• On March 25th, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was briefed on the state of the DoD’s space systems and national security challenges in space. John Hill, the assistant secretary in charge of the defense for space affairs, headed Austin’s meeting attended by officials from Space Force, the US Space Command, and the National Reconnaissance Office, some in person and others via video teleconference.
• The briefing was meant to get Austin up to speed on space projects, the framework of the national defense space industry, and obstacles the US is facing in the space domain. China’s technical developments and space aspirations were also discussed. Biden has made technical rivalry with China a focal point for expenditure and policy decisions. Earlier in March, Austin assembled a “China Task Force” of senior government officials to offer suggestions about coping with China’s aspirations.
• “Serious and increasing risks to United States national security interests” are raised by Chinese and Russian space operations, according to Austin. In written confirmation hearings to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Austin said that the “strategic climate continues to change rapidly, particularly as it relates to space.” As defense secretary, he would embrace a national defense policy that addresses the “continued development of adversary space as well as counter space capacities.”
• US allies Japan and South Korea are increasingly anxious about China’s broad maritime assertions, technical advancements in space and other fields. In an address last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that the United States should “engage all nations, like China and Russia, in establishing principles and norms of responsible conduct in outer space.”
• US military commanders in the Indo-Pacific area are worried about China’s potential to interrupt GPS and other vital communications satellites. They have called for increased investments in advanced space systems technology. Austin will have to weigh combatant commanders’ demands for more money amid economic constraints and proposals to cut military budgets as he prepares to make his first budget proposal to Congress.
Last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin got a comprehensive report on the
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin
Department of Defense’s space systems and national security challenges in space. Since taking office, this was Austin’s first high-level consultation on space concerns. In a comment to SpaceNews, Defense Department spokesperson John Kirby stated, “Secretary Austin was delighted to obtain a briefing on the space realm.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken
Kirby stated he couldn’t elaborate on the exact topics addressed at the March 25 conference, but Austin “recognizes the relevance of this area to our national security,” according to Kirby. John Hill, who is serving as the assistant secretary in charge of the defense for space affairs, headed Austin’s meeting. Senior officials from the United States Space Force, United States Space Command, as well as the National Reconnaissance Office were present, some in person and others via video teleconference.
As per several outlets, the briefing was meant to get Austin up to speed on space projects, the framework of the national defense space industry, as well as the obstacles the United States confronts in the space domain. According to these sources, China’s technical developments and space aspirations were also discussed. The Biden government has made technical rivalry with China a focal point for expenditure and policy decisions. Austin assembled a “China task force” of senior government officials earlier this month to make suggestions about coping with China’s problems.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
Article by Tim McMillan December 2, 2020 (thedebrief.org)
• US military and intelligence officials have offered a glimpse into what is currently going on with the Pentagon’s “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force,” in an exclusive for The Debrief.org website. For the last two years, the DoD has been busy briefing lawmakers, intelligence community members, and the highest levels of the US military on encounters with UAP/UFOs that defy conventional explanations. In addition, two classified intelligence reports on UFOs have been widely distributed to the US Intelligence Community, including clear photographic evidence. The reports also explicitly state that these UFOs could be operated by “intelligences of unknown origin”.
• In June, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence offered its support for the “efforts of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force at the Office of Naval Intelligence” and requested an unclassified report detailing the analysis of ‘Anomalous Aerial Vehicles’. In mid-August, the Pentagon formally acknowledged they had established a UAP Task Force “to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to US national security.”
• The Debrief learned that on October 21, 2019, a UFO briefing was conducted at the Pentagon for several Senate Armed Services Committee staffers. Attendees said they were provided information on two Pentagon UFO research programs that preceded the UAP Task Force. Two days later on October 23rd, staffers with the Senate Select Intelligence Committee were provided the same information. Dr. Hal Puthoff, who claims to be one of a handful of persons who conducted the October UFO briefings, said that he had been invited to brief congressional staffers on more than one occasion. He said that staffers were “engaged”, and provided “positive responses, [with] more details always being requested.”
• An email obtained by The Debrief shows an October 16, 2019 exchange between then Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Robert Burke, and current Vice Chief of Staff for the Air Force General Stephen “Steve” Wilson, in which Adm. Burke tells Gen. Wilson, “Recommend you take the brief I just received from our Director of Naval Intelligence VADM Matt Kohler, on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).” Adm. Burke concludes the email, “SECNAV [Secretary of the Navy] will get the same brief tomorrow at 1000.”
