The Pentagon has also been working for years on a mysterious program to study UFO sightings to spend $ 22 million a year from 2008 to 2011. The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, the so-called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was led by an intelligence officer, Luis Elizondo, who resigned on October 4 for lack of support. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed the program's existence to the newspaper, but assured that it was shut down in 2012, although some sources said investigations into these sightings continue (essentially it would have finished receiving funds in 2012, but from he then continued to work with military and CIA men). The program worked in coordination with a company led by billionaire Robert Bigelow, Bigelow Aerospace, with facilities in the city of Las Vegas. Most were contracts signed with Bigelow Aerospace, which in turn subcontracted the investigation to other experts. The program analyzed video and sound recordings of the sightings, in cases that were not usually disclosed and involved pilots of the United States Air Force. Among them, the sighting of an oval object, the size of a commercial aircraft, by two military aircraft in 2004 near the coast of the city of San Diego (California), a case the Pentagon spoke about last August. One of the main promoters of the program was former Democratic Senator Harry Reid, a friend of Bigelow, who has always been interested in the phenomenon. Astrophysicist Sara Seager told the newspaper that the fact that the details of these unidentified objects are not known does not mean that they come from another planet or another galaxy.
