To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science

Female Fighter Pilot Who Saw the Tic Tac UFO

June 6, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Petula Dvorak May 24, 2021 (washingtonpost.com)

• Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich of Annapolis, Maryland is a retired US Navy fighter pilot, a mother of three, and a popular guest at the Pentagon and Capitol Hill being questioned about the day in 2004 that she saw the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO from the seat of her Super Hornet fighter jet in the skies near San Diego. “My life right now is very surreal,” said Dietrich, 41. Her testimony has been in high demand since the President signed into law a bill requesting the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense to provide a declassified report on everything the government knows about UFOs/UAPs. It is due to be released in June.

• On November 14, 2004, Dietrich was a newly winged pilot on a regular training flight with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group over the ocean off of San Diego when something moving fast and erratically came into view. Her boss, Commander Dave Fravor, told her to hang back and be his wingman while he flew closer in to check it out. The object began mirroring his movements and then just disappeared. A video recording from that day captured a white object shaped like a Tic Tac, along with the howls and exclamations of the pilots who were tracking it. The video was released by ‘To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science’ in 2017, and the video gained a lot of traction after the Pentagon verified its authenticity.

• As soon as the pilots returned to their aircraft carrier that day, they reported everything they saw and how it happened. “We all collectively lost our minds,” said Dietrich. “There was no denying it, everybody had heard us on the radio.” Even the technicians back at the ship saw the object on their radar. In the days after the UFO sighting, Fravor and Dietrich’s colleagues were merciless. They looped alien-invader movies “Men in Black” and “Independence Day” to show on the ship’s channels. They left tinfoil hats all over the place. The daily newsletters had little green men cartoons. They had to laugh it off, saying that if she and her fellow pilots had been flying solo, “… we wouldn’t have said anything”.

• Dietrich has kept a low profile over the past 17 years, flying more than 200 combat missions and 57 mounted combat patrols and ground assault convoy missions over two deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. More recently, Dietrich has been teaching at George Washington University and at the U.S. Naval Academy. “People have found me throughout the years,” she said. “I just was an eyewitness to something in the course of my normal duties . . . that somehow makes me a portal.” She is a hero to the believers and she listens patiently to debunkers who found her private number and screamed at her over the phone.

• When asked why she has agreed to talk to reporters including her recent appearance in a UFO segment on CBS’ 60 Minutes, says, “I do feel a duty and obligation. I was in a taxpayer-funded aircraft, doing my job as a military officer. Citizens have questions. It’s not classified. If I can share or help give a reasonable response, I will. I don’t want to be someone who’s saying ‘no comment.’” Dietrich has decided to be open about it now because she knows other pilots have seen similar UFOs but have kept quiet – afraid of the conspiracy realm stigma.

• Dietrich is also keeping busy with her three kids, ages 2, 4 and 6. One of them was the hit of that day’s pre-K show-and-tell when he brought in the red-and-white helmet Dietrich was wearing that November day in 2004. Another was commanding her from the back seat during the telephone interview: “Window open!” followed by a chorus of squeals and shrieks from the back seat. “No, I [don’t] have time to think about it too much,” she sighed. “But I will pay someone to abduct me right now.”

She picked up the kids after finishing her last call at work — there was some whining

in the back seat — and raced to her home near Annapolis for family dinnertime. In between, she answered questions about the UFO.

“My life right now is very surreal,” said Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich, who is a 41-year-old mother of three, a retired fighter pilot and one of the few people who gets regularly hauled into the Pentagon or before Congress for further questioning about the day in 2004 she saw a UFO — the Pentagon prefers to call them unidentified aerial phenomena — from the seat of her Super Hornet in the skies near San Diego.

Dietrich is pragmatic, forthright and has a swaggery, pilot’s sense of humor about this thing she’s been living with for nearly 17 years.

Thanks to a bizarro little line in last year’s coronavirus relief bill, the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense are ordered to generate a report on everything the government knows about UAPs — including Dietrich’s sighting. It’s coming next month, and it’s going to be D.C.’s hottest summer read.

