The Pentagon's Mysterious UFO Program

The NY Times recently reported on The Pentagon's Mysterious UFO Program - the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program - a 2007 initiative that has been confirmed to have received a decent chunk of funding to investigate unknown objects in the sky. The funding, $600 billion, "dried up" in 2012 and not too many details are known about what work was actually done in those five years.

Sra Seager, an MIT astrophysicist, cautions against reading too much into it:

"When people claim to observe truly unusual phenomena, sometimes it’s worth investigating seriously," she said. But, she added, "what people sometimes don’t get about science is that we often have phenomena that remain unexplained."

That's entirely fair and agreeable but the US government rarely acknowledges anything to do with UFOs - alien or otherwise - so it's vaguely refreshing to hear this talked about a bit more openly.

It's a good read and, hopefully, just the first of many pieces to discuss the work and findings of Bigelow Aerospace, the company contracted to research the data. Here's my favorite quote from Mr. Bigelow himself:

"Internationally, we are the most backward country in the world on this issue. Our scientists are scared of being ostracized, and our media is scared of the stigma. China and Russia are much more open and work on this with huge organizations within their countries. Smaller countries like Belgium, France, England and South American countries like Chile are more open, too. They are proactive and willing to discuss this topic, rather than being held back by a juvenile taboo."

At the very least, watch the accompanying video.