Normally where there is smoke, there is a blazing fire. In a monumental change for our government, the U.S. Defense Department said recently it’s now going to “detect, analyze and catalog” UFOs that could pose a threat to national security. After telling us since 1947 that UFOs didn’t exist our federal government, in all their infinite wisdom, are now telling us they don’t really know what’s flying around in our skies.

Many other countries worldwide have already come out of the closet on this issue. So, since the cat was already out of the bag, so to speak, I guess our folks decided to try and get ahead of the disclosure game so they wouldn’t look so stupid if someone actually showed up to the party.

I mean, it’s not like we didn’t know they have been keeping an eye on this for many years. In the past 60 years or so there have been many secret government programs looking into the unidentified aerial phenomenon story. Here is a list of some of the secret programs to get you up to speed.

Project Sign was an official U.S. Government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United State Air Force (USAF) and active for most of 1948.

Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the USAF to investigate UFOs. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951.

Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of UFOs conducted by the USAF. It started in 1952. A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased on January 19, 1970. Project Blue Book had two goals: to determine if UFOs were a threat to our national security, and to scientifically analyze all UFO-related data.

The Robertson Panel was a scientific committee which met in January 1953 headed by Howard P. Robertson. The Panel arose from a recommendation to the Intelligence Advisory Committee in December 1952 from a Central Intelligence Agency review of the U.S. Air Force investigation into the Project Blue Book program. The CIA review itself was in response to widespread reports of unidentified flying objects, especially over Washington, D.C. area during the summer of 1952. Known officially as the Washington UFO Flap, the incident took place on two consecutive weekends, July 19-20 and July 26-27 and was also seen by thousands of spectators on the ground.

Late on the evening of July 19, 1952, air traffic controllers at Washington National Airport spotted a curious cluster of blips on their radar screens. Similar blips were sighted by radar operators at Andrews and Bolling Air Force bases. National’s control tower contacted commercial aircraft in the vicinity and asked their pilots if they had seen anything unusual. Why yes, Capt. S.C. “Casey” Pierman of Capital Air Flight 807 radioed back. He saw six bright lights streaking across the sky, “like falling stars without tails.” Then, the next weekend, it happened all over again. National Airport’s air traffic controllers tracked a dozen unexplained blips flying right over the U.S. Capital and the White House. Fighter jets were scrambled, and on their second circuit, pilots saw bright lights speeding away from them. “I tried to make contact with the bogies below 1,000 feet,” jet pilot William Patterson later told investigators. “I was at my maximum speed but I ceased chasing them because I saw no chance of overtaking them.”

The Condon Committee was the informal name of the University of Colorado UFO Project, a group funded by the USAF from 1966 to 1968 at the University of Colorado to study unidentified flying objects under the direction of physicist Edward Condon. The result of its work, formally titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, and known as the Condon Report, their findings appeared in 1968.

Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was an unclassified but unpublicized investigatory effort funded by our government to study UFOs. The program was first made public on December 16, 2017. The program began in 2007, with funding of $22 million over the five years until the available appropriations were ended in 2012. The program began in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. The only reason we found out about the AATIP program was because of three leaked Navy videos. It seems that Navy fighter pilots have reported close encounters with unidentified aerial vehicles, including several that were dangerously close. The Department of Defense finally released three videos, known as Go Fast, Gimbal & Flir, taken by U.S. Navy pilots revealing mysterious flying objects that to this day remain unidentified. The footage, which shows unidentified objects flying at incredibly high speeds in the Earth’s atmosphere along with audio of Navy pilots expressing shock and awe of what they were witnessing, was initially leaked in 2007 and 2017. In a turn of events, the Navy actually began formalizing a reporting process recently for pilots to report incidents of UFO sightings, saying in an April 2019 statement that there have been “a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated airspace in recent years.” “These kinds of incursions can be both a security risk and pose a safety hazard for both Navy and Air Force aviation. For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the USAF takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report,” the 2019 statement said. This is strange because up until recently it was career-ending to report such phenomena.

Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), run by Robert Bigelow was reportedly contracted under the auspices of the AATIP program to study UFO reports and purported paranormal phenomena in secret. As an independent contractor the organization is not held to the same rules of the governments Freedom of Information Act. So, you will never find out what they are up to.

Now, the question you should be asking yourself, is why would your government be spending billions of your tax dollars and now holding secret congressional hearings to investigate something they have said repeatedly over the years doesn’t exist? It was announced earlier this year that yet another government program, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, has been launched. What are these folks up to? We will take a closer look next month.

Keep the Faith!