And now that UFOs join the pandemic and insurrection on the congressional agenda (when it comes to the weird year contest, 2021 is telling 2020 to “hold my beer”), Dietrich’s callers have moved from mostly the fringe, stalkery UFO fanatics who just want to be near her, to mainstream media freaks like me. She patiently plays along.

“I do feel a duty and obligation,” Dietrich said, when I asked her why she took my call and why she agreed to talk to “60 Minutes,” her national media debut. “I was in a taxpayer-funded aircraft, doing my job as a military officer,” she said. “Citizens have questions. It’s not classified. If I can share or help give a reasonable response, I will. I don’t want to be someone who’s saying ‘no comment.’ ”

So, on to the events of Nov. 14, 2004.

She was a newly winged pilot on a regular training flight with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group that day when something moving fast and erratically came into view.

Dietrich’s boss, Cmdr. Dave Fravor, told her to hang back and be his wingman while he flew closer in to check it out. The object began mirroring his movements and then just disappeared.

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Tom DeLonge Joins Ex-Government Agent to Hunt for Truth About UFOs

July 8, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Natasha Wynarczyk June 28, 2020 (dailystar.co.uk)

• Tom DeLonge, the former rock star with the band Blink-182, has teamed up with Luis Elizondo who ran the Pentagon’s UFO research program for eight years, to create a television documentary called “Unidentified”. DeLonge and Elizondo use eyewitness ¬accounts and -unseen footage to ¬reveal details of the US government’s alleged awareness – and cover-up – of extra-terrestrial life forms visiting Earth.

• “My gut tells me we are going to be able to pull this all together,” DeLonge told the Daily Star. “One of the biggest ¬misconceptions is that we are only experiencing these phenomena in modern time. There are a lot of unanswered questions about a lot of things going back thousands of years. In ancient Indian texts, for example, there’s descriptions of flying crafts with twisting -engines, similar to what people have seen in the past 60 years. I have a feeling we are going to get to a place where our ¬understanding of things such as the pyramids might change as we learn more about what these are and where they come from.”

• DeLonge has long been a believer in UFOs. In 2017, he founded the institute, ‘To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science’, and became one of America’s most prominent UFO researchers. Last September, the U.S. Navy admitted that some of the ¬declassified videos published by ‘To The Stars’ were in fact “unidentified aerial phenomena”. DeLonge says, “People have asked me…if I feel vindicated because I was out there in the front taking arrows for everybody. I actually don’t. I signed up to be that person for a little bit of time until the facts came out and started turning the tide of public opinion.” “So I don’t go around going: ‘Oh, I told you so’. I go around saying: ‘Well if you thought that was a lot to digest, just wait for the next few years’.”

• Last year DeLonge worked on the first series of ‘Unidentified’ with Elizondo. “I’ve had a long time learning about this stuff, and being around people such as Luis and my team who know a lot more about it than I do,” said DeLonge. “It’s given me the ability to look at something that is hard to digest for a lot of people.” In 2012, Elizondo sensationally quit the Pentagon to become a freelance investigator, as he believed the US government was covering up the true extent of UFOs. “This is a serious topic that affects us all,” says Elizondo. “We are now at a point where there is so much overwhelming evidence out there.”

• “UFO sightings in the U.S. picked up after the country started increasing its nuclear ¬activities during World War Two,” notes Elizondo. “There is some information that shows unidentified aerial phenomena may have interest in our nuclear capabilities.” “If something is flying over your most sensitive facilities and has the ability to interfere with them, it can be a big problem.”

• DeLonge says the ¬final episode of last year’s season of ‘Unidentified’ was “really eye-opening”. “Luis and I met with members of the Italian government… We spoke to one individual and his partner who were involved in an investigation in Sicily and the Mediterranean.” “They had photos of objects, they had some damage done to a helicopter, a lot of sightings.” “[T]here was a pattern of things that had been happening around the world that were definitely going on there.”

