MYSTERY WIRE — The Department of Defense (DoD) has put out a news release outlining the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) task force and who will be in charge.

In a release put out by the DoD it states the “The Department of the Navy, under the cognizance of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, will lead the UAPTF.

Below you can read the entire Department of Defense news release.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Establishment of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force
AUG. 14, 2020

On Aug. 4, 2020, Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist approved the establishment of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force (UAPTF).  The Department of the Navy, under the cognizance of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, will lead the UAPTF.  
The Department of Defense established the UAPTF to improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs.  The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.
As DOD has stated previously, the safety of our personnel and the security of our operations are of paramount concern. The Department of Defense and the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report. This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAP when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing. 

Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist (Photo: defense.gov)

Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist will help oversee the task force, which is expected to be officially unveiled in the next few days, according to the officials. Previous efforts to look into what the Pentagon dubs unidentified aerial phenomena were led by the US Navy as many of the documented encounters involved their aircraft.

In July, the New York Times published two stories about the government and UAP/UFO programs. One of the new details released was from astrophysicist Eric Davis.

The Times reported Davis said he gave a classified briefing to a Defense Department agency in March of 2020 and the topic was about retrievals from off-world vehicles not made on this earth.

  • AAWSAP — Advanced Aerospace Weapons Special Application Program
  • BAASS — Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies
  • AATIP — Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program

Davis lived in Las Vegas for years and worked for Robert Bigelow’s National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) organization and was also directly involved with Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), created to carry out the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP) contract from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Before the UAP Task Force there was BAASS – hear from the man behind the once secret program

Davis was also one of the principal investigators looking into strange happenings at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah.

Davis told the Times he gave classified briefings on the same topic to the staff of members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on October 21, 2019 and then the Senate Intelligence Committee two days later.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is led by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL). Sen. Rubio has also made headlines recently by talking on camera about his request for funding to run an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) task force at the Office of Naval Intelligence. This was revealed when Sen. Rubio put the language of the request into the 2021 Intelligence Authorization Act.

The Times writes that it did ask Committee staff members for comment and got no response.

Lawmakers ask for unclassified UFO report in new intelligence bill

Sen. Rubio was recently interviewed by an investigative reporter who works for the CBS television station in Miami. The reporter, Jim DeFede, asks Sen. Rubio, “Are we alone?” To which, Sen. Rubio gives a lengthy answer:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

“Here’s the interesting thing for me about all this. And the reason why I think it’s an important topic, okay. And that is we have things flying over our military bases and places where we’re conducting military exercises, and we don’t know what it is, and it isn’t ours. So that’s the legitimate question to ask. I would say that, frankly, that if it’s something outside from outside this planet, that might actually be better than the fact that we’ve seen some technological leap on behalf of the Chinese or the Russians or some other adversary that allows them to conduct this sort of activity. But the bottom line is, there are things flying over your military bases, and you don’t know what they are, because they’re not yours. And they exhibit potentially technologies that you don’t have at your own disposal. That to me is a national security risk and one that we should be looking into. And so that’s the premise I begin with.”

It was the Times that brought the new government programs to a world-wide audience back in 2017 when it published an article about the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

AATIP was funded in part because of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

In depth on UFOs, AATIP: Our interview with former Defense Department official Luis Elizondo


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