In a Tuesday interview with the Washington Post, Luis Elizondo, the former director of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), said unidentified flying objects (UFOs) repeatedly rendered U.S. nuclear capabilities inoperable.
Referring to UFOs by their official Pentagon designation, Unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAPs), Elizondo said, “We’ve had incidents where these UAPs have interfered and actually brought offline our nuclear capabilities.”
“I think to some they would probably say, well, that’s a sign that whatever this is, is something that is peaceful,” Elizondo said of the observation U.S. nuclear technologies are being taken offline. “But in the same context, we also have data suggesting that in other countries these things have interfered with their nuclear technology and actually turned them on, put them online. So that is equally, for me, just as concerning.”
He said, “I think that there is certainly at this point enough data to demonstrate there is an interest in our nuclear technology, a potential to even interfere with that nuclear technology.”
The now-defunct AATIP has been replaced by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), which was announced last summer by the Pentagon for the purpose of studying the strange aerial phenomena.
Elizondo said he believes there are some key characteristics common among UFO sightings.
“We see an interest in our nuclear capabilities, and then we have this really bizarre . . .I don’t know if you call it an interest, but there seems to be a connection with water, and these things have a tendency to be seen in and around water,” he said.
Elizondo shared other notes about the technological capabilities suggested by some UFO sightings.
“The first is hypersonic velocity. The ability to change directions instantly, ” Elizondo said. “And when I say instantly, I mean human beings can withstand about 9 g forces or some of our best aircraft can withstand about 16 Gs. These things are doing 3-, 4-, 600 Gs in midflight.”
Elizondo then noted the hypersonic speeds of the UFOs. “You know, there are [some known human] technologies that can go that fast, but then again, you don’t expect a hypersonic aircraft to do a 90-degree turn. To put that into context, our SR-71 Blackbird when at 3,200 miles an hour wants to take a right-hand turn, it takes roughly half the state of Ohio to do it.”
He said the third major technological capability observed among UFOs is similar to a cloaking device. “We call it low observability.”
Elizondo also again noted the apparent water connection observed among UFOs. He described UFOs as demonstrating overall “trans-medium” travel, including the ability to fly in earth’s atmosphere as well as vacuum environments such as in space or underwater.
“Now we do have vehicles that can do that. We have, for example, a seaplane,” he said. “A seaplane is a plane that can fly, and it can float on the water. But when you look at it, it’s neither really a very good aircraft or a boat because it’s a design compromise. And yet what we are seeing are objects that can operate in all these domains or all these environments, seemingly without any type of performance compromise.”
Elizondo’s comments come after a preview of a Pentagon report on UFOs, expected to be released in an unclassified manner by June 25, reportedly showed no direct signs of alien technology underlying the strange aerial phenomena.
“Up until very recently there were really only three possibilities of what this could be, and the first possibility is that it is some sort of secret U.S. tech that somehow, we have managed to keep secret even from ourselves for a long period of time,” Elizondo said. “The second option is that it is some sort of foreign adversarial technology that has somehow managed to technology leapfrog ahead of our country despite having a fairly robust and comprehensive intelligence apparatus. And of course, the third option is something quite entirely different. It’s a different paradigm completely.”
Elizondo said the upcoming Pentagon report will rule out the possibility that UFO sightings are linked to a U.S. technology. Elizondo went on to say “if I’m not mistaken, as of today, we had an announcement by former Director of National Intelligence Ratcliffe who said this isn’t Russian technology” either. Elizondo said that “really leaves China” in terms of Earth-based possibilities for the origins of UFOs.
Noting UFO sightings have been occurring since the 1950s, Elizondo said, “If you look at that from . . . a time perspective, it simply doesn’t make sense that China back in 1950 would have this beyond next-generation technology, mastered it, is able to fly at will anywhere it wants on the face of the planet, and the last 70 years, despite the billions of dollars we’ve put into our intelligence community infrastructure and architecture, it has–it has managed to evade us. In fact, China is a country that has stolen quite a bit–spends a lot of time stealing technology from us. And so, one has to ask the question that if really a country had this technology, would it be necessary to steal, you know, much more basic technology from another country.”