• “The last conversation Tom and I have on camera at the end of series one is: ‘Are the American people really prepared to handle what comes next?’” says Elizondo. “We have now taken this conversation to the point where the Department of Defense and our military apparatus has acknowledged the reality of the phenomena. I think we are beginning to accept the fact there’s things in our airspace behaving in ways we don’t understand. We know these things are real.”

EX-Blink-182 star Tom DeLonge has teamed up with a ¬former US government agent to finally uncover the truth about UFOs.

Tom and Luis Elizondo, who spent eight years running a ¬secret Pentagon programme that investigated alien sightings in America, are presenting a TV documentary series called Unidentified.

In the show the pair use eyewitness ¬accounts and ¬unseen footage to ¬reveal details of the US government’s alleged awareness – and potential cover-up – of extra-terrestrial life forms.

And Tom, 44, reckons we might one day even discover a link between ancient structures, such as the pyramids, and alien visitors.
“My gut tells me we are going to be able to pull this all together,” he tells the Daily Star.

“One of the biggest ¬misconceptions is that we are only experiencing these phenomena in modern time. There are a lot of unanswered questions about a lot of things going back thousands of years.

“In ancient Indian texts, for example, there’s descriptions of flying crafts with twisting ¬engines, similar to what people have seen in the past 60 years.
“I have a feeling we are going to get to a place where our ¬understanding of things such as the pyramids might change as we learn more about what these are and where they come from.”

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UFO Sightings Frequently Reported Across Western Pennsylvania

August 11, 2019
ExoNews Editor

Listen to “E63 8-11-19 UFO Sightings Frequently Reported Across Western Pennsylvania” on Spreaker.
Article by Stephen Huba July 27, 2019 (triblive.com)

• Retired journalist Bob Gatty, 76, originally reported on the Kecksburg UFO incident for the Greensburg Tribune-Review, when on December 9th, 1965, people across six states and Canada reported seeing a fireball streak across the sky before crashing into a wooded area in Mt. Pleasant Township, Pennsylvania, a southeastern suburb of Pittsburgh. (Note: The Army and State Police cordoned off the area, and claimed that they found nothing there in the woods. But locals have come forward to say they saw a military truck removing an acorn-shaped object the size of a Volkswagen Beetle with hieroglyphics on it.)

• The Kecksburg UFO sighting has become part of local lore, but Gatty says, “It’s not going away. Whether you believe or don’t believe in this stuff, the fact remains there is a lot happening for some reason.” Reports of unexplained aerial phenomena are getting serious attention from Congress, the U.S. military and longtime UFO watchers. “Congress apparently is taking this stuff… seriously,” says Gatty.

• UFO researcher Stan Gordon, 69, has spent the past 54 years investigating the Kecksburg incident. Gordon says that there has been a recent “surge” in sightings of unexplained phenomena in Western Pennsylvania. Says Gordon, “We’ve had a surge of UFO and Bigfoot activity in the area in the last couple of weeks. Many of these sightings are very detailed reports… from credible people that you cannot easily dismiss.” Most end up in the growing repository of unexplained phenomena, with no conclusive explanation.

• Gordon continues to report UFO sightings in Pennsylvania on his website, StanGordon.info. Pennsylvania is ranked seventh in total UFO sightings in the U.S., with 3,937 UFOs reported since 1947. There have been 84 sightings so far in 2019, which already matches the total for 2018. The most recent was a sighting over Greensburg on July 5th of a red/orange round object moving across the sky at night, lasting about six minutes.

• On July 4th, an orange-red sphere was spotted at night in both Erie and Cecil, in Washington County. On June 28th, a shiny silver saucer was seen over Mt. Lebanon. After about 15 minutes, it disappeared. On June 23rd, an Elizabeth resident reported seeing five amber-colored, circular shapes move in all directions in the sky, and then form an arrowhead shape before disappearing after about 4 minutes.

