The US Military Admits It Spent $22 Million Investigating UFOs (boston.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader Joosy writes, "Until 2012 the Pentagon had a program, the 'Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program', that tracked unidentified flying objects." An anonymous reader writes: The Pentagon finally acknowledged the existence of the $22 million program today to the New York Times, while also claiming that they closed the program five years ago. "But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties."

Over the years the program "produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift. Officials with the program have also studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and U.S. military aircraft." But ultimately, a Pentagon spokesman said, "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."

Comments

So what?

[Jeremi]

The US military budget is $597 billion a year (that's billion, with a 'b').

$22 million spent looking for UFOs means that over the program's lifetime they spent .003% of one year's budget on the program.

Now you can argue that that was money wasted, and maybe its was, but if you're going to complain about the US military wasting money, this program is way down the list. And if it actually found something (and who is to say it hasn't? oooooh), then it would have been very well worth the investment for the military to know that aliens are among us -- knowing whether your country is being surveilled or infiltrated (and by whom) is considered very important to know in defense circles.

UFOs do not automatically mean aliens!

[morethanapapercert]

You see something in the sky, you report to the Air Force or FBI. They have a duty to investigate it if it seems at all like a credible sighting. They are responsible for the safety of the public after all, and need to at the very least, confirm that the sighting is no threat. Further, the Air Force and the Armed Forces in general, have to know that they don't always have complete intelligence about the actions and capabilities of hostile and potentially hostile countries and groups. For most "lights in the sky" that are spotted, the VAST majority are terrestrial aircraft or terrestrial phenomenon. The term UFO properly means just that the witness couldn't recognize it.

I remember a video that was going around the UFO community that had them all in a flap. It was a hourglass shaped object, seen hovering and darting around in a vertical posture in dusk conditions around Buenos Aires or something like that. The UFO nuts were saying that there was no such aircraft and it moved too fast to be of human manufacturer. I recognized it though. It was a CL-227 Sentinel UAV. The UFO nuts didn't notice the co-axial rotors around it's waist and misjudged how far away it was, leading them to over-estimate how fast it was moving. As far as I was concerned, the only interesting bit was that I didn't know that any South American nations even had any of them. My training identified them as being Canadian and only in use by NATO members. This is exactly the sort of thing I'd expect the US Air Force to investigate. People see funny lights or objects in the sky, the Air Force needs to find out if it's a mistaken report, a legitimate but unrecognised aircraft, or just possibly another group sending drones into US airspace for intelligence gathering.