• Pentagon Spokesperson Susan Gough did not confirm or deny the existence of the UAP intelligence reports, and declined to make any comment on their contents. It seems the Pentagon is not interested in sharing any more information on the UAP topic.
• However, several current and former officials with the DoD and individuals working for multiple US intelligence agencies told The Debrief that there was much more going on behind closed doors. Details on the two classified intelligence position reports, which the UAP Task Force provided to the US Intelligence Community, suggest both a greater degree of Pentagon involvement and an indication that the hunt for UFOs isn’t confined to aerial phenomena.
• A 2018 intelligence report provided a general overview of the UAP/UFO topic, including details of previous military encounters. According to sources who had read the classified reports, the report also contained an unreleased photograph of a silver “cube-shaped” flying object captured from the cockpit of an F/A-18 fighter jet with a pilot’s personal cell phone. The object was “hovering” completely motionless when Navy pilots encountered it. Based on the photo, the object was at an altitude of 30,000 to 35,000 feet, and approximately 1,000 feet from the fighter jet.
• Defense and intelligence officials expressed shock that the classified UAP Task Force report had been so widely distributed amongst the Intelligence community. “In decades with the [Intelligence Community] I’ve never seen anything like this,” said one intelligence official. The report’s most disconcerting aspect was a “list” of possible explanations for these mysterious encounters, and that the potential for UAP/UFO to be “alien” or “non-human” technology was of legitimate consideration.
• A second classified UAP Task Force report was issued in the summer of 2020. Like the first report, this report was also widely distributed amongst the Intelligence Community. “It went viral,” said one intelligence official who had read the report. The most striking feature of the second report was the inclusion of new and “extremely clear” photograph of an unidentifiable triangular aircraft also taken from inside the cockpit of a fighter jet off the East Coast of the United States. The UFO in the photograph is described as a large equilateral triangle with rounded or “blunted” edges and large, perfectly spherical white “lights” in each corner. Two DoD officials said the photo was taken after the triangular craft emerged from the ocean and began to ascend straight upwards at a 90-degree angle.
• The second report primarily focused on “Unidentified Submersible Phenomena”, or “transmedium” vehicles capable of operating both under water and in the air, and apparently originating from within the world’s oceans. The idea of unidentified submersible objects, or “USOs”, is not something new. MUFON astronomer Marc D’Antonio has shared an experience involving the detection of an underwater “Fast Mover,” which occurred while he was sailing as a civilian aboard one of the US Navy’s prized attack submarines. Defense journalist Tyler Rogoway spoke with several veteran submariners to get their take on D’Antonio’s account. The Navy vets interviewed by Rogoway almost unanimously acknowledged that unexplained, very high-speed sonar targets are indeed recorded by some of the most sophisticated listening equipment on the planet.
• A senior member of the Intelligence Community, whose responsibilities for decades involved underwater surveillance and reconnaissance programs, told The Debrief there was validity to claims of extremely fast-moving underwater objects being detected by US military systems. “On occasion, there are detections made of non-cavitational, extremely fast-moving objects within the ocean.” The intelligence official cited the high-levels of security classification associated with underwater reconnaissance. One active defense official said the UAP Task Force has a wealth of photographic evidence collected from military pilots’ personal devices as well as sophisticated DoD surveillance and reconnaissance platforms. There are many accounts – some going back centuries – in which people have observed unidentifiable craft operating in and out of the water.
• In 2017, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Dana White confirmed to Politico that the DoD had studied UFOs under the Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program (AATIP) run by Luis Elizondo. Then in December 2019, the Pentagon issued a statement saying AATIP was not UAP related, and that Elizondo had “no responsibilities” in the program. When The Debrief pointed out that its investigation had confirmed that AATIP did, in fact, involve UFOs and that Luis Elizondo was, in fact, the custodian of the AATIP portfolio, Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough replied, “Please keep in mind (Elizondo) left DoD over three years ago, and there are personnel and privacy matters involved.”
• From closed-door meetings, to senior military leadership and the issuance of classified intelligence reports, all indications suggest the DoD is indeed taking the UAP/UFO issue seriously. But when it comes to underwater systems, the extremity of official secrecy falls into a class by itself. For instance, retired Navy Admiral Bobby Ray Inman acknowledged that he served as director for the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office (NURO) decades ago. Yet to date, the government denies that the NURO even exists.
