What Was AATIP?

Term: AATIP: the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a Pentagon program that studied UAP reports and technology.

Term: Luis Elizondo: a former Department of Defense official who says he ran AATIP and left the government in 2017 to speak publicly about it.

Term: Tic Tac: the nickname for an object filmed by Navy pilots off the California coast in 2004, named for its shape.

What Was AATIP?

AATIP, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, was a Pentagon program that studied reports of unidentified aerial phenomena. It ran with about 22 million dollars in funding, and the government had denied it existed until The New York Times revealed it in December 2017. Former director Luis Elizondo was the inside source, and the story included gun-camera footage of a 2004 Navy encounter known as the Tic Tac.

How it became public

For decades the government treated UFO reports as a closed subject after Project Blue Book ended in 1969. That changed on December 16, 2017, when The New York Times published an investigation revealing that the Pentagon had secretly studied UAP through AATIP. Luis Elizondo, who says he ran the program, left the Department of Defense that year and became the source for the story.

What the story included

The article included gun-camera footage of a 2004 Navy encounter off the California coast, an object that pilots nicknamed the Tic Tac for its shape. It was the first time the government was forced to publicly acknowledge that UAP were a matter of active military concern. The Times reported that the program had studied unexplained aerial phenomena and, according to some officials involved, had examined material recovered from unidentified objects.

What came after

In April 2020, the Pentagon officially declassified three Navy videos that had circulated informally for years, labeled FLIR, GIMBAL, and GOFAST. The release confirmed they were genuine recordings of unresolved encounters, without offering an explanation. The government later created follow-on offices, including the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force in 2020 and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, AARO, in 2022, to continue collecting and analyzing reports.

What is disputed

Officials have given differing accounts of AATIP’s scope and of Elizondo’s exact role, and the Pentagon has offered varying statements about when the program ended and what work continued after. Elizondo’s claims about recovered materials go beyond what the Times reported and have not been independently confirmed.

What is solid and what is not

The program’s existence, its funding, and the 2017 revelation are documented, and AARO is now the government’s standing office for the subject. Claims about what AATIP found, beyond the released videos, rest on the statements of people who worked in it. In my book Disclosure: They Are Not Extraterrestrials, AATIP marks the start of the modern disclosure timeline. Disclosure is available on Amazon. You can find more of my work at ckqbooks.com.

Sources

The New York Times, Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program (December 16, 2017). U.S. Department of Defense, statements on AATIP and AARO. Wikipedia, Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.