The highly-anticipated report by NASA’s Independent Study Team on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, released today, recommends that the agency step up its role in UAP research — in particular to help develop processes for civil and commercial reporting and data analysis — as a necessary, and public, complement to that of the Defense Department.
“The recommendation of this report is that NASA should play a role to review archival data to create a transparent reporting process that then DoD can take advantage of, because DoD, certainly, is ill suited to doing so and in many instances legally can’t,” Mike Gold, a former NASA official and a member of the UAP independent study team, told Breaking Defense.
For example, he explained that the Pentagon doesn’t have the same ability to work with international partners, due in large part to classification issues. Nor does it have expertise in collecting and vetting citizen science, something that is important given that much of the reporting of UAPs — more commonly called UFOs — comes from civilians.
“So, this is a vital part of the process to ensure our national defense, because DoD cannot do it alone,” said Gold, now chief growth officer at Redwire Space. Such NASA work would “complement and support DoD’s overall mission, which is to protect American skies, to understand what’s occurring in space and the oceans, and to defend all domains.”
Huh? The DoD has enormous monetary and technological resources dedicated to identifying potential aerial threats to US national security, and now they're asking for civilian help? What's wrong with this picture?
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