilots have a university degree, because they're all officers. So not "dumb." But certainly that doesn't give you the credentials to understand camera optics and so on. People are people, and most believe what they want to be true.
          • The fact that places like Oral Roberts University exist (and are accredited!) proves pretty definitively that there is no necessary correlation between having a university degree and having critical thinking skills.

          • I knew someone would bring up fighter pilots having degrees.

            I've known engineers that cant build anything, and computer scientists that can't replace their own RAM.

            Just look at the Slashdot crowd...educated idiots exist. And in the general population, there's a lot of morons with degrees.

            Fighter pilots are just cocky officers that think they're hot shit because they fly fighters...their degrees were just a means to achieve that goal. They love the mystique and myth that surrounds them. I know it's a gener

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by RobinH ( 124750 )
              That has nothing to do with what I'm saying. I just said they're not dumb. You need roughly 120 IQ to graduate from a typical university program. I'm not saying they have a lot of street smarts or whatever. But they're not some 80 IQ mouth breather.

              • But I see people who are obviously stupid with university degrees. Those "IQ" ratings are all bullshit, they don't really prove anything except an ability to solve a certain type of problem. Also, no one gives IQ tests anymore anyway because they're not useful.

                I found in my history that I kept thinking you'd get someone smarter in your peer group as I went through life. That is, I expected that leaving high school and entering university that people would be smarter. They weren't. Then I figured when I

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            That probably makes it worse. Undergrads tend to have an overinflated sense of their own knowledge. The first few years of grad school hopefully knocks that out of them. I expect being an officer, a pilot, and shooting big guns and missiles doesn't help any either.

        • I know it's touchy, and people don't want to admit it....but a lot of pilots are basically pretty dumb.

          It's not that people don't want to admit it, it's just that you seem to think that everyone is dumb for not being an expert on everything. Some of the smartest people I've met have said some truly dumb things outside of their field of expertise. Pilots are no different. If not knowing the detailed physics of camera optics makes people "dumb" then congrats on insulting literally brilliants of truly smart people.

          Now that said one could argue that true brilliance comes from recognising when something is outsid

          • The snag isn't knowledge or logic or whatever, it's the human foible of believing one's own eyes. Except that your eyes lie to you all the damn time! There's also a woeful lack of good reliable skepticism, instead most humans like to jump to a first estimate conclusion quickly, then stick with it. Note especially the SRI scientists who were utterly fooled by "psychics". Certainly, there's the ability to take advantage of someone's inflated self worth to con them which you can see throughout history. But

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by piojo ( 995934 )

      Show some real evidence

      There is one example of an anomalous phenomenon (something that doesn't obey the known rules of the universe): consciousness. Physics, chemistry, and biology lets us understand the functioning of this machine made of mostly water, carbon, proteins, minerals, and long chain fatty acids. We understand it in the same way we understand planets, rivers, computers, explosions, and pizza. But nothing in our understanding explains why this machine should have a private inner experience beyond the mere description o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bongo ( 13261 )

        Yes, if the physical organism is doing everything, what need is there for an experiencer? It's the first mystery.

        As for aliens, humans could easily be a billion years behind other species in the galaxy. Yet we think we can judge what a billion years of technical advancement could produce.

      • There's no way in which consciousness "doesn't obey the known rules of the universe". That's like claiming that ant colonies (or any other complex system) aren't allowed by physics.

      • To give a little more detail, I waver between Type-A and Type-C materialism in response to Chalmers' "hard problem of consciousness".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Handwavy bullshit. There's absolutely no reason except conceit to think that consciousness needs any special explanation.

    • If you want to see an extra-terrestrial, the evidence of that hasn't been shown yet.

      If you're interested in strange things flying around, there's a ton of evidence.

    • The good thing though, is it occupies some of Lauren Boebert's time, reducing slightly the amount of damage she can do elsewhere.

    • "Let me be clear: UAP are real," he wrote.

      How can UAP be real when even birds aren't?

  • Hollywood aliens (Score:5, Funny)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Thursday November 14, 2024 @02:39AM (#64944595)
    I'm so glad aliens only ever choose to appear as blobs of light in front of mentally sketchy government officials, they must be big X-Files fans.

  • it's not aliens (Score:3)

    by ecorona ( 953223 ) on Thursday November 14, 2024 @02:45AM (#64944605) Homepage
    I'd bet good money that this is a secret government operation to misled the world. This is an excuse to fly aircraft over military installations around the world without anyone blaming the USA. Why wouldn't they blame the USA you ask? Becaues we are pretending it's happening to us but really we're just developing the technology. It's an elaborate hoax to give us a free pass to invade sovereign territory

    • Right. Oh, we have that same alien infestation too.

