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

money well spent

[gbjbaanb]

but I wonder how much was spent... covering up what they found.... mouhahaahaaaa!

Re:money well spent

[hairyfeet]

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."

Re: money well spent

[c6gunner]

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.

Re:money well spent

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

And they found that the Lizard People...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have taken over the White House and the Republican Party.

Not investigating would be negligence

[RhettLivingston]

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.

Re:Not investigating would be negligence

[Pseudonym]

Most people don't know that the term "UFOB" (from which we get "UFO") was itself originally a USAF radar operator term. It referred to anything on a radar screen which wasn't obviously noise and hadn't yet been identified.

Re: Not a bad way to spend money

[quantaman]

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.

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.

Re: So what?

[c6gunner]

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.

This is why I've always argued that the military should have a real program in place to try and locate Santa Claus. I mean, sure, the likelihood of every finding him is slim, but think of the benefits if we DID find him! Not only could we stop that goddamn commie from invading our houses every year, but we could put his slave elf labour pool to work building weapons and ammunition.

For some reason I have been unable to convince my local government representative to put $20 million into this project, but I remain hopeful!

Re: So what?

[ScentCone]

On behalf of everyone who's experienced something that doesn't have a conventional explanation... go fuck yourself.

Have you ever noticed how hostile are the people who don't want anyone to point out they've imagined stuff? The closer a person gets to the threshold of admitting they've grasped onto a phony supernatural or extraterrestrial explanation for something, the angrier they get at everyone else who rolls their eyes because they've already figured out it was phony. Based on your anger, you're now very close to finally admitting that to yourself.

Re:So what?

[swb]

Even without taking into consideration the notion of aliens, flying saucers or any similar phenomena, this program makes sense if it helps sort out problems in radar imaging, remote sensing or pilot training/target identification.

Even if you think this $22 million was wasted "because UFOs don't exist", you have to admit that a military program to explain simultaneous failure of radar systems is money well spent if some natural or other phenomenon can be identified as tricking both sensing networks and pilots.

Even without that kind of hard-headed practical purpose, why *not* have some kind of office to investigate weird aerial incidents, especially if they are backed by pilot testimony, radar data, FLIR imagery, etc. It's not like it would take a ton of money, especially measured in military scales.

Re: So what?

[ScentCone]

I'm perfectly capable of stating what needs to be said without getting angry

I know, it's like smoking, right? You could quit any time but you just don't want to. That little outburst was just for fun, I guess.

$22M proves they didn't find anything.

[FrankSchwab]

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.

They weren't looking for little green men

[elrous0]

They were investigating:

1) Possible Russian and Chinese spyplanes and experimental aircrafts.
2) To find out what the public knew about OUR spyplanes and experimental aircrafts.

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.

This Is Something They Should Be Doing

[careysub]

I do not believe that there are any space aliens appearing on our skies. I am skeptical even that any genuinely unexplainable events are being regularly and reliably detected (the usual UFO scenario).

But absolutely I believe the military should maintain an on-going program to record and investigate unusual detections and reports of strange observations by trained personnel. Like listening for extra-terrestrial life with radio telescopes, if you don't look you will never see anything, and in any case this is important even if LGMs (little green men) are not even in the picture.

It could be secret programs of other countries (or even our own) or other sorts of organizations. Could be natural events not yet identified (sprites are good example of strange things that proved quite real). You need to look to see the rare black swan.

ufos in the military != ufos in pop-culture

[Lobachevsky]

UFO in the military means something different than in pop-culture. In pop-culture, it means aliens and flying saucers, and ray-guns, and Martians. In the military, it means an unidentified flying object, including flights by non-cleared personnel like hobbyists or foreign surveillance drones. Every one of our "drones" in Afghanistan would be a UFO to the Afghan military if we didn't seek clearance from them first.

My guess is the name "UFO" wreaked of bad smell over the years and the military just changed the name and defunded the old one. They likely *still* want to investigate any sightings or blips on the radar to record when and where China or Russia are running spy drones over American soil or international waters, and hence whatever personnel are conducting those investigations are still funded, just under a better name than UFOs.

Funnily enough

[aepervius]

They would have been right, seeing how the few of them (which survived their epidemic and intercine wars), were wiped out by the subsequent arrival of the white men , and all the war , conquest, and pushing away their population, new disease etc...

Re:Funnily enough

[LeftCoastThinker]

The arrival of the white man was the end of the Native American way of life, but we are still here. All of us smart ones integrated, intermarried and are productive members of society. A few holdouts, mostly stubborn idiots, fought the white man and lost and the ones that are still stubborn idiots live on reservations. In each generation, the smart ones move out and integrate into society.

When someone shows up and demonstrably proves that your way of life and beliefs are backwards and wrong, the wise man accepts reality and adapts. I am not saying that the arrival of Europeans was good for Native Americans of the time, but I am glad to not be living that life today. I greatly enjoy modern civilization.

Re: Funnily enough

[c6gunner]

I suspect that's very much what would happen if a more advanced alien species took an interest in us. Assuming their goal wasn't genocide, they'd likely assimilate us. And I for one would gladly put on their space pants, learn to speak Keplerian, and join them amongst the starts, even if it meant being treated as a second class citizen for generations to come.

Maybe they would set aside Australia as a reservation for the humans who don't want to adapt.

Re:white spots

[bigfoottoo]

Actually, the files are too big to attach. So, I put the photos in Google Drive. https://drive.google.com/drive... I hope this works.