Pentagon Launches New UFO Group as Officials Deny Evidence of Advanced Tech

​Yesterday, the Pentagon announced the creation of a new group to handle UFO investigations as part of an effort to distance the military from the increasingly unhinged fringe science narratives circling around the subject. The Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence issued a directive creating the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group, which will investigate and identify potential aerial threats. According to officials who briefed reporters, the group was created in response to frustration within the intelligence community that the UAP Task Force did too little to explain sightings, letting UFO looneys promote alien speculation that military and intelligence officials do not take seriously. 

​The move also comes on the heels of Kirsten Gillibrand’s proposed amendment that would create a UFO office tasked with exploring fantasy sci-fi propulsion technologies associated with alien spacecraft. The timing of the move may be designed to reduce momentum in the Senate to pass Gillibrand’s amendment to the NDAA and empower the types of speculation that led the previous Pentagon UFO investigation program to hunt werewolves and space ghosts and issue a report about alien implants.
 
Officials told the New York Times (presumably back in June, though the article was not clear in its attribution) that there was no evidence of any advanced technology at work, a likely reason that no one in government had taken UFOs seriously until media pressure and a public lobbying campaign from UFO believers like Chris Mellon and Lue Elizondo popularized the issue again.

Government officials said privately that there was no evidence of Russian or Chinese advance[d] technology in use, much less space-traveling aliens, in the information collected. But the officials acknowledged that the government’s failure to provide much explanation would fuel a wide range of theories, some more conspiratorial than others.

The paragraph appears to be a close self-plagiarism from a June report by the same Times ​reporter.

​The new synchronization group will focus on identifying what military pilots are seeing in the sky and recommending mitigation efforts when necessary to prevent risks to flight safety.

In reaction, UFO advocate Lue Elizondo took to Twitter to implore his followers to call their congressional representatives to demand the Gillibrand amendment pass. He decried the new UFO study group, alleging that the undersecretary of defense was engaged in a conspiracy to suppress UFO information and attack UFO believers. 

That, of course, is how you know that the Pentagon’s move threatens the Elizondo gravy train. It does not make for quite the dramatic ending to Elizondo’s forthcoming memoir. Oh, never mind. There never was any alien super-tech. The skeptics were right after all.