With all that 2020 has hurled at us with breakneck swiftness, one could very easily argue that the recent series of developments in the unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) sector—though now consistently a subject of mainstream news coverage—are still not being discussed as frequently as these revelations seem to warrant.
For the latest, we turn to a New York Timespiece published Thursday from Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean that includes no shortage of dissection-worthy comments from a variety of key players including former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, former military intelligence official (and current partner with Tom DeLonge at To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science) Luis Elizondo, and more.
"After looking into this, I came to the conclusion that there were reports—some were substantive, some not so substantive—that there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession," Reid, who is said to believe that crashes involving objects "of unknown origin" may have happened, said. Reid is also among those who want any possible retrieved materials from such crashes to be studied, with the findings made available to the public.
At the center of recent developments, which include official Defense Department publication of UAP footage previously shared by DeLonge's company and public confirmation from the Navy that the videos are indeed real, is the revelation that investigations at the Pentagon level continue by way of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force.
Of course, political interest in these matters appears to be largely centered on the idea of the potential military threat of UAP-deemed objects. But many have optimism about the current state of affairs, including Elizondo, who famously headed the government's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program before his move to TTSA.
"It no longer has to hide in the shadows," Elizondo told the Times. "It will have a new transparency."
In the same piece, astrophysicist Eric W. Davis—whose prior credits include working as a subcontractor and consultant for the Pentagon program—spoke more definitively about the study of "retrieved objects."
While some are said to have ultimately been determined to be man-made, Davis—now working for the Aerospace Corporation—pointed out that he gave a classified briefing "to a Defense Department agency" about retrieved objects described as being taken from "off-world vehicles not made on this earth." That particular briefing, per Davis, took place in March.
The full Times story shouldn't be condensed any further, and can be perused in full here. Following its publication, as well as its amplification from DeLonge and others, reactions have ranged from the aforementioned shock felt by those who believe this should be more heavily discussed among the other news stories of 2020 to those who simply stopped in for some playful commentary:
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