Here’s a new article in Popular Mechanics. It scans the UAP landscape from 3000 years ago to present. You can imagine that comets and cloud formations became woven into religious experiences years ago. Now we have the tools to explain many of these things. Not all though, as the Navy just admitted.

Something towards the end of the article drew my attention. Materials.

Angels, Airships, and Aliens: The 3,500-Year History of UFO Sightings, Popular Mechanics, 24 September 2019

A review:

This past week, the U.S. Navy confirmed that several videos—two of which were first released by The New York Times in 2017 depicting so-called “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP)—are authentic. The three videos, (another was later published by The Washington Post), each depicting quick-moving oblong-shaped objects, were shot by Navy pilots during training exercises in 2004 and 2015. The Navy has yet to identify the objects in the video, and along with the Department of Defense, said the videos should have never been made public.

So, they don’t know what they are. Remember, the Pentagon also said they stopped funding research into what they are:

A Pentagon spokesman did not respond to requests from The Washington Post for comment, but in December [2017], the military confirmed the existence of a program [AATIP] to investigate UFOs and said it had stopped funding the research in 2012.

Here they mention that program, AATIP, and suggest it continued to run. That makes sense to me however it isn’t the official Pentagon stance:

The $22 million Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program [AATIP] officially ran for about five years, from 2007 to 2012. This much was acknowledged by the Pentagon, but Luis Elizondo, who headed the program until his 2017 resignation, told the Times that it continued to run beyond 2012.

Here’s the part that caught my eye:

In that time, Elizondo said that the program had investigated a number of UAPs, including the ones that the U.S. Navy confirmed were authentic.

But the most jaw-dropping detail is one that’s a bit buried: the program recovered materials from these UAPs.

Kean [journalist Leslie Kean, who co-wrote the 2017 New York Times investigation into the Pentagon’s UFO/UAP) program] says she believes there’s a lot going on behind-the-scenes. She thinks research is being done on these recovered materials to understand what they are. Alluding to the fact that the U.S. may not be the only country in possession of these materials—that there is a secretive global race associated with them.

“From what I’ve been told, it’s a competitive thing. Whoever understands the technology first has a real advantage,” says Kean. “My sense of it is that there’s an undercurrent of competition among Russia, China, and the U.S.”

Here’s Elizondo speaking to investigative reporter George Knapp in December 2018, a year after he resigned. He mentioned the materials. He called them “tangibles.” At 4:08.

George Knapp: “Is there a form of physical evidence that’s indisputable, that we’re going to know about [in 2019]?”

Luis Elizondo: “I think there’s a lot of things out there that we’re looking into to include tangibles, tangibles in a real sense that will hopefully allow us to have a more comprehensive conversation. I don’t want to lead the cart before the horse. There’s a lot of analysis. There’s a lot of homework that needs to be done.

Elizondo is practiced at using many words to say little. But he probably signed a non-disclosure agreement when he left AATIP so he’s being careful. (By the way, AATIP was begun in 2007 with the encouragement of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Reid said it was funded on a bipartisan basis.)

What to believe? Is there material or not? The head of the Pentagon’s program that used to investigate UFOs/UAPs said material was recovered. But the Pentagon says there is “no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.”

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Update: Here’s another article, fresh off the New York Times’ press today. Elizondo was being interviewed. (NYTs gives Elizondo’s background as: “He was a career intelligence officer with the Army, the Department of Defense, National Counterintelligence Executive and the Office of Director of National Intelligence.” No wonder he doublespeaks!)

In July, the academy announced the ADAM (Acquisition & Data Analysis of Materials) Research Project, an academic research program focused on exotic material samples from U.F.O.s. How will the academy conduct research on the materials and what exactly is it looking for?

Mr. Elizondo: We’re going to do research employing the scientific method, first and foremost. What we have been doing is trying to find the most qualified individuals at the most respectable institutions to conduct scientific analysis. That scientific analysis includes physical analysis, it includes molecular and chemical analysis and ultimately it includes nuclear analysis.

Has the academy gotten its hands on any materials to review?
Mr. Elizondo: Certainly.

Are you able to share more about that?
Mr. Elizondo: Not at this point.