• Peter Davenport, director for the National UFO Reporting Center, has been collecting UFO data for 25 years. In 2004, Davenport presented a paper to the Mutual UFO Network on the use of “passive radar” for detecting UFOs in the near-earth environment. This was acknowledged by the CIA and the FBI. Davenport says that the US government has known about the UFO phenomenon for a long time. Solving the mystery of UFOs will require “a government that still serves the people”.

• UFO sightings by Navy fighter pilots have reached the highest echelons of the US government, according to the ‘To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science’. Former Pentagon intelligence official Christopher Mellon, an adviser to the Academy, wrote in the Washington Post in 2018 that the existence of UFOs is no longer in question. What is lacking is a commitment from the Defense Department to investigate the growing body of evidence from the military. Said Mellon, “It is time to set aside taboos regarding ‘UFOs’ and instead listen to our pilots and radar operators.”

While the Kecksburg UFO sighting has become a quaint part of local lore, more recent reports of unexplained aerial phenomena are getting serious attention from Congress, the U.S. military and longtime UFO watchers.

**reproduction of Kecksburg “acorn” UFO**

“It’s not going away,” said retired journalist Bob Gatty. “Whether you believe or don’t believe in this stuff, the fact remains there is a lot happening for some reason.”

Gatty, who originally reported on the Kecksburg incident for the Tribune-Review in 1965, recently noted on his blog NotFakeNews.biz that the Navy has issued new guidelines to fighter pilots regarding UFO sightings, and members of Congress are seeking more frequent briefings on the subject.

“Congress apparently is taking this stuff — at least the Navy reports — seriously,” said Gatty, 76, a former Sykesville, Jefferson County, resident who lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Meanwhile, longtime local UFO researcher Stan Gordon said there has been a “surge” in sightings of unexplained phenomena in Western Pennsylvania — whether extraterrestrial or not.

“We keep getting reports of very strange things that people see around here,” said Gordon, 69, of Greensburg. “We’ve had a surge of UFO and Bigfoot activity in the area in the last couple of weeks. Many of these sightings are very detailed reports.”

While sightings usually spike in the spring and summer, when people are outside more, reports in 2018 and 2019 have been more consistently year-round, he said. Sightings are mostly of unexplained things in the sky or of earthbound cryptids — animals such as Bigfoot, whose existence is unsubstantiated.

Gordon has spent the past 54 years investigating the Kecksburg incident, when on Dec. 9, 1965, people across six states and Canada reported seeing a fireball streak across the sky before crashing into a wooded area in Mt. Pleasant Township.

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Tom DeLonge: America Has Been Investigating UFOs for Years. Time For the Rest of Us to Catch Up

June 6, 2019
ExoNews Editor

by Tom DeLonge May 30, 2019 (newsweek.com)

• When Tom DeLonge was touring with his band, Blink-182, during the early 1990’s, he read Timothy Good’s book, ‘Above Top Secret’, which detailed a historical chronology of UFO events. Learning that UFOs and extraterrestrials were for real changed the course of Tom’s life. He became consumed with it. ‘Who or what are they? Who actually knows the facts and holds the most credible evidence?’ He began to weed through what was real and what was disinformation.

• Tom studied accounts of UFOs during World War II, and the societal changes that began in 1947 when thousands of people began to witness ‘flying saucers’ in the sky. He saw how the public accepted the government’s cover-up of the phenomenon with decades of denial and ridicule. Still, Tom’s conclusion was that it would be naïve to think that UFOs don’t exist. “[T]he more I’ve been able to share my ideas with people I respected, the more sense of community I felt. And I want other people to feel that way too,” says DeLonge.

• More recently, Tom began regular communications with people at the highest levels of our intelligence agencies and military branches, and was encouraged to create the To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science (TTSA). TTSA is an organization that promotes the truth about UFOs and the extraterrestrial presence through a combination of scientific research, entertainment, and innovations in aerospace engineering, utilizing as members some of the most experienced, connected, and passionately curious minds from the U.S. intelligence community that have been operating under the shadows of top-secrecy for decades.

