Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program

Note that start and dissolution dates are accurate only to the year.

AATIP was a small, unpublicized U.S. government effort housed at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Then–Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid arranged roughly $22 million over five years, with support from Senators Ted Stevens and Daniel Inouye, after discussions with Nevada aerospace contractor Robert Bigelow. The money went mainly to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) under the AAWSAP contract. Official tasking covered about a dozen technical areas of advanced aerospace science; the contractor also compiled UAP case material, including a large unpublished report on worldwide sightings, and examined reports from a Utah property then owned by Bigelow (Skinwalker Ranch). In 2009 Reid asked the Pentagon to place the effort under a restricted special-access program; that request was declined. The Defense Intelligence Reference Documents produced under the contract were technical papers on speculative physics and propulsion, not confirmed findings of non-human technology.

The Pentagon said the funded program ended in 2012. Some officials, notably Luis Elizondo, later said an informal look at military UAP encounters continued under the AATIP name without a dedicated budget. The effort stayed out of public view until 16 December 2017, when The New York Times, Politico, and The Washington Post reported it and released Navy videos of unexplained encounters (including the “Tic Tac” incident). That disclosure led to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force in 2020 and, in 2022, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which now holds the standing UAP mission.