• Even if the Senate Select Intelligence Committee’s request for an unclassified UAP report ends up being enacted in the FY2021 Intelligence Act, the UAP report provision is not binding law. There’s no guarantee the public will be provided any comprehensive information on UAP/UFOs. And while Congress is required to have access to classified information, only the Executive Branch has the authority to declassify national security information to make it public.
• Should the DoD become more willing to discuss UAPs publicly, there are plenty of indications that it might be a disappointment compared to many of the popular myths and narratives intertwined with the UFO subject over the last 70 years. Every source familiar with the activities of the UAP Task Force said that no concise estimate of the situation for UAP has been achieved, and the US government presently lacks any definite explanation for UAP-related events.
• US Air Force Brigadier General Bruce McClintock, who served as Special Assistant to the Commander of Air Force Space Command until his retirement in 2017, and presently heads up the RAND corporation’s space-related research, told The Debrief that he is dismissive of the idea that US military encounters with UAP/UFO could be related to any form of classified aerospace testing by either the US or a foreign adversary. “It is unlikely that the US government would intentionally conduct tests against its own unwitting military assets. To do so would require a very high level of coordination and approval for the potential safety and operational security risks.”
• The Debrief has been unable to find anyone willing to speculate as to the source of UFO encounters reported by military aviators, whether they may be a US black budget program or the ‘testing’ of US air defense by foreign governments. A transition team spokesperson for Biden said that his administration would “[i]mmediately return to daily press briefings at the White House, US Department of State, and US Department of Defense. Our foreign policy relies on the informed consent of the American people. That is not possible when our government refuses to communicate with the public.”
‘equilateral triangle’ ufo
In an exclusive feature for The Debrief, U.S. military and intelligence officials, as well as Pentagon emails,
Air Force General Steve Wilson
offer an unprecedented glimpse behind the scenes of what’s currently going on with The Pentagon’s investigation into UFOs, or as they term them, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP).
For the last two years, the Department of Defense’s newly revamped “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force” (or UAPTF) has been busy briefing lawmakers, Intelligence Community stakeholders, and the highest levels of the U.S. military on encounters with what they say are mysterious airborne objects that defy conventional explanations.
Along with classified briefings, multiple senior U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter say two classified intelligence reports on UAP have been widely distributed to the U.S. Intelligence Community. Numerous sources from various government agencies told The Debrief that these reports include clear photographic evidence of UAP. The reports also explicitly state that the Task Force is considering the possibility that these unidentified objects could, as stated by one source from the U.S. Intelligence Community said, be operated by “intelligences of unknown origin.”
Admiral Robert Burke
Significantly, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general and head of RAND corporation’s Space Enterprise Initiative has—for the first time—gone on record to discuss some of the most likely explanations for UAP. His responses were surprising.
BRIEFINGS AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS
In June, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s FY2021 Intelligence Authorization Act contained an
Naval Intelligence VADM Matt Kohler
intriguing section titled report on “Advanced Aerial Threats.” In the inclusion, the committee gave an eye-opening official hint (in recent history) the government takes UFOs seriously by offering its support for the “efforts of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force at the Office of Naval Intelligence.” The Intelligence Committee additionally requested an unclassified report detailing the analysis of “UAP” or “Anomalous Aerial Vehicles.”
Though already acknowledged by the Intelligence Committee, in mid-August, the Pentagon formally acknowledged they had established a task force looking into UAP. In a press announcement, the Secretary of Defense’s Office stated, “the UAPTF’s mission will be to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.” According to the release, authority for the Task Force was approved by the DoD’s chief operating officer, Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist.
The summer news of the establishment of the UAPTF seemingly suggests—for the first time since the shuttering of Project Blue Book (the Air Force’s official investigations into UFOs) in 1969—that the Pentagon is now taking the subject of UFOs seriously.
However, an internal email obtained by The Debrief shows that almost one year before the DoD’s announcement, the highest levels of the U.S. military were already being briefed on UAP.
David L. Norquist
The email, obtained via Freedom of Information Act request, shows an October 16th, 2019 exchange between
Bruce McClintock
then Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Robert Burke, and current Vice Chief of Staff for the Air Force General Stephen “Steve” Wilson.