      Even our best ships don't know how to fight them off. So sad, so mysterious.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ecorona ( 953223 )
        To make the whole deal even sweeter, we're pretending we are reverse engineering the spacecraft. This way, if one crashes or if they shoot one down then the China or the Russians will spend countless fruitless man-hours trying to understand the technology. The fake tech will be deliberately obfuscated to waste their time. The real tech will be replaced by a decoy in the last minute that "crashes" or something akin to that. It's the most plausible explanation and infinitely more likely than interdimensional

    • Ever heard of Operation Blue Beam?

    • I'd bet good money that this is a secret government operation to misled the world.

      I agree, but which government?

      Clearly the US was embarrassed by the Chinese balloon story, but that's the one everyone knows about. When we do shoot things down, it's not always good to acknowledge that we shot it down or even whose it was. Keep the owner of the thing in the dark.

      But I do wonder if any aircraft that try to surveil the US are marked and possibly even programmed with manufactured languages to obscure their origin. Maybe not to convince the US that it's alien, but to keep it unknown whose i

  • Uhuh (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Thursday November 14, 2024 @03:05AM (#64944647)

    Somebody spent a lot of time quote mining and cherry picking this article together. Conspicuously lacking is actual evidence.

  • I think anyone with some knowledge of cosmology knows that this has to bullshit. There are 1e10 stas in the our galaxy alone, for sure there is life in some fraction of them and probably intelligent life in some smaller fraction of them. But for sure not on the closest star. But you know what -- a typical star is some tens of thousands of lightyears away. This means 50 thousand years for a return light travel. Good luck communicating whith those guys or travelling Star Wars like to visit them.

    • But for sure not on the closest star.
      Actually the closest star has a known earth like planet.
      We just could not measure its atmosphere yet, in case it has one.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Secondly: we are not talking about aliens.
      We are talking about Unexplainable/Unidentified Areal Phenomena.
      And we are not talking about UFOs from 30 years.
      We are talking about things that usually came in small swarms and harassed an American carrier group repeatedly during the recent years.

      Those things are on video. And

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rossdee ( 243626 )

        "Actually the closest star has a known earth like planet."

        It does indeed, and there is evidence from studies of its atmosphere (Like the increasing levels of Carbon Dioxide and other greenhouse gases) that there is life there.

        However analysis of various radio signals shows that the life is not intelligent.

        (the closest star is about 150,000,000,000 meters away)

      • Those things are on video. And not only (as sun ghosts) on the gun cameras. The pilots saw them with their own eyes. And the carrier - I believe it was the Nimitz - and its escorts: have them on radar.

        So this drone stuff, is obviously human made. Probably by a secret US project. Probably by the Chinese. Who knows?

        It is kind of irritating that so many /. ers do know nothing about those incidents.

        There are hundreds of original footage on youtube, including the radio conversation of the pilots with the carrier. And interviews with the pilots, too.

        Sure, it could be a hoax, dozens of high ranked US fighter pilots inventing a story, faking videos and a fake radio calls to a non existing carrier added later to the footage. Nice conspiracy theory ...

        I've seen the video and then I've seen the video debunking the videos from Nimitz and Roosevelt. Is there a video debunking the debunking video?

        The Nimitz radar drama started after an upgraded radar system went live. These things are massively complex bags of imperfect algorithms that try to interpret returns to predict reality while rejecting clutter. If you had to guess you can either guess the new system is now just powerful enough to detect aliens or you can guess they were still working out kinks.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Secondly: we are not talking about aliens.

        From the summary:

        four experts testified that the U.S. is running secret UAP programs, including crash retrieval and reverse-engineering programs for advanced nonhuman technology.

        Advanced technologies not made by our Government -- or any other government

        So yeah, we're talking about aliens. And claims that take things like the "go fast" video at credulous face value, claiming physics defying mechanics, are even more incredible than aliens.

        • Well, "they" are.

          If they've got "nonhuman" technology, seems like they could clear a lot of things up by showing it, rather than blabbering on about it.

          The status quo only serves to add speculation and confusion.

          Which might, in fact, be the military's goal here: sow confusion and mistrust.

          Why? Maybe to project the idea that we'd better keep the military well funded so it can protect us. I dunno. The intents could be quite complicated.

