This, folks, is where the rabbit hole of information and disinformation opens up below us. There is no way around it. With the vacuum of verifiable information that the government has created on the matter, and all the rumor and speculation, one's truth compass begins to spin with reckless abandon as you dig into these issues. It is not only about what is real and what is not real, but it is also about what does the government want us to believe and not to believe. The truth could be the eventual goal, but getting there may include a long trail of often stale factoid crumbs that seem to lead in puzzling directions. In other words, even if the government wants the truth to come out eventually, it seems alarmingly clear they are going to do it on their own terms, and the timeline for that plan could be measured in decades, not years, or more.

On the other hand, putting a possible goal of disclosure aside, there is also a very real reason why the Pentagon would want the idea of UFOs injected back into the public's consciousness and even to add validity to it. Doing so is in itself a very old chapter in Uncle Sam's information warfare playbook. During the Cold War, the government actively lied about UFOs and perpetuated UFO hysteria to cover up its secret aircraft programs. They literally spread disinformation to the public in order to create a wonderfully convenient cover for the myriad clandestine weapon systems in development or operational at the time. Now, we are once again back in an age of "great power competition," according to the Pentagon, and billions of dollars are being pumped into new technologies that were considered exotic themselves just years ago. With this in mind, reanimating maybe the best and most broadly self-perpetuating cover story of all time for sightings of clandestine aircraft that people see in the sky seems like a highly logical and proven act.

As I have said over and over again, the sky, and the things we are accustomed to seeing inhabiting it, is going to look increasingly different in the very near term. Hypersonics, drone swarms, directed energy weapons, and a full-on emerging arms race in space are just some of the very real activities and technologies that will dominate the near future of American weapons development. The products of all of these initiatives, once manifested, could appear positively alien to curious bystanders.

The military will be able to explain some of this, but some of it they won't. So, reinvigorating the presence of UFOs in the American psyche by adding heaps of validity to the topic on an official level and possibly also on a less than official level (To The Stars Academy for instance) can help keep secret programs that grace the skies just that, secret. And who knows, that list of programs and technologies could include the very Tic Tac and other bizarrely shaped craft that can defy imagination with their aerial feats that have been spotted and even recorded in recent years. In fact, if the U.S. military has such a capability, the UFO cover story would be imperative to keeping the nature of its existence under wraps.

The game has changed

If the Pentagon really doesn't know what these things are or where they come from, after so many years of sightings and odd encounters and its own studies and shadowy probes, then that would be an unfathomable dereliction of duty considering they are, you know, tasked with keeping America safe from the foreign harm. But really, how can we believe the idea that the military has zero opinion on the matter. It seems like a laughable proposition at best. If there is anything they would have high interest in, it would be craft capable of decimating the enemy on a whim.

With all that being said, what does the Navy's move to change its procedures and rules in regards to reporting UFOs mean?

Nothing, at least not definitively.

Is it a case of one hand not knowing what the other hand is doing? Is it just a relevant move in this new era of heightened power competition with peer state adversaries? Or is somehow part of a broader information campaign with unidentified goals?

We can't say for sure, but a mix of all of those things and more is certainly possible. The reality is the entire narrative, and at times the lack thereof, on UFOs from the Department of Defense, is a total mess of contradictory statements and historical facts.

Whatever the truth is, the landscape when it comes to the U.S. government and its relation to unexplained objects in the sky and in our oceans is clearly changing.

To what end remains just as much a mystery as the fantastic vehicles themselves.

Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com