• TTSA has now partnered with HISTORY (formerly the History Channel) to produce “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation TM.” This six part, non-fiction series premiering on Friday, May 31 st will give the public an opportunity to see newly authenticated evidence and footage; learn the common characteristics of how these UAP move and operate; and see interviews from eyewitnesses and former military personnel who have never spoken out before. This series will hopefully spark the public to ask questions and look for answers. This information impacts not only our perception of who we are as human beings but also our understanding of where we’re going and how we treat each other. And that might be the greatest change of all.

About 25 years ago, I read a non-fiction book about UFOs while on tour with Blink-182 that blew my mind.
This was a time before smartphones, so being on a tour bus for weeks on end meant we were forced to keep ourselves occupied if we were bored. I chose to read. Timothy Good’s Above Top Secret detailed a historical chronology of UFO events in conjunction with domestic and foreign space programs and militaries. It wasn’t just a solitary event, but a chain of occurrences. I remember repeating as I was reading, “Oh my god, this is massive.” I probably annoyed the hell out of my bandmates.

Before reading that book, I thought the idea of E.T. and unknown flying vehicles were confined to the realm of science-fiction, which I’d always loved as a kid. But I had no idea these crafts were real and in fact interacting with nuclear missiles, NASA missions and facilities, astronauts, and even civilians.

The book opened my eyes to the enormity of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), filling me with curiosity and propelling me on a hunt for knowledge that quite literally changed the course of my life. I became consumed with questions about UAP: How do they travel at such incredible speeds? Who or what are they? Who actually knows the facts and holds the most credible evidence?

I followed many paths of discovery in the field—some peculiar, but all exciting. Back then, I was young and naive, and had trouble separating fact from fiction. As any serious researcher will tell you, UAP and its attendant fields are filled with truly crazy misinformation from countless unreliable characters.

As a result, I undertook the project of seeking out legitimate sources, and learned that for most of history, people thought it was crazy to even think about the possibility of UAP. Things briefly started to change after 1947, when numerous people, both pedestrian and high-level military and government personnel, started witnessing unidentified objects in the sky; military pilots, U.S. presidents, scientists, doctors, lawyers, farmers, politicians, teachers, and children.

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History Orders UFO Docu-Series from Tom DeLonge

March 27, 2019
ExoNews Editor

by Jessica Pena March 13, 2019 (tvseriesfinale.com)

• The History Channel, along with A+E Originals, has announced it has ordered a six-episode, one-hour limited television docu-series entitled: “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation” to debut in May. The show’s executive producer is Tom DeLonge (pictured above) of the ‘To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science’, along with ‘To The Stars’ team members Luis Elizondo and Chris Mellon who are among its roster of scientists, engineers and intelligence experts. The UFO docu-series will “reveal newly authenticated evidence and footage, interviews from eyewitnesses and former military personnel who have never spoken out before and extensive breakthroughs in understanding the technology behind these unknown phenomena in our skies,” says DeLonge.

• Former DIA military intelligence official Luis Elizondo and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Intelligence Chris Mellon were instrumental in the release of a New York Times’ exposé about the Pentagon’s secret UFO research program, the ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’, in December 2017, along with several authentic videos of UFO encounters by the US military.

• “This is not a UFO hunting show,” said Eli Lehrer, Executive Vice President and Head of Programming at the History Channel, “but a series that will hopefully provoke a cultural conversation about unexplained phenomena and allow our viewers to ultimately draw their own conclusions. Tom’s curiosity and passion for this subject matter, combined with his team, are the perfect partners to deliver this breakthrough series.”

• DeLonge’s ‘To The Stars’ team also includes retired Program Director for Advanced Systems at Lockheed Martin’s Skunkworks, Steve Justice; renowned CIA researcher and quantum physicist, Hal Puthoff; and retired senior CIA member, Jim Semivan. The team will spearhead the disclosure of efforts being made to change government policy surrounding UFOs, and produce tangible evidence for the existence of UFOs ever assembled.