  • L00nyOps Money Fleecing (Score:3)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Thursday November 14, 2024 @05:13AM (#64944797)

    This all has a serious smell of L00nyOps Money Fleecing and budget forking/securing about it. Like those military projects back in the 70ies where they trained GIs with clairvoyance, magic powers and new age wicca protection spells and talismans or countless other DOD bullsh*t projects. There's an absolutely hilarious movie on this made by the Cohen brothers [wikipedia.org] btw.

    Given, there is fermis paradox and it's not completely unlikely that the aliens have been around us all along. It's also very likely that if they're interstellar - which would be totally plausible - that they are quasi artificial lifeforms with vast access to virtual worlds they take with them and has them not minding floating around through space for thousands of years on end. Which would just about be the most plausible state of things.

    So I'm not ruling out aliens entirely.

    But looking at the current noise and the entire state of the discussion on aliens in the US, it is way more likely that some smart guy in some agency picked up on the crackpots and new agers and found some mates in the private sector to do some easy money with doing quasi-official "alien research". And other bodies within the US complex are glad to have some distractions ready for the people so they don't stick to long with the idea of taxing the rich. You know, like the whole inflated gender debate.

  • July 2, 2025, is only 230 days away!

  • And so the US circles the drain (Score:3)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Thursday November 14, 2024 @07:21AM (#64944991)

    Two things are happening here: they are risking exposing details of current military bleeding edge technology to the world, and they are indulging credulous morons because there are enough of them to be a political force.

    Neither case is good for the US.

    What is badly needed here are basic science and civics being mandatory in all schools so the next generation isn't so fucking stupid. But you're not going to get that, because half the population is successfully forcing Jesus and fascism into them instead.

  • ... four experts testified that the U.S. is running secret ...

    Someone's been saying it for 30 years, this isn't news. The question is, is this the inside dirt, or another cover-story?

    In the 1970s, a lot of the cover-stories got exposed, allowing a glimpse of what the US was really doing: Such as crashed UFOs, really being US-made surveillance craft.

  • "The very next day, the email disappeared from my account and those of the other recipients without explanation," he said

    I'm pretty sure any e-mail admin can explain it. Deleting messages out of user mailboxes is a trivial task. Usually it is because they are suspected of containing malware, but sometimes they contain information not meant to be released.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Or somebody explained to a certain high ranking officer how parallax works and that officer was a wee bit embarassed.

  • If UFOs are real then there are some realllllly interesting physics out there that we don't know about and go against all of our experimental evidence - namely, how is any civilization reaching earth in a reasonable amount of time while not exceeding the speed of light.

    If we're getting visited by aliens, we're being visited by aliens who can also time travel.

    • I think it gives a warm fuzzy to some to believe an alien race is somehow protecting humanity from destroying itself by watching over us and giving a nudge when needed. It is pretty similar to religion in many ways where a god protects. It is probably in human DNA feature as it has been true for centuries from the ancient Egyptians to the Greeks to the Romans to the ... to have a god. Even cults raise a human to god like status and will follow them to death. Remember Jonestown, Heaven's Gate, ...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rahmrh ( 939610 )

        If your place in the world (not as rich or well off as you think you should be) and/or the world does not make sense (or seems truly random--because it is somewhat) and you cannot cope with it being mostly random because of that means. Then believing in god lets you ignore the scary random stuff that cause unexpected injury and death and lets you think you have some control by praying to the mighty sky god that has a plan for you.

        It is the ultimate crutch, and lots of other people will beat you over the he

  • Maybe politicians should stick to what they understand rather than believing that the "aliens are among us" TV shows are documentaries.
  • It's gratifying that one of the witness quoted the X-Files.
  • If they are aliens, I hope above all else they have some sort of "prime directive". Can you imagine if they bring advanced technology only to a dictatorial enemy?

  • This was a Nothing Burger repeat of prior hearings, with continued clever evasiveness by Elizondo. Mr. Gold was overly effusive, as if he were applying for a new position -- his statement that NASA is completely transparent is, of course, complete BS (and we know that).

    Granted there are elements that engage in snuffing out this topic in our mass media, we are at least getting the hearings. It is disappointing that few Senators are present -- there is a battle going on about releasing this information, som

  • Look, buzzing people was the height of comedy right up until the early '00s, but pulling that garbage now will get you fired.
  • now. It would take 81,000 years to travel from the nearest star to reach Earth. There are no little green men flying and running around on earth.

    • An antimatter rocket - something theoretically possible - might do it in four and a half years. If your impact shield can take relativistic hits of interstellar hydrogen.

      But still, you have the rocket... Are you going to spend almost five years in transit so you can buzz some locals with bad cameras?

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