Why the US continues to fund UFO research

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

One of the most unusual "professional" holidays - the day of the ufologist - is celebrated on July 2. Tens of thousands of enthusiasts and explorers around the world are watching the skies in the hope of unraveling the mystery of unidentified flying objects. In the United States, this issue is given close attention at the highest level.

Another surge of interest in the UFO topic arose after it became known about the Pentagon's program, in which the department was collecting evidence of military pilots about encounters with UFOs. Experts note that Washington continues to allocate funds for the study of unusual atmospheric phenomena, although no significant results have been achieved.

"Not only conspiracy theorists are interested in this topic": why the question of UFOs does not lose its relevance in the USA

July 2 is celebrated as World UFO Day, or, as it is also called, UFO Day - a "professional" holiday for all enthusiastic researchers who are trying to unravel the mystery of unidentified objects and atmospheric phenomena appearing in the sky. This area of research was named "ufology" because of the English abbreviation UFO (Unidentified Flying Object - "unidentified flying object").

The date for this day was not chosen by chance - July 2 is associated with one of the most significant events for ufology. On this day in 1947, in the vicinity of the town of Roswell in the state of New Mexico, an unidentified object crashed, the fragments of which were discovered by a foreman of workers from one of the surrounding farms.

A few weeks earlier, the American press wrote about some "flying discs", so the worker decided to report the find to the local sheriff. He, in turn, transmitted the information to the Roswell military airfield. From there, two officers arrived at the scene, inspected the crash site and collected several fragments of the object.

On July 8, 1947, a number of regional newspapers appeared on the front pages of a series of regional newspapers stating that "the US Air Force captured a flying saucer near Roswell." The media referred to a press release circulated by the public relations officer at Roswell Airfield.

However, the very next day, Air Force General Roger Raimi issued a rebuttal, in which he stated that the object was in fact a weather balloon used as part of the secret Mogul program. The incident was soon forgotten.

General Raimi shows reporters the wreckage of the Mogul weather balloon © University of Texas at Arlington, Special Collections

In 1978, the famous ufologist and physicist Stanton Friedman published an interview with a participant in those events, Major Jesse Marcel, who said that the American army allegedly concealed from the public the discovery of an alien spacecraft and aliens on it.

The Roswell incident has become a major event for ufologists and one of the central elements of American pop culture - many books have been written about it, feature films and TV series have been shot.

In the sky over the USA

In the early 1950s, headlines about "flying discs" appeared on the pages of American newspapers with such frequency that the US Air Force, under pressure from the public, launched the Blue Book Project, which was designed to understand this phenomenon.

After two fighters chased four luminous objects in the sky over Washington on July 26, 1952, President Harry Truman himself called the Blue Book headquarters and demanded to find out the reasons for the mysterious phenomenon. The CIA also organized its own investigation.

In 1969, the Blue Book project was closed. During his work, it was possible to collect more than 12 thousand reports on various incidents associated with unidentified objects or unusual atmospheric phenomena.

As a result of the project, a report was released, which stated that the UFO phenomenon can be explained by optical illusions or atmospheric phenomena, and he himself did not pose a threat to the United States in terms of national security or interest for any field of science.

This gave ufologists a reason to declare that the US federal government did not take the investigation seriously and only superficially studied the information provided by eyewitnesses.

In the series "The X-Files" the investigation of accidents with UFOs was conducted by FBI agents © Still from the series "The X-Files"

In turn, experts are confident that such accusations are groundless.

"In most cases, these are just atmospheric phenomena that observers, in this case, American naval pilots, simply could not identify," Vladimir Batyuk, head of the Center for Political-Military Studies of the Institute of the USA and Canada, Russian Academy of Sciences, explained in an interview with RT

He also recalled that not only residents of the United States, but also other regions of the planet, willingly participate in the pursuit of such "sensations".

“Some time ago, similar messages came from South America. But then all this information was compared with the time of launches from the cosmodrome in Plesetsk, and it turned out that eyewitnesses saw rocket stages burning in the atmosphere. As a rule, such phenomena have a completely ordinary origin, which has nothing to do with aliens from distant planets,”said Batyuk.

A new round

The UFO theme returned to the pages of the American media again in December 2017. Then a number of publications, including, for example, The New York Times, Politico, Time, Newsweek, reported on the Pentagon's program, which, among other things, was engaged in the study of UFOs.

The American military department then confirmed the existence of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which existed from 2007 to 2012. Within its framework, $ 22 million was spent on the study of unidentified flying objects and unidentified atmospheric phenomena.

Unidentified object footage captured by the sensor equipment of the United States Navy F-18 fighters © U. S. Department of defense

Leading American media published videos that were collected as part of the program, showing US Navy pilots in F-18 Super Hornet fighters chasing an object moving at high speed.

The AATIP program and the unusual "encounters" of American fighters were again on the agenda this year. In April, the US Navy issued a special instruction for its pilots, which established the procedure for reporting incidents with unidentified air targets.

In May, The New York Times published an article containing a new portion of the revelations of American naval pilots. In them, they talked about encounters with such objects and argued that infrared observation devices did not record the operation of the engines or any exhaust emissions.

Media interest in the topic of UFOs has increased so much that journalists turned to Donald Trump for clarification directly. In response to a question about the increased testimony of US Navy pilots about encounters with unidentified flying objects, the president said that he had been informed of alleged UFO sightings.

“They can think what they want. They really talk about it. I have seen the materials, read and heard about it. I even had one very short meeting on this issue. People claim to see UFOs. Do I believe this? Not particularly,”Trump said in an interview with ABC News

When asked if he would have been informed about the discovery of alien life, Trump replied: “We are constantly monitoring. You will be the first to know."

A secret report on UFO encounters was also received by American senators, including the deputy chairman of the intelligence committee, Democrat Mark Warner.

“When pilots at the Oceana Naval Base (Virginia, USA - RT) or elsewhere report a threat to flight, interfering with training or posing a threat to life, then Senator Warner demands answers. It doesn't matter whether it's weather balloons, little green men, or something else entirely - we cannot require our pilots to expose themselves to unnecessary danger, Rachel Cohen, spokeswoman for Senator Warner, told CNN.

Reports of UFOs in America appear every year for 70 years, this is a completely normal practice for Americans, said American political scientist Mikhail Sinelnikov-Orishak in an interview with RT.

“In the US, programs periodically appear for which little funding is allocated from the Pentagon and NASA, so not only conspiracy theorists, but also the military are interested in this topic. It is fundamentally important for the United States to study the direction of promising aviation so that no one bypasses them, so they need to collect information about all such phenomena,”the expert explained.

American scientists expect that someday the amount of information will turn into quality, after which they will be able to continue looking for some explanation for unusual phenomena, added Mikhail Sinelnikov-Orishak. Serious and influential media try to publish very limited data on UFOs or refrain from such materials, the political scientist says. According to him, only the yellow press creates sensations on this topic.