• “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation” will reveal newly authenticated UFO evidence and footage, interviews from eyewitnesses and former military personnel who have never spoken out before, and extensive breakthroughs in understanding the technology behind these Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Says DeLonge, “I think everyone that watches the show will walk away with questions answered and a feeling of, “Wow, I get it now.”

New York, NY – March 12, 2019 – In December of 2017, The New York Times published a stunning front-page exposé about the Pentagon’s mysterious UFO program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). Featuring an interview with former military intelligence official and Special Agent In- Charge, Luis Elizondo, who confirmed the existence of the hidden government program, the controversial story was the focus of worldwide attention. Previously run by Elizondo, AATIP was created to research and investigate Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) including numerous videos of reported encounters, three of which were released to a shocked public in 2017. Elizondo resigned after expressing to the government that these UAPs could pose a major threat to our national security and not enough was being done to deal with them or address our potential vulnerabilities. Now, as a part of HISTORY’s groundbreaking new six-part, one-hour limited series “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation(TM),” Elizondo is speaking out for the first time with Tom DeLonge, co-founder and President of To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science and Chris Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Intelligence, to expose a series of startling encounters and embark on fascinating new investigations that will urge the public to ask questions and look for answers. From A+E Originals, DeLonge serves as executive producer.

Says DeLonge, “With this show, the real conversation can finally begin. I’m thankful to HISTORY for giving the To The Stars Academy team of world-class scientists, engineers and intelligence experts the opportunity to tell the story in a comprehensive and compelling way. I think everyone that watches the show will walk away with questions answered and a feeling of, “wow, I get it now.”‘

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UFO Sightings May Be Falling, but Congress is Still Paying Attention

October 30, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by Nick Pope October 15, 2018 (theguardian.com)

• 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?

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Former Blink-182 Vocalist Tom DeLonge On a Mission to Prove UFOs Are Real

October 27, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by Eric Mueller October 12, 2018 (mandatory.com)

• One year ago this month, Tom DeLonge’s ‘To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science’ launched. The academy is divided into three divisions: aerospace, entertainment, and science. The net result has been Tom and his fellow compatriots confirming that UFOs are real. But an “unidentified flying object” is a vague term. It could mean any number of things, not all of them alien.

• To The Stars Academy also released some Department of Defense videos of UFOs. They claim it’s only the beginning. Up until now, the U.S. government has denied all UFO accounts.

• We learned last year that one of the To The Stars Academy’s principals is Luis Elizondo. Elizondo, it turned out, had headed the Pentagon’s $22 million ‘Advanced Aerospace Threats Program’ (AATP) to investigate unidentified aerial threats. The AATP only lasted for five years until 2012 when funding ran out. Elements of the program remain classified and many speculate that the program may still exist in some capacity. “We may not be alone,” Elizondo said publicly this time last year.

• The number of UFO sightings drastically rose, then declined, over the past 28 years. The National UFO Reporting Center reported only 315 UFO sightings in 1990, but by 1998, the number spiked to 2,000 UFO sightings. The number went up to 4,000 for 2006 and peaked at 8,670 in 2014. It has since gone down drastically, to only 1,329 at the end of June 2018. Are we too busy staring down at our new smart phones now to look up at the sky?

One year ago this month, To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science launched. The public benefit corporation was founded by Tom DeLonge, the former co-lead vocalist of blink-182 and the current lead guitarist and vocalist of Angels & Airwaves. The corporation is divided into three divisions: aerospace, entertainment, and science. Delonge originally became interested in all things otherworldly while doing research for a series of graphic novels. During a four-hour discussion with several former government officials at the launch of the corporation, he confirmed that UFOs are real.

No, that does not mean that aliens will suddenly invade our ears and switch bodies. An “unidentified flying object” is a vague term; it could mean any number of things, not all of them alien. Given the technology we have, from heat-sensing to enhanced images to metal detection, it’s amazing that anything is unidentifiable anymore.

