Tom DeLonge on Releasing UFO Videos: ‘I Can’t Believe We Pulled This Off’
Article by Patrick Doyle May 7, 2020 (rollingstone.com)
• In late April, the US Department of Defense declassified three videos of UFOs taken by Navy jets – one over the Pacific Ocean off of San Diego in 2004, and two others over the Atlantic Ocean off of Florida and Virginia in 2015. These were the same videos that were published in December 2017 by the New York Times, and provided by ‘To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences’, a UFO research organization headed by rock guitarist Tom DeLonge (pictured above). And these are the same videos which the US Navy acknowledged in 2019 that they were indeed real and not fabricated.
• DeLonge sees this official government release as the culmination of a long journey that began when he walked away from his band, Blink-182, in 2015 to spend more time developing ‘To the Stars’ as a “transmedia” experience working with former intelligence officials to uncover information about unidentified aerial phenomena. DeLonge feels that the government acknowledged the videos because of the investigative work his team is doing. “I can’t believe we pulled this off,” he said. “It’s a big deal, and so much more is coming. I think people need to buckle up.”
• DeLonge was struck by how many people somehow missed the original release of the videos in 2017 or the Navy’s acknowledgment of them in 2019. At the time that the New York Times published the videos, they also revealed that until 2012, the Pentagon had a program to study UFOs as well. “I think it’s something we should all be focusing on right now, because it’s a big, big thing that’s gonna change the world as we know it,” said DeLonge.
• DeLonge points out that the government works for us, the people. There were leaks at the Pentagon, “… and basically we caught them dealing with something, and now they’re forced to recognize it and acknowledge it.” So the government is like, ‘Alright it’s time to start talking about it because Tom and his rascals are putting our feet to the fire,’ you know?”
• The Gimbal UFO video that was recorded by Navy jets from the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier battle group off of Florida in 2015 is DeLonge’s favorite. * When he first saw the video, all he could say was, “’Oh my God, this is the real deal.’ I have never seen a UFO that clear before.” “[Y]ou can see the plasma on the bottom, you can see the blurry edges. You see all the things that are just absolutely impossible with any technology that we know of,” says DeLonge.
• “Steve Justice, who runs our aerospace division, was one of the top guys at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works,” said DeLonge. “Steve is looking at this going, ‘Wow, this is not something anyone can do on earth right now.’ But the scarier part could be if Russia or China or someone else did create something that could do that, that’s a big deal. It’s a game changer and we should be all over it. So either way, we need to focus on this.”
• When people say, “oh, it could be anything.” No. The definition is incredible with these Navy jet cameras. “[I]t literally is like taking a black and white photo with the exact amount of clarity,” says DeLonge. “That’s why the pilots were so animated. They knew that this was a special event.”
• When skeptics claim that the Navy’s UFO videos could be the result of “bugs in the imaging code” of the fighter jet video recorders, DeLonge points out that there wasn’t just video footage. There were trained observers who saw it. There was also radar data from the absolute top radar systems that have ever been invented. This is coupled with satellite data. There was a DoD investigation. “So we’re not saying, ‘Hey, this is an unidentified aerial object because one guy saw something.’ We’re saying it because it’s been captured on so many systems and been confirmed by so many different groups, so I think it’s a really big deal.” “For someone just to say it’s a bug or a glitch is literally pure ignorance,” says DeLonge. “[I]t just shows the close-mindedness of people that are supposed to be some of the smarter people here. It just blows my mind. I hold these guys up to a higher standard than that.”
• “To the Stars Academy made all the noise,” says DeLonge. “We’ve been working tirelessly to get all the senators and congressman briefed… (and making) sure the info is getting passed around. We’ve been giving advice on national security policy… and basically have all the data flow up to the proper think tanks.” “Now that the cat is out of the bag, …what you’re seeing is them having meetings and saying, ‘What are we going to do? Are we going to try to act like this isn’t real? I’m not going to be the guy… that has to get hauled before Congress and be deposed on CNN live.”
• Trump has “talked about the fact that he’s had a (Navy UFO) briefing,” DeLonge says. “I tend to wonder when he says things like, “I don’t particularly know if these are real or not.” “I don’t talk to the President. I just know that he got briefed…. I think whatever his reasons are for saying the things he’s saying are probably because behind the scenes, there’s a lot more discussions on how to best handle this with the public. So you know, I’m excited that he mentioned it again, because I think it helps.”
Last week, the Department of Defense released three declassified videos of “unexplained aerial phenomena.” The videos — filmed by Navy pilots in 2004 and 2015 — show “objects hurtling through the sky, one rotating against the wind, and pilots can be heard expressing confusion and awe,” wrote the New York Times, who published two of the videos in 2017 at the same time as To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences, a company that researches unidentified aerial phenomena co-founded by Tom DeLonge, the original singer-guitarist of Blink-182. A third video, of a 2015 incident off the East Coast, was released by To the Stars the following year. Though the Navy acknowledged that the videos were not fabricated in 2019, for people still in doubt, the Department of Defense officially released the videos last week and made them available for download “to clear up any misconceptions by the public.”
While the Pentagon did not offer any more hints on what we are looking at, DeLonge saw the official government acknowledgment as the culmination of a long journey — one that began when he walked away from his band in 2015 to spend more time developing To the Stars, a “transmedia” experience for music, books, films, and UFO research. DeLonge works alongside former intelligence officials to uncover information about unidentified aerial phenomena, and helped expose the Pentagon’s mysterious UFO program in 2017.
“It’s wild,” says DeLonge, who feels that the government released the statement because of the investigative work his team is doing. “I can’t believe we pulled this off. It’s a big deal, and so much more is coming. I think people need to buckle up.” We talked to DeLonge — whose History Channel show Unidentified is gearing up for its second season — about the UFO videos, his life in isolation, and the possibility of a reunion with Blink-182.
What was your reaction when the government officially released these videos?
My first reaction was how many people didn’t see when the Navy acknowledged the videos were real, the objects were real, and UFOs were real. That all happened a year ago. And then before that, the New York Times blasted out that UFOs were real and the Pentagon was studying them, so it’s funny that this came out now, with the Department of Defense, which is obviously higher than the Navy. It just shows you how much news is out there and how many people are out there, and how much work we have to do.
I did not see it coming, but I do know some of the inside leaks that are happening at the Pentagon. And they’re not allowed to lie, and basically we caught them dealing with something, and now they’re forced to recognize it and acknowledge it. They do work for us. They’re like, “Alright it’s time to start talking about it because Tom and his rascals are putting our feet to the fire,” you know? I think it’s something we should all be focusing on right now, because it’s a big, big thing that’s gonna change the world as we know it.
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