BLUF: Exploding Drones and Intelligence Leaks

The BLUF, on a FRIDAY? Don’t get used