The Pentagon has admitted that they have been investigating UFOs through a secret government initiative known as the "Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)," which the Defense department told the New York Post "did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena."

image: 'Project Blue Book'

The DoD says that it shut down AATIP in 2012, however spokesman Christopher Sherwood told the Post that the department still investigates potential alien aircraft sightings.

"The Department of Defense is always concerned about maintaining positive identification of all aircraft in our operating environment, as well as identifying any foreign capability that may be a threat to the homeland," said Sherwood.

"The department will continue to investigate, through normal procedures, reports of unidentified aircraft encountered by US military aviators in order to ensure defense of the homeland and protection against strategic surprise by our nation’s adversaries."

Nick Pope, who secretly investigated UFOs for the British government during the 1990s, called the DOD’s comments a “bombshell revelation.” Pope, a former UK defense official-turned-author, said, “Previous official statements were ambiguous and left the door open to the possibility that AATIP was simply concerned with next-generation aviation threats from aircraft, missiles and drones — as skeptics claimed. “This new admission makes it clear that they really did study what the public would call ‘UFOs,’ ” he said. “It also shows the British influence, because UAP was the term we used in the Ministry of Defence to get away from the pop culture baggage that came with the term ‘UFO.’ ” -New York Post

AATIP's existence was revealed in 2017, when former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) claimed to have arranged for the program's $22 million annual funding. Reid told the New York Times that it was "one of the good things I did in my congressional service."

The New York Times published the article after the DoD released a 33-second DoD video released by the AATIP, featuring an airborne object being chased off the coast of San Diego by two navy jets in 2004.

On Sunday we reported on an op-ed written by Christopher Mellon in The Hill, on the fact that since 2015, "dozens of Navy F-18 fighter jets have encountered Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAPs) - once commonly referred to as UFOs - off the East Coast of the United States, some not far from the nation’s capital. Encounters have been reported by other military aircraft and civilian airliners elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad, too, including videos shot by airline passengers."

What these UAPs were and who was flying them - whether friends, foes or unknown forces - remains a mystery. Yet careful examination of the data inevitably leads to one possible, disturbing conclusion: A potential adversary of the United States has mastered technologies we do not yet understand, to achieve capabilities we cannot yet match. It is long past time for Congress to discover the answers to those questions, and to share at least some of its conclusions with the public. -The Hill

So what's really out there?