美国政府首度公开UFO影像

我们是宇宙中的独行者吗？据《纽约时报》（New York Times）报道，美国政府官员在本月首次承认，国防部（U.S. Defense Department）之前一直试图找出这个问题的答案。

国防部在每年6,000亿美元的预算之中，隐秘地拨款了2,200万美元用于开展高级航空威胁辨识计划（Advanced Aviation Thread Identification Program）。该计划旨在调查“异常飞行器”，通俗地说就是不明飞行物（UFO）。

项目的前主管是名为路易斯·埃利松多的军事情报官员，他在今年10月辞职，并公布了之前战斗机飞行员目击不明飞行物的机密视频。

一位飞行员表示：“有一整队不明飞行物。”

这段视频由驾驶舱的相机拍摄，其中显示了一个高速飞行并旋转的发光物体，背景中还有努力搞清自己究竟看到了什么的美国海军飞行员的声音。

该项目诞生于2007年，并与2012年正式终止，不过知情官员接受《华盛顿邮报》（Washington Post）采访时表示，他们直到上个月还在搜集数据。

前参议院多数党领袖哈利·里德（内华达州民主党）是为项目筹集资金的主要负责人。

里德与已故的议员泰德·史蒂芬（阿拉斯加州共和党）和已故的议员丹尼尔·K·艾努耶（夏威夷州民主党）合作推动了此项目。他回忆道，曾在二战时担任空军飞行员的史蒂芬迫切希望展开调查，服役人员往往不愿向上级主动报告这类目击事件，他们害怕被嘲笑或批评。

里德表示：“泰德·史蒂芬说：‘我在空军服役时就期待去做这件事了。’”他补充道，史蒂芬在开会时曾说自己被不明来头的奇怪飞行器尾随了数英里。

大部分资金都流向了Bigelow Aerospace，这家公司由里德的好友、亿万富翁罗伯特·毕格罗经营。毕格罗目前正与美国国家航空和宇宙航行局（NASA）合作，研发和生产人类太空旅行所需的可扩展太空船。他在哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）《60分钟》（60 Minutes）栏目中表示，他“完全相信”外星生命确实存在，外星人已经造访过地球。

这个国防部项目在2009年的发现，促使里德要求特别指派，并提高项目的安全级。

在当时给国防部副部长威廉姆·林三世的信中，里德表示：“我们取得了很大进展，确认了几种非常敏感、不同寻常的航空发现。”不过，《时代》（Times）杂志报道称，他的要求被驳回了。

埃利松多说，内部的怀疑态度导致在五角大楼里很难开展调查。

他表示：“我很荣幸为国防部服务，并承担了严肃探索无法解释的空中现象的任务。然而，最后，我无法继续下去了，因为国防部无法提供调查日益增多的证据所需的足够资源——可以理解，他们的战线拉得太长了。”

在接受《时代》The Daily播客采访时，他表示这些视频只是国防部收集的记录所谓UFO活动的很小一部分证据。（财富中文网）

译者：严匡正

Are we alone in the universe? Government officials confirmed for the first time this month that the U.S. Defense Department has been trying to answer that question, according to the New York Times.

Out of the defense department’s $600 billion budget, a very well-hidden $22 million went to the Advanced Aviation Thread Identification Program, an initiative that investigates reports of “anomalous aerial vehicles,” more colloquially known as UFOs.

The former director of the program, a military intelligence official named Luis Elizondo, resigned in October and shared previously classified videos of fighter jet pilots sighting UFOs.

“There’s a whole fleet of them,” one pilot says.

The video, taken from the cockpit camera, shows a glowing object traveling at high speeds while rotating and includes audio of Navy pilots struggling to process what they are seeing.

The program was created in 2007 and officially ended in 2012, but officials familiar with the initiative told the Washington Post that collection efforts were ongoing as recently as last month.

Former Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) was largely responsible for securing funding for the program.

He worked with the late Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and the late Senator Daniel K. Inuye (D-HI) on the project and recalled that Stevens, who served as a pilot in the Army’s air force during World War II, was eager to investigate claims that service members were often hesitant to report sightings to their superiors due to fear of being laughed at or stigmatized.

“Ted Stevens said, ‘I’ve been waiting to do this since I was in the Air Force,” Reid said, adding that during the meeting Stevens recounted being tailed for miles by a strange aircraft with no known origin.

Most of the money went to Bigelow Aerospace, a company run by billionaire entrepreneur and friend of Sen. Reid, Robert Bigelow. Bigelow is currently working with NASA to develop and produce expandable crafts for human space travel. He said in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview that he “absolutely convinced” that alien life is real and that extraterrestrials have visited Earth.

The defense department program made discoveries in 2009 that prompted Sen. Reid to request a special designation and heightened security for it.

“Much progress has been made with the identification of several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings,” Sen. Reid said in a letter to William Lynn III, a deputy defense secretary at the time. His request was denied, the Times reported.

Elizondo said that internal skepticism made it difficult for the investigations to take place within the Pentagon.

“I was honored to serve at the DoD and took my mission of exploring unexplained aerial phenomena quite seriously,” he said. “In the end, however, I couldn’t carry out that mission, because the department — which was understandably overstretched — couldn’t give it the resources that the mounting evidence deserved.”

In an interview on the Times “The Daily” podcast, he said that these videos are just a small sampling of the evidence the Defense Department has collected while documenting alleged UFO activity.