Chris Mellon was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He’s also a policy advisor for To the Stars Academy. The guy has been working on military intelligence and policy for a long time from both inside and outside of the halls of the federal government. In other words, when it comes to the military, he knows a thing or two.

One thing that Mellon knows now is that he’s getting frustrated with the seeming lack of coherent response on the part of the Pentagon to the revelations of incredible craft that have been seen violating our military airspace, first revealed to the public in December of 2017. These UFOs (and we should just be calling them that because that’s what they are) are described in detail by Mellon in a new article he’s published at the website of the American Legion titled “A threat unmet.” But despite all of the available data and expert military witnesses, Mellon finds that almost everyone in the United States government and the upper echelons of our military is turning a blind eye to what he sees as a very real, potential threat to our national security. The lack of action on the part of so many agencies that should be cooperating in the collection and analysis of data has led to a condition Mellon describes as “paralysis.” (Emphasis added)

This paralysis is occurring at a time when the scientific community increasingly recognizes the possibility of humanity encountering probes from spacefaring civilizations. In fact, last year the House Committee on Space, Science and Technology directed NASA to begin looking for “technosignatures,” by which it means alien space probes. This is happening because many exobiologists now recognize probes are more efficient and effective than radio waves for purposes of space exploration or contact. As unlikely as it may seem, there is no denying the possibility that some UFO/UAPs encountered by our military are probes launched by distant civilizations. While military personnel such as [Cmdr. David] Fravor and Lt. Ryan Graves – an F-18 pilot who said UFOs followed his Navy strike group for months – are awed by the technology they observed, they are undeterred, eager to give chase both literally and figuratively. Reflecting on his encounter, Fravor told me, “I want to fly that thing!” He naturally expects his country to figure out where these things come from, why they are here and how they work. Fravor and his colleagues at least still have the right stuff, even if the hierarchy above them is lethargic and risk-averse.

I wanted to highlight that portion of Mellon’s article in particular because you’ll notice that he’s coming out and saying what so many people have been thinking since this story first began developing. At least some of the UFO/UAPs our military has been running into may indeed be “probes launched by a distant civilization.” In other words… aliens. There. We said it.

This is something that a few of us were batting around on social media this week. Virtually nobody with a deep background in either science or the military really thinks that those things were built by the Russians or the Chinese at this point. If either of those countries had developed the technology to build aircraft that can defy gravity and fly at Mach 25 deep in the atmosphere without us catching up, they’d have attacked us by now. Or at least shown off their cool new technology to impress everyone. And the Navy and the Pentagon have already said they aren’t ours.

So if that’s not our hardware and it’s not Russia’s and it’s not China’s… then what? I don’t care if you want to say it’s aliens, time travelers from the future or humans from some parallel dimension. As Mellon says when quoting Joseph Gradisher, spokesman for the deputy chief of naval operations, “whatever they are, they are real, they aren’t ours, and they continue to violate U.S. airspace with impunity.” We have identified a technology gap between us and someone (or something) and our government has an obligation to try to close it.

For my part, I will just say that I’m not entirely convinced that the Pentagon is doing as little as Mellon says. He’s been out of the loop there for a while and there could well be things going on that he’s simply not aware of. Of course, that’s because they keep this huge veil of secrecy over everything and anything to do with the UFO topic, as we’ve discussed here repeatedly. And even when they do tell us something, they frequently contradict themselves and obfuscate when they’re not flat-out lying.

So what does Mellon want to see happening? He would like to see a coordinated effort across multiple agencies including NASA, the National Reconnaissance Office, the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, the DIA, and DHS to develop a process for collecting and integrating pertinent information about UFO/UAPs. We need to assess the level of the risk that’s presented. (The pilots who went up against the tic-tac during the Nimitz encounter told Mellon “We didn’t stand a chance against it.”) And then, with all the available data being coordinated, figure out a plan as to what we’re going to do about it.

If I can add one more item to Mellon’s wish list it would be to tell the government that the public has a right to know what’s going on and what they’re doing, particularly if they’re fairly sure it’s not the Russians or the Chinese. They should come out and tell us everything they know short of exposing sources or methods.