It Doesn’t Get Much More Official Than This Guy

Luis Elizondo worked for the Department of Defense. He is the former director of programs to investigate unidentified aerial threats and headed the Advanced Aerospace Threats Program. The AATP formed in 2007 with a $22 million budget. The budget may sound big, but in context, it was small enough to go unnoticed by the public and unacknowledged by the government.

The AATP only lasted for five years when funding ran out. Elements of the program remain classified and many speculate that the program may still exist in some capacity. This is basically the plot to Men in Black and we’re obsessed.

“We may not be alone,” Elizondo said publicly this time last year.

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In This Time of Tension and Anxiety, UFOs Are Back in the News

June 25, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by Hedley Burrell Jun 10, 2018 (www.heraldtribune.com)

• Stories of UFOs have ebbed and flowed over the decades, but now there is new chatter of a different kind. Today mainstream news outlets featuring heavily credentialed experts weighing in on the ongoing UFO phenomenon. In December (2017), CNN announced: “A former Pentagon official who led a … government program to research potential UFOs said … he believes there is evidence of alien life reaching Earth.”

• The New York Post summarized events: “… The New York Times released the results of an investigation into the U.S. military’s monitoring of UFO claims and came up with… a video released by the Pentagon that shows U.S. Navy pilots tracking the movements of a totally unexplainable aircraft. Now, a local news team from Las Vegas has obtained a military report that offers even more details on the sighting and the story is somehow becoming even more bizarre than it already was.” “The report explains in great detail how a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier played a strange game of hide and seek with multiple Anomalous Aerial Vehicles (AAVs) that demonstrated flight characteristics that should be downright impossible to pull off.”

• Then there was a Washington Post story describing how a rock star had “mustered a team of credentialed experts to put mysterious incidents on your radar.” “UFOs”, the headline said, “are suddenly a serious news story.” The rock star, the Post reported, was former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge, who launched To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science. It will investigate the “outer edges of science.”

• Christopher Mellon, an adviser to the academy who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, wrote a Washington Post opinion piece that carried this headline: “The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care?”

• What we have today are heavy-duty experts taking UFOs seriously. “My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone,” declared Luis Elizondo, the former Pentagon official in the CNN interview.

• It is intriguing to think of a new generation of journalists having to decide what attention, if any, should be given to new assertions that “the truth is out there,” to borrow a tagline from “The X-Files.”

Long ago, as a young reporter, I was well aware of UFO stories.

Out of curiosity, I read mainstream media pieces as well as tabloid tales. What repeatedly struck me was this: As with much else in life, we were reluctant to simply accept that we didn’t immediately know the answer to the mystery of the moment.

In any event, I would not have imagined that some six decades later, UFO stories would still be around, with heavily credentialed experts weighing in.

The stories ebbed and flowed over the decades, but now there is new chatter of a different kind.
In the past, I suspected that reports of sightings were likely to increase when popular entertainment featured space sagas, but I also thought they were a reflection of universal tensions and anxiety.

Given that these are truly tense and anxious times, I started to look around for UFO-type talk — or, rather, the reporting of same. I searched for some indication of renewed and perhaps more intense attention.

I found it, and it even had a new spin — namely an assertion that the subject was “serious.”

In December, CNN announced: “A former Pentagon official who led a … government program to research potential UFOs said … he believes there is evidence of alien life reaching Earth.” Other media outlets also weighed in. What was going on?

Last month, The New York Post summarized and updated events:
“UFO sightings are a dime a dozen … but back in December, The New York Times released the results of an investigation into the U.S. military’s monitoring of UFO claims and came up with something totally wild. It was a video released by the Pentagon that shows U.S. Navy pilots tracking the movements of a totally unexplainable aircraft. Now, a local news team from Las Vegas has obtained a military report that offers even more details on the sighting and the story is somehow becoming even more bizarre than it already was.”

The account continued: “The report explains in great details how a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier played a strange game of hide and seek with multiple Anomalous Aerial Vehicles (AAVs) that demonstrated flight characteristics that should be downright impossible to pull off.”
So there was all this.

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Tag: To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science