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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."
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."
To be fair lets say, just for the sake of argument, that they found that there was alien spacecraft flying over our heads. Now what do you think the public would say when the PTBs announced "There are alien spacecraft that have visited us. they are superior to our technology in every way and if they decide to be hostile we have absolutely no chance...have a nice day."
You would have the excrement hit the bladed cooling device at the speed of light, riots, religious whackos doing all kinds of crazy shit, the destruction would be epic. Remember the line from MiB? "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
An Unidentified Flying Object is nothing more than that. Any UFO could easily be an unidentified military (or even civilian these days) weapon. To choose to never investigate any report because of the association between the acronym UFO and "aliens" in the public mind would be foolishly negligent. A middle ground is essential. Hopefully, this just went full black.
But the money wasn't spent investigating anything... from TFA:
"initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Reidâ(TM)s, Robert Bigelow"
If Pentagon staff can continue doing the video analysis in their spare time, most of that $22M was wasted on a friend of a politician.
If this were real, it wouldn't be a problem. This seems to be an instance of something being a secret not because of defense but to hide corruption.
My interpretation is that everyone involved was sincere. What probably happened was something like Bigelow really believed in UFOs and wanted to study them so he went to Reid and asked for the money and mandate (so he could get military folks to talk to him) and Reid agreed. As for Bigelow's company doing the project I don't know how the bid would have been done, but I'm guessing the intersection of companies who could competently do the work and people who would take is seriously is not very large.
I don't have a fundamental objection to a little government money going to studying UFOs, it's massive longshot but a huge payoff, and smart people doing weird stuff can generate unexpected spinoffs.
Of course the risk is the whole thing becomes a BS factory where believers trying to justify the project start skewing the evidence and feeding the conspiracy theorists.
I stole this Sig
I know, that's pretty much what happened when the white man showed up in the Americas. Excrement hit the leaf-fan, natives running every which way, medicine men screaming about the end of the world. Total chaos.
Imagine that the USAF investigated a UFO report, and found credible evidence that there was a real flying craft, and that it was of alien origin.
I'd imagine their budget for following up on UFO sightings would suddenly have three zeros added to it. The supposition that this didn't happen proves they haven't found anything of interest.
And the worms ate into his brain.
In that scenario, here are some of the (likely) outcomes:
- We now know there's intelligent life beyond earth.
- That certain technologies are possible. This alone is a huge scientific advance. And from the available evidence etc, we might be able to discern how it worked (or even how it doesn't work, which is almost as useful).
- The public at large would be a lot more interested in science/engineering and also be more accepting of the huge military budgets currently spent on overthrowing regimes not to our liking. See the scientific/engineering advances that occurs during the time of a total-war.
- And while it won't be peace on earth, you know what what we won't be wasting our time/money/effort on...North Korea, Iran etc. It could even lead to an era of greater peace between the major world powers as they ally against a common threat.
- Of course, this would result in a drop in living standards (eg war-time rationing and all), but I'd accept that if the alternative was to sit and do nothing.
- If the aliens weren't hostile, I'd love to talk with them. And if they were hostile and going to eliminate us no-matter-what, I'd want to know what killed my planet in the 0.32 seconds before their star-killer is turned onto the earth.