Your Tax Dollars Investigate UAP- Part 1 of 2
A list of US government UAP Programs.
This post is a glossary of UAP-related agencies in the US that have existed since 2008. These agencies have an enormous effect on the discourse of UAP in the news, and their existence have brought UFOs from the realm of speculation into national security.
Table of Contents
(2008-2010) AAWSAP - comprehensive UFO study including paranormal activity.
(2008- undetermined) AATIP - section of AAWSAP used for public disclosure.
(2020-2021) UAP Task Force - DoD response to mounting interest in UAP.
(2021-2022) AOIMSG - DoD synchronization effort for inter-agency cooperation.
(2022- present) AARO - current centralized agency tasked with resolving UAP cases.
AAWSAP- Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications Program
AAWSAP was the first official study of UAP since the termination of the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book in 1969. The program was proposed by Senators Harry Reid, Daniel Inouye, and Ted Stevens in 2008, and operated under DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency).
DIA contracted BAASS (Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies) to execute the AAWSAP contract.
Between 2008-2010, AAWSAP received $22 million from DIA for the two years it was active. More than 75 contractor personnel performed exotic aerospace research, and several hundred part-time personnel conducted fieldwork.
AAWSAP’s Mission
AAWSAP’s mission was to study the flight characteristics and evaluate the threat potential of UAP. To do this, scientists and contractors executed six projects.
Project Physics- research on future aerospace capabilities of propulsion, power generation, signature reduction, and armament to name a few.
Project Engagement- locate and access geographic areas of UAP sightings.
Project Northern Tier- obtain case files of UAP sightings near restricted airspace of ICBM sites.
Project Colares- obtained videos and case files from the 1977 case of Colares Island, Brazil, in which a variety of UAP injured and killed islanders.
Project Ranch- researchers reported metallic UAP, flying orbs, otherworldly creatures, poltergeists, and more at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah.
Project Consciousness- examined the connection between UAP experiences and the human mind and body, including telepathy, remote viewing, psychic functioning, etc.
Project Database- The project at the center of the other six. The database was a multi million dollar operation to collect, analyze and fuse data from the other projects.
AAWSAP stands out from other programs because it explicitly studied paranormal phenomena.
“BAASS was an organization specifically created to execute the AAWSAP contract to evaluate the threat potential of UAP. From the beginning, AAWSAP was determined to cast as wide a net as possible to study all phenomena within the overall rubric of the UAP topic. That meant that if paranormal phenomena were known to collocate with, and overlap temporally with, UAP, then paranormal phenomena would also be studied by AAWSAP.”
From Inside the U.S. Government Covert UFO Program: Initial Revelations, written by AAWSAP program managers James Lacatski and Colm Kellher, and journalist George Knapp.
Link to the AAWSAP Contract and Related Documents
AATIP- Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program
AATIP was a secret until its existence was revealed by the 2017 New York Times article Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The U.S. Government’s UFO Program. Despite AATIP taking the spotlight, it wasn’t a fully funded scientific program like AAWSAP. According to Skinwalkers at the Pentagon, the 2021 book written by the program managers of AAWSAP…
The AATIP moniker rose from an unclassified nickname that was inserted into a letter that was sent from Senator Harry Reid to the Deputy Secretary of Defense requesting the creation of the Special Access Program. After AAWSAP had shut down, the AATIP designation was used to describe a completely separate, small initiative that was underway at the Pentagon to study UAPs encountered by military personnel.
We know a few things about AATIP, but it’s full scope is messy and inconsistent. This 2024 entry from John Greenewald at The Black Vault describes the contested origin of AATIP.
AATIP’s Mission
Quote from the link above:
AATIP was a program with a strategic focus on “beyond next generation technologies in the areas of lift, propulsion, cloaking, and human effects,” and sought “unexplained or unknown aerial systems” information from all DoD elements “for the purposes of intelligence analysis and exploitation.”
Between 2010 and 2019, there were no publicly known government agencies that were investigating UAP. The 2017 article, along with the three videos and disclosure of AATIP, kick started public and government interest in UFOs. In 2020, the UAP Task Force was created.
UAP Task Force
UAP Task Force’s Mission
The Department of Defense established the UAPTF to improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs. The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.
Less than a year later in 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.
One of the points in the assessment’s executive summary was the following…
UAP pose a hazard to safety of flight and could pose a broader danger if some instances represent sophisticated collection against U.S. military activities by a foreign government or demonstrate a breakthrough aerospace technology by a potential adversary.
In 2021 the conversation shifted. Suddenly, UAP might be advanced technology controlled by an adversary, likely Russia or China.
In the same year of 2021, the Deputy Secretary of Defense sent a memo establishing the successor to the UAPTF.
AOIMSG- Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group
AOIMSG’s Mission
From the Deputy Secretary of Defense’s memo:
AOIMSG’s mission is to detect, identify, and attribute objects of interests in SUA, and to assess and as appropriate, mitigate any associated threats to safety of flight and national security.
SUA refers to Special Use Airspace, and includes space that is prohibited or restricted for safety and military operations.
In May 2022, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation, holds the first congressional hearing about UAP and UFOs in 50 years.
VIDEO: Committee Chair Andre Carson introduces the Hearing- 35 seconds
AARO- All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office
Less than three months after the hearing, AARO replaces AOIMSG. AARO was established by Ronald Moultrie, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, who was one of the witnesses at the hearing.
While AOIMSG was limited to airborne phenomena, AARO expanded data collection of submerged objects and “trans medium” objects that travel between domains of underwater, air, and space.
AARO’s Mission
From their current website, AAROs’ mission is to…
Minimize technical and intelligence surprise by synchronizing identification, attribution, and mitigation of UAP in the vicinity of national security areas.
Today AARO holds the central responsibility for resolving UAP cases, from military, civilians, and anyone willing to file a report.
IMAGE: UAP that AARO resolved as a balloon
IMAGE: From AARO’s Resources page with links for spherical drones, Starlink satellites, and other objects potentially mistaken as exotic UAP.
AARO has been controversial regarding its misrepresentation of the history of UAP, and is not trusted by all members of congress and even some witnesses from the four congressional hearings on UAP. It’s a critical point to understand, and I’ll be covering this in a later post. Below are some examples of AARO’s suspicious intentions from the hearings.
From the beginning, the only agencies that have publicly studied UFOs and UAP have been under the Department of Defense and US Intelligence Community. The phenomenon is not only real; UAP investigations are line items in the Pentagon’s near-trillion dollar budget.
Part 2 will focus on:
NASA’s 2023 UAP Study.
Kona Blue- the cancelled UAP program from the Department of Homeland Security.
The NDAA- National Defense Authorization act- the national defense budget which was used to kickstart the current status of UAP as potential natsec threat.