In the email, Adm. Burke tells Gen. Wilson, “Recommend you take the brief I just received from our Director of Naval Intelligence VADM Matt Kohler, on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).” Adm. Burke concludes the email, “SECNAV [Secretary of the Navy] will get the same brief tomorrow at 1000.”
The “SECNAV” referenced in Adm. Burke’s email was then-Secretary of the Navy, Richard V. Spencer. A little over a month after this UAP briefing, Spencer was fired by then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper over public disagreements stemming from a series of controversies involving the court-martial of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher.
Speaking on background, one U.S. Defense official lamented that a lack of continuity with DoD leadership might have hindered some of the UAPTF’s work. Within the past 24 months, there have been four different Secretaries of the Navy and five additional Secretaries of Defense. Vice Admiral Matt Kohler, noted for having provided the briefings, retired after 36 years with the Navy in June of this year.
Marc D’Antonio
Reaching out to several active government officials and individuals who retain their government-issued security
Dr. Hal Puthoff
clearances, The Debrief learned that last fall was a busy time for the UAPTF. On October 21st, 2019, a briefing on UAP was conducted at the Pentagon for several Senate Armed Services Committee staffers.
Attendees at the meeting told The Debrief that they were provided information on two previous DoD-backed UFO programs: The Advanced Aerial Weapons Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP) and the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). They were also briefed on “highly sensitive categories of UFO investigations.” Only two days later on October 23rd, staffers with the Senate Select Intelligence Committee were provided the same information in a meeting on Capitol Hill.
A former private contractor for AAWSAP and AATIP, Dr. Hal Puthoff, confirmed for The Debrief he was one of a handful of persons who conducted the October briefings. “I have been invited to brief congressional staffers on the Senate Armed Services Committee on UAP matters in the last couple of years,” Puthoff said in an email, “and have done so on more than one occasion.” Dr. Puthoff described the staffers during these meetings as being “engaged,” and provided “positive responses, [and] more details always being requested.”
Luis Elizondo
The Debrief reached out to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Office and DoD Executive Services
Bobby Ray Inman
Office and formally requested an interview with someone authorized to speak on the UAP briefings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In an email, Senior Strategist and Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough responded, “To maintain operations security, which includes not disseminating information publicly that may be useful to our adversaries, DOD does not discuss publicly the details of either the observations or the examination of reported incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace, including those incursions initially designated as UAP – and that includes not discussing the UAPTF publicly, also.”
Official public affairs channels indicate the Pentagon is not interested in sharing any more information on the UAP topic. However, several current and former officials with the DoD and individuals working for multiple U.S. intelligence agencies told The Debrief that there was much more going on behind closed doors.
UAP INTELLIGENCE POSITION REPORTS
Multiple sources confirmed for The Debrief that the UAPTF had issued two classified intelligence position reports, which one individual described as “shocking.” Details provided on these reports suggest both a greater degree of Pentagon involvement, and that the UAPTF’s hunt for unidentified objects isn’t confined only to aerial phenomena.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
Article by Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean July 23, 2020 (nytimes.com)
• The ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force’ is a program that appears in an unclassified US Senate budget report. Its function, however, which is to research sightings of unexplained aerial vehicles (i.e.: UFOs), is classified. Operating under the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Task Force is the latest incarnation of a previous covert Defense Intelligence Agency UFO research program said to have been ‘disbanded’ in 2012. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has taken notice of this covert program and is requiring the Navy to reveal at least ‘some’ findings to the public as part of the proposed Intelligence Authorization Act.
• Florida Senator Marco Rubio is the acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Rubio told CBS Miami that he wanted to get to the bottom of these Navy UFO videos because there are reports of unidentified aircraft over American military bases and we need to know if China or Russia has made “some technological leap”. (see first of three short videos below)
• The former head of the previous DIA UFO research program, known as the ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’, Luis Elizondo is among a small group of former government officials and scientists with security clearances who say they are convinced that objects of undetermined origin have crashed on Earth and that extraterrestrial material have been retrieved for study. According to participants and unclassified briefing documents, this military UFO program has been briefing congressional committees, aerospace company executives and other government officials.
• Former Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada pushed to fund the previous Pentagon UFO program in 2007. After reviewing reports from that program, Reid came to the conclusion that crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred, and “there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession” that should be studied. As yet, no crash artifacts have been publicly verified as being extraterrestrial in origin.
