The U.S. government's now-defunct Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification
Program (AATIP) spent millions of taxpayer dollars to research bizarre,
experimental technologies such as invisibility cloaks, antigravity devices,
traversable wormholes, and a proposal to tunnel through the moon with
nuclear explosives, according to dozens of documents obtained by Vice.com.
The documents, which include nearly 1,600 pages of reports, proposals,
contracts and meeting notes, reveal some of the stranger priorities of AATIP
– a secretive Department of Defense program that ran from 2007 to 2012, but
only became known to the public in 2017, when the program's former director
resigned from the Pentagon.
That year, AATIP became synonymous with UFOs, thanks to several now-infamous
videos of an unidentified aircraft moving in seemingly impossible ways that
former director Luis Elizondo leaked to the press after his resignation.
But the new documents suggest AATIP was up to more than just investigating
reported UFO encounters. The entire cache of 51 documents, obtained by Vice
via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed four years ago, can be
read
here.
Perhaps most intriguing among the documents are the several dozen Defense
Intelligence Reference Documents (DIRDs), which discuss the viability of
various "advanced technolog[ies]." This collection includes reports on
"traversable wormholes, stargates, and negative energy," "high-frequency
gravitational wave communications," "warp drive, dark energy, and the
manipulation of extra dimensions," and many other topics that will sound
familiar to fans of science fiction.
Many of the reports stress the impracticalities of implementing advanced
technologies. In the DIRD report on invisibility cloaking, for example, the
authors (whose names have been redacted in all of the reports) write that,
"perfect cloaking devices are impossible because they require materials
where the speed of light approaches infinity." However, cloaking devices
that make objects invisible to microwave-based sensors, such as radars and
motion detectors, are "definitely within reach of the present technology,"
the report authors wrote.
Other reports do not shy away from bold, sometimes outlandish proposals for
realizing advanced technologies. In a report on "negative mass propulsion,"
the authors propose a plan to look for extremely lightweight metals in the
center of the moon that may be "100,000 times lighter than steel, but still
[have] the strength of steel." To reach the center of the moon, the authors
suggest blasting a tunnel through the lunar crust and mantle using
thermonuclear explosives.
Of course, the U.S. has not nuked the moon and shows no immediate intention
to; NASA's upcoming Artemis missions plan to return humans to the moon for
the first time since the Apollo era, with the ultimate goal of establishing
a sustainable human presence there. Rattling the moon with nuclear
explosions would likely prove contrary to this mission.
Whether these DIRD documents ever led to any long-term investments in
advanced technologies is unclear. According to Vice, much of AATIP's agenda
relied on contract research from a private company called Bigelow Aerospace
Advanced Space Studies (BAASS). The company – run by Robert Bigelow, a
personal friend of late Sen. Harry Reid, who was responsible for the
creation of AATIP – was awarded a $10 million contract for their first year
of research for the program, Vice reported.
This latest FOIA document dump arrives just three weeks after British
tabloid The Sun obtained more than 1,500 pages of documents related to
alleged UFO encounters cataloged by the AATIP. Included among the documents
was a report on the alleged biological effects of UFO encounters on humans.
The report listed paralysis, "apparent abduction" and "unaccounted for
pregnancy" as reported side effects of alleged UFO encounters, Live Science
previously reported.
Vice reporters will be delving into their newly acquired database of AATIP
documents in detail over the coming weeks. Follow their coverage
here.
Originally published on
Live Science.