OPINION

Crash Retrievals, Reverse Engineering, and the Cost of Secrecy: The UAP Debate Unfolds.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

November marked another round of historic House and Senate hearings on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). Sworn testimony was delivered before both legislative bodies, and more astounding information has been revealed to the American public through highly credible whistleblowers and government officials. 

UAP is the modernized acronym for Unidentified Flying Object (UFO). The old acronym carried baggage and stigma, but more importantly, has simply become antiquated and inaccurate. The unidentified phenomenon aren’t simply flying objects, but have been observed to be trans-medium, moving with unimpeded ease between space, atmosphere, and water.   

Though congressional testimony has been fascinating and compelling, the UAP matter seems to continue to elude broad, public debate and attention. It’s easy to understand the average Joe’s lack of engagement on the topic, given the last four years of Biden administration economic, national, and international catastrophe. It’s hard to care about seemly esoteric matters like, “is there life out there,” when a dozen eggs can cost as much as twelve dollars. But, Trump’s “drill baby drill” policy will soon make domestic concerns like the price of eggs a relic of Bidenomics. Another portend of good things to come is Trump’s promise to declassify, specifically with regard to UAP matters, information that has been inappropriately classified. 

Of particular note are FBI Director nominee Kash Patel’s statements regarding declassifying FBI materials related to the Epstein investigation, and UAP investigations. During a recent interview, Rep. Nancy Mace said she’s “seen memos between the FBI and the U.S. Army saying we’ll help you with this crash retrieval program, but you have to give us access to the crashed craft.” It’s an admission the FBI has been engaged in ongoing investigations into UAP, and the crash retrieval programs responsible for recovery and exploitation. 

At the heart of the UAP question for most people is relevancy. However, during the November 20 Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on UAP, Dr. Jon Kosloski, head of the Department of Defense’s UAP investigation program, the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) told the senate committee that UAP are real, there are cases that defy his understanding of physics, and that UAP are not our technology or adversarial technology. These are stunning admissions, especially in light of DOD’s decades long denial of even the existence of UAP, and active disinformation campaigns designed to discredit the topic and anyone who dares to counter the DOD narrative. 

On November 13th, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, chaired by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), held a UAP hearing and empaneled retired Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet, former Director of DOD’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) Lue Elizondo, journalist and author Michael D. Shellenberger, and former NASA Associate Administrator of Space Policy and Partnerships Micheal Gold. All four individuals are experts in their fields and gave testimony under oath. 

Of the many points Rep. Mace made during the hearing, perhaps the most incisive was in regard to the government making disability payments to individuals who’ve suffered demonstrable harm from their work on or around recovered UAP. Her statement related directly to questioning by Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) who cleverly observed, “Well you can’t talk about fight club if there’s no fight club.” Moskowitz’s point was if the DOD required Mr. Elizondo to sign non-disclosure agreements about crash retrieval programs, then that tacitly acknowledges the existence of crash retrieval programs. 

The U.S. government has long been involved in foreign adversary materials and systems exploitation operations. The existence of these programs are highly classified. For instance, in 1976 a Russian MiG-25 was captured via Viktor Belenko’s defection. But, the crash retrieval programs discussed during the UAP hearings are not related in any way to foreign adversary exploitation. During an exclusive interview, Lue Elizondo told Townhall, “Foreign Materials Exploitation and Analysis (FMA and FME) is a very sensitive topic…we don’t like to admit that we have access to certain adversarial technologies, so it’s been a very closely guarded secret for a very, very long time. So, there are absolutely some sensitivities surrounding anytime you recover something foreign, in this case very foreign.” UAP programs are specifically about non-human origin technologies. 

Perhaps, one of the most significant revelations to come out of the House UAP hearing was the disclosure of a heretofore highly classified Unacknowledged Special Access Program (USAP) code named Immaculate Constellation. Released by Shellenberger, the document details government image (IMINT) and signals (SIGINT) intelligence collected on UAP. Interestingly, the document also details collection on “Reproduction Vehicles” (ARV/RV), which are technologies derived from reverse engineered UAPs. A number of incidents are recorded in the document involving “cuboid formation of metallic orbs”, fast movers, RVs, equilateral triangle UAP, and “jellyfish” UAP occurrences among others. The entire document can be viewed on Mace’s congressional website

Of critical importance going forward will be the passage of the UAP Whistleblower Protection Act (H.R. 10111), sponsored by Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN). This bill is being championed by Mace, and will be essential in providing necessary protection to UAP whistleblowers. During an exclusive interview, Mace told Townhall, “Protecting whistleblowers is a non-partisan issue…it shouldn’t be controversial to protect people who know what tax dollars have been spent on UAP research. I want those people to come forward, and I want them to feel protected.” 

Mace cited the mistreatment of David Grusch last summer, “If he was not a credible witness, why violate HIPAA and his medical privacy to attack his credibility…it’s the deep state going after someone they say isn’t credible…it doesn’t add up.” 

We know from unimpeachable sources that UAP are real, and we are in possession of technology not of human origin. The government has been engaged in covering up those facts. Elizondo told Townhall, “We’ve created a…UAP Disclosure Fund…to pay for the necessary legal expertise to help these whistleblowers to come forward.” Republics cannot survive without transparency. Though legitimate national security issues are involved, Americans have the right to know the truth about UAP.