• Eric W. Davis is an astrophysicist who has worked with these government UFO programs since 2007. Although he could not offer any hard evidence of classified alien artifacts, Davis said that he had provided classified briefings to the DoD as recently as last March about retrievals of “off-world vehicles not made on this Earth.” Davis also gave classified briefings on retrievals of ‘unexplained objects’ to Senate Armed Services Committee staff and to Senate Intelligence Committee staff in October 2019.
• In a June interview, President Trump told his son Donald Jr. that he knew “very interesting” things about Roswell but demurred when asked if he would declassify any information on Roswell. “I’ll have to think about that one,” he said, coyly.
• [Editor’s Note] Check out the three videos below. The first is a report on acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, talking about the ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force’ from ‘Rising with Krystal and Saagar’. The two and a half minute clip features footage of the three famous Navy UFO videos. The second video is a five minute clip from Fox News of Tucker Carlson talking to Leslie Kean, the NY Times article’s co-writer, on how the government is inexplicably indifferent to legitimate UFO sightings. (Can you say “cover-up”?) The third is a five minute video of Dr Michael Salla’s take on the article and Carlson’s interview with Kean. Dr Salla stresses a point made in the article that the US military and private aerospace defense contractors have been successfully reverse-engineering extraterrestrial craft for decades. This is particularly true with the US Air Force’s sizable secret space program.
Dr Salla wonders how the so-called experts in academia, media, government and the military, who have parroted the deep state’s false position that extraterrestrial UFOs simply don’t exist, are feeling now as they are confronted with the reality that they have been kept from knowing the truth all of these years, while they smugly spread their “tin foil hat” disinformation. To quote Dr Salla, “This is very important breakthrough. Millions of people are now waking up to a different reality. This has been a seismic shift.”
Senator Marco Rubio
Despite Pentagon statements that it disbanded a once-covert program to investigate unidentified flying objects, the effort remains underway —
Eric W. Davis
renamed and tucked inside the Office of Naval Intelligence, where officials continue to study mystifying encounters between military pilots and unidentified aerial vehicles.
Pentagon officials will not discuss the program, which is not classified but deals with classified matters. Yet it appeared last month in a Senate committee report outlining spending on the nation’s intelligence agencies for the coming year. The report said the program, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, was “to standardize collection and reporting” on sightings of unexplained aerial vehicles, and was to report at least some of its findings to the public within 180 days after passage of the intelligence authorization act.
Fmr Senator Harry Reid
While retired officials involved with the effort — including Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader — hope the program will seek evidence of vehicles from other worlds, its main focus is on discovering whether another nation, especially any potential adversary, is using breakout aviation technology that could threaten the United States.
Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who is the acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Luis Elizondo
Intelligence, told a CBS affiliate in Miami this month that he was primarily concerned about reports of unidentified aircraft over American military bases — and that it was in the government’s interest to find out who was responsible.
He expressed concerns that China or Russia or some other adversary had made “some technological leap” that “allows them to conduct this sort of activity.”
Mr. Rubio said some of the unidentified aerial vehicles over U.S. bases possibly exhibited technologies not in the American arsenal. But he also noted: “Maybe there is a completely, sort of, boring explanation for it. But we need to find out.”
In 2017, The New York Times disclosed the existence of a predecessor unit, called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Defense Department officials said at the time that the unit and its $22 million in funding had lapsed after 2012.
People working with the program, however, said it was still in operation in 2017 and beyond, statements later confirmed by the Defense Department.
The program was begun in 2007 under the Defense Intelligence Agency and was then placed within the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, which remains responsible for its oversight. But its coordination with the intelligence community will be carried out by the Office of Naval Intelligence, as described in the Senate budget bill. The program never lapsed in those years, but little was disclosed about the post-2017 operations.
2:31 minute clip from ‘Krystal and Saagar’ on Marco Rubio and Navy UFOs (‘The Hill’ YouTube)
5:04 minute video of Tucker Carlson and Leslie Kean on legit UFOs (‘Wise Wanderer’ YouTube)
5:14 minute video of Dr Michael Salla’s take on the NYT article (‘Michael Salla’ YouTube)
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
• On August 28th, in his first news conference as defense secretary, Mark Esper (standing alongside Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford in image above) endorsed the US Space Command as the “next crucial step” in the Pentagon’s reorganization of space forces “to ensure the protection of America’s interests in space.”
