(MYSTERY WIRE) — The intelligence officer who previously directed the Pentagon’s secret investigation of UFOs says the ultimate explanation might be more exotic than we can imagine.
“Unfortunately, there’s a lot more we don’t know than we do now,” Lue Elizondo said during a recent media briefing. “The good news is that we’re finally taking it seriously.”
Lue Elizondo is a former intelligence officer who spent his career in the shadows, working on sensitive national security matters, including 10 years investigating UFOs heading the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).
The familiar term UFO carries considerable baggage because the public equates it with extraterrestrials, so the government now prefers to use the acronym UAPs, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. The AATIP program evolved from a broader study that was initiated, in large part, by Nevada Senator Harry Reid and two of his Senate colleagues.
In 2017 Elizondo helped spark an intense wave of media interest that has not abated, as demonstrated by the high-powered phalanx of reporters who met him this week.
Elizondo reminded the media of recent statements made by former intelligence chiefs, each of whom declared UAPs to be a legitimate concern for national security.
“This isn’t a silly conversation,” Elizondo told reporters. “This is a conversation about someone, somewhere displaying beyond-next-generation technology in our controlled airspace, and there’s not a whole lot we can do about it. And what I would do is submit to you that if we just take the word UFO out of it, just say Russia or China has the ability to fly in our airspace unimpeded. And without detection, within minutes of taking off. That’s a real problem.”
Since 2018, Elizondo and colleagues, including Navy pilots, have been briefing key committees in Congress behind closed doors. The Senate Intelligence Committee was impressed enough by the evidence and testimony that it authorized the creation of the UAP Task Force. That team is compiling a comprehensive report for Congress, due in June, consisting of evidence and images collected from other military and intelligence outfits.
Elizondo thinks the Task Force won’t have enough time to complete its massive undertaking but could finish the first phase. “I don’t think it’s going to be anything more than a ‘Hey, yep, there’s something here. We don’t know what it is. It could be some sort of new super advanced drone technology, but it could be something else. And here’s our plan for trying to figure it out.’”
The Task Force has collected an impressive array of images and videos and has been briefing not only Congress, but also the top brass in the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, and others.
Their briefing document is classified but many of the images contained are not. Two weeks ago, along with filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, Mystery Wire unveiled images that are part of the briefing presentation created by the UAP Task Force.
Mystery Wire published the images which have since been reported by major news organizations all over the world.
The Pentagon has confirmed that the three photos, taken by Naval aviators off the coast of Virginia two years ago, are considered to be unknowns.
Months later, ships on the west coast were repeatedly buzzed by other unknown intruders including what appear to be flying pyramids above the USS Russell, and multiple untrackable objects around the USS Omaha including a dark sphere that shadowed the ship for an hour, then vanished into the ocean.
The U.S. Navy, with the most sophisticated sensors in the world, does not know what the aerial intruders are or who sent them. Elizondo acknowledges that, at some point, some of the objects might be confirmed as foreign drones or other types of identifiable technology, but, he adds, he has seen far too much evidence of objects that exhibit technology far more advanced than anything in the US arsenal. “I don’t know the answer. frankly, I don’t think anybody does,” Elizondo said. “And anybody who tells you they do, I would approach them very cautiously. The bottom line is we don’t know. And we need to ask all the questions.”
The U.S. Navy has had years to analyze the images, along with classified sensor data that has not been made public, but still considers them to be unknowns. But debunkers on social media insist they know what the Navy does not, namely that the “flying pyramids” weren’t actually seen by anyone because they were created by a feature in infrared lenses. Some have contended the pyramids are actually distorted images of an airplane flying over the ship.
As for the other mystery drones, digital publications chide the U.S. Navy for its ignorance of Chinese drone technology. Elizondo made clear his opinion of armchair experts. “If it’s a foreign adversarial drone, how come we don’t have anything to … I mean, look, we have counter drone technology on ships, I’m not going to say what they are, but we can knock them out of the sky. Drones aren’t a problem for us. That’s a fact. We have radar on ships, we know if it’s a plane. We know if it’s a military aircraft. These are simple things to figure out. It’s not like someone gets on the ship one day with some infrared binoculars and says, ‘Hey, that’s strange in the sky, I’m going to go ahead and record that.’ The reason why they’re recording is because it’s probably something interesting in the skies. In some cases, yeah, there could be a readily explainable explanation for it. But from my experience, there’s a lot that aren’t and are very compelling.”
Elizondo believes it is an insult to the Navy to argue that our military can’t identify a Chinese drone or that Navy experts in possession of classified sensor data know less about their own technology than some guy on Twitter. He also thinks the Russians and Chinese are likely encountering unknown “ drones” and are asking the same questions as us.
“It’s not just a us thing,” he told reporters. “And I’ll submit to you they probably wonder, too, if this is some sort of super-secret U.S. technology being deployed over there. As much of it is a mystery for us, you know, it’s not our technology we’re using against ourselves. You know, the same question we asked, could it be foreign adversarial? I’m certain China and Russia are asking the exact same question.”