• Esper also voiced support for the creation of an independent Space Force as a branch of the armed forces. But the DoD cannot move forward on the establishment of a Space Force branch of the military until Congress authorizes it. Congress is on recess until September 9th . Sources told SpaceNews that DoD officials met with congressional committee staffers over the August recess to discuss Space Force legislation.
• The Pentagon is pushing back on the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which re-designates the Air Force Space Command as the U.S. Space Force without revising Title 10 of the U.S. Code to establish a new military service as necessary. The Senate proposes a one-year transition to consider Title 10 revisions out of concerns about excessive costs and growth in the military bureaucracy. The House version does not require a transition period.
• During his confirmation hearing in July, Esper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that this is the right time to create a separate Space Force service. Referencing the creation of a separate Air Force in 1947, Esper said, “[We’ve] got to realize that it is a new domain of warfare and it requires a different organizational construct and a different way of thinking about it.” “I urge the committee to provide the necessary technical legislative authority to establish the Space Force as the sixth branch of the Armed Forces within the Department of the Air Force. I also request the committee to provide the department with the necessary resources to ensure its success.”
• [Editor’s Note] This is a stand-off between the Trump-backed independent Space Force, and the Deep State-backed US Space Command. The Deep State players in the government want this whole space service under the control of Air Force generals whom the Deep State can still manipulate, in spite of the Air Force’s recent shift away from the Deep State. Trump and the Alliance want the space service separate from the Air Force and the US Space Command, so that he can staff the military branch with non-Deep State officials.
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Wednesday gave the United States Space Command a forceful endorsement and described the standup of the new command as the “next crucial step” in the Pentagon’s reorganization of space forces.
Esper spoke on Wednesday in his first news conference as defense secretary alongside Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford. Esper insisted that he does not intend to depart from the broad goals of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which calls for DoD to work closely with allies and to modernize the U.S. military to outpace China and Russia.
On Thursday at the White House, President Trump and Vice President Pence will host an establishment ceremony with Esper and the commander of U.S. Space Command Gen. John Raymond.
“I’m excited for tomorrow’s activation of the United States Space Command to ensure the protection of America’s interests in space,” Esper said. “We must apply the necessary focus, energy and resources to the task. That is exactly what the command will do.”
Esper also voiced support for the establishment of an independent Space Force as a branch of the armed forces. But DoD cannot move forward until Congress authorizes it.
“As a unified command, the United States Space Command is the next crucial step toward the creation of an independent Space Force as an additional armed service — an independent additional armed service,” said Esper.
Congress is on recess until Sept. 9. But DoD officials have met with congressional committee staffs over the August recess to discuss Space Force legislation, sources told SpaceNews. The Pentagon specifically is pushing back on the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which re-designates the Air Force Space Command as the U.S. Space Force but does not rewrite Title 10 of the U.S. Code to establish a new military service. The Senate proposes a one-year transition after which it would consider Title 10 revisions. The House version of the NDAA does not require that transition period.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
• On July 2nd, US Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH, pictured above) was in North Conway, New Hampshire where she confirmed receiving a briefing as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee on reports by Navy fliers of UFOs in the skies over both the East and West Coasts. Said Shaheen, “It was a classified briefing so I’m not allowed to talk about it. But if you were to ask me personally do I believe there are UFOs, I think that there are events that have happened that have not been explained adequately.”
• UFOs have been in the news quite a lot in recent years. The New York Times has reported a secret Pentagon UFO program from 2007-12 (and beyond), and released Navy cockpit video footage of a “tic tac” UFO flying over the Pacific Ocean in 2004. That Navy pilot was Windham, New Hampshire’s own David Fravor who has also told his story on the History Channel’s television show “Unidentified.” Last October, The Guardian reported that the Senate Armed Services Committee was briefed on the 2004 incident described by Fravor.
• Earlier this year, Navy pilots on the East Coast also were also interviewed by the Times about encounters with UFOs. The Navy has recently relaxed its UFO reporting policies. ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos asked President Donald Trump about UFOs. Trump confirmed that he was briefed on UFOs and didn’t “particularly” believe in them.
• Shaheen happened to be in Conway on “World UFO Day”, commemorating the July 2, 1947 crash of a UFO in Roswell, NM. The goal for the day was to raise awareness of UFOs and to promote what enthusiasts call “disclosure” of the same.
U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen she confirmed during her trip to North Conway Tuesday, which was “World UFO Day,” that she’s been briefed on unidentified flying objects.
July 2 was chosen as World UFO day because it “commemorates the supposed UFO crash in 1947,” said Wikipedia, making reference to an alleged incident in Roswell, N.M.
The goal for the day was to raise awareness of UFOs and also to promote what enthusiasts call “disclosure” of the same.
Shaheen is on the Armed Services Committee of the U.S. Senate. She was not aware of World UFO Day. However, she confirmed a briefing on them.
“We have been briefed,” said Shaheen. “It was a classified briefing so I’m not allowed to talk about it. But if you were to ask me personally do I believe there are UFOs, I think that there are events that have happened that have not been explained adequately.”
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
• The Senate Armed Services Committee of the U.S. Congress is looking into a 2004 incident where US Navy pilots flying with the USS Nimitz strike group encountered, chased and filmed fast-moving unidentified objects. Reliable sources say at least two of the military pilots involved have already been interviewed. The House Armed Services Committee also received a DIA briefing on the Pentagon’s “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program” UFO project.
• The AATIP was the brainchild of the then Senate majority leader Harry Reid, and much of the work was contracted out to Bigelow Aerospace, run by former budget hotel magnate and believer in extraterrestrial visitation, Robert Bigelow. Now, some of the people formerly involved with the project, including the DIA official who ran it, Luis Elizondo, have joined “To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science”, fronted by Tom DeLonge, the former vocalist/guitarist of the pop punk band Blink-182. Their mission is “to explore exotic science and technologies … that can change the world”.
• The UFO phenomenon should not be judged by number of sightings, which has decreased, but by the compelling nature of the evidence: reports from pilots on different flights; visual sightings corroborated by radar; photos and videos regarded as genuinely intriguing by intelligence community. The term “UFO” itself has become as obsolete, usually referring to an extraterrestrial “flying saucer”, which may or may not be the case. The new “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAPs) is a term not automatically associated with ETs.
• But Congress needs to get past debates over terminology and statistical analyses to focus more on the quality of reports in a far more meaningful assessment of the phenomenon. Irrespective of the outcome, these might turn out to be the most fascinating Congressional hearings in history.
There’s renewed interest in the UFO phenomenon and it’s coming from an unexpected source: the United States Congress.
The Senate Armed Services Committee is looking into a 2004 incident where US Navy pilots flying with the USS Nimitz strike group encountered, chased and filmed fast-moving unidentified objects. Reliable sources say at least two of the military pilots involved have already been interviewed, and a radar operator was subsequently invited to get in touch.
Nick Pope and wife, Dr Elizabeth Weiss
In parallel, the House Armed Services Committee is taking an interest. Records from April show the committee received a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) briefing on the Pentagon’s UFO project, the cryptically-named AATIP. We know so little about AATIP that there’s even dispute over whether the acronym stands for Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program or Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. The very existence of the project caused a sensation, because until the New York Times broke the story in December 2017, the US government claimed it had not investigated UFOs since the 1960s when sightings were looked at in a study called Project Blue Book.
As noted in the Guardian recently, data from two civilian UFO research organisations show that the number of reported sightings has fallen in recent years. However, there’s no single, global focal point for reports (the Ministry of Defence stopped investigating UFOs in 2009) and statistics will never tell the full story.
It would be better if the phenomenon were assessed and judged not on numbers alone, but by focusing on cases where we have compelling evidence: independently submitted reports from pilots on different flights; visual sightings corroborated by radar; photos and videos regarded as genuinely intriguing by intelligence community imagery analysts. Irrespective of the methodology we use to assess the phenomenon, how can we do so in an even-handed way when the subject has so much pop culture baggage?
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
• The Trump administration’s nominee for the position of undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, Michael Griffin (in photo above), told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. military can no longer count on having technological dominance. The shift in the spread of global technology “demands that we reassert our technological leadership,” said Griffin. “Our most pressing challenge will be to field new capabilities faster than our adversaries, and faster than has been the case for decades.”
• As undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, Griffin would be dual-hatted as chief technology officer of the Department of Defense.
• Griffin said the Pentagon currently faces the “most technically challenging future defense environment we have seen since the Cold War.” The Pentagon’s number one priority should be the “rapid incorporation of those technologies into new military capabilities.” The Pentagon needs to “maintain and enhance military superiority in space.”
• William Roper, the administration’s nominee for assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition added that commercial technologies are on a path to “revolutionize warfare,” particularly artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomy.
• The Defense Department already represents over 50 percent of U.S. government expenditures in research and development.
• [Editor’s Note] This seems to be heading right down the path that Dr. Salla warned us about in a December 24, 2017 article, where the Air Force will use this opportunity to funnel billions of dollars into building up a lower-level military space program as part of an officially sanctioned “soft disclosure”, without revealing the much larger and far more advanced U.S. Navy-controlled Solar Warden space program that has been in existence since the 1980’s. Said Dr. Salla, “I’m sure major US defense contractors are salivating at the prospect of building fleets of armed antigravity spacecraft to respond to a contrived Russian (and Chinese) threat to US national security through a secret space program.”
The United States military can no longer count on having technological dominance over its adversaries. For the Pentagon, this is a pivotal moment that demands bold action, said Michael Griffin, the Trump administration’s nominee for the position of undersecretary of defense for research and engineering.
Global spread of technology that the Pentagon used to own exclusively has shifted the balance of power, a situation that “demands that we reassert our technological leadership,” Griffin told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday during a confirmation hearing for a slate of Pentagon nominees.
“Our adversaries are leveraging nearly universal access to technology and exploiting our own scientific and technological advances to threaten our deployed forces, our allies and the national and economic security of our nation,” Griffin said.
Griffin had made a similar point in written answers to questions submitted to the committee. “Our most pressing challenge will be to field new capabilities faster than our adversaries, and faster than has been the case for decades,” he wrote.
Although the Pentagon is no longer the biggest player in technology, it nonetheless has significant talent in its national labs, the defense and commercial industrial base, and in academic institutions, Griffin noted. The Defense Department represents over 50 percent of U.S. government expenditures in research and development.
“We can and must provide the leadership to focus these critical national resources,” he said. For the Pentagon, priority one should be the “rapid incorporation of those technologies into new military capabilities.”
Griffin said the Pentagon currently faces the “most technically challenging future defense environment we have seen since the Cold War.” A top priority in his job will be “protecting the technological edge of our U.S. forces.”
Griffin is expected to be swiftly confirmed. He brings a strong technology and government background to the defense research and engineering job, a new position that Congress created specifically to shake up the Pentagon’s bureaucracy and speed up the transition to technology from labs to the field.
Griffin served as NASA administrator during the George W. Bush administration. He headed the space department at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. He previously was president and chief operating officer of In-Q-Tel Inc., CEO of Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Magellan Systems division, and general manager of Orbital’s Space Systems Group.
As undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, Griffin would be dual-hatted as chief technology officer of the Department of Defense. The CTO will be the primary advisor to the secretary and the deputy secretary for all things technology.
Space Reforms
Because of his strong space background, Griffin is likely to be involved in ongoing efforts to reorganize the military’s space portfolio as mandated by Congress in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. Section 1601 of the NDAA included a number of reforms on space acquisition, management and oversight.
That point was raised by the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Jack Reed. “You have a wealth of background on space, but let me be clear that the day-to-day job for which you are being confirmed is to be the chief technology and innovation officer of the department, and not for the management of space issues.”
In his written statement, Griffin said he would pay equal attention to all “warfighting domains, including space.” Space is “essential to achieving our national security objectives,” he said. “Our adversaries understand this and have taken concerted efforts to deny this advantage.” For that reason, the Pentagon needs to “maintain and enhance military superiority in space.”
On specific space technologies such as satellites, Griffin said the Pentagon should tap the considerable commercial investment in microsatellites and cubesats to “facilitate research and enable resilience in areas such as sensing, environmental forecasting, and communications.”
With regard to space launch, he said the Pentagon should “continue to work with new and existing commercial entrants.” He also suggested the Pentagon should increase collaboration with NASA, especially as military begins to focus on a national initiative in hypersonics.
Griffin said the Chinese have conducted nearly 20 times as many hypersonic flight vehicle tests as the United States has done over a comparable period. “This is a capability they’ve developed that overflies our air defense, under-flies our missile defense and holds our sea and land bases at risk.”
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
Last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin got a comprehensive report on the
from the United States Space Force, United States Space Command, as well as the National Reconnaissance Office were present, some in person and others via video teleconference.
The summer news of the establishment of the UAPTF seemingly suggests—for the first time since the shuttering of Project Blue Book (the Air Force’s official investigations into UFOs) in 1969—that the Pentagon is now taking the subject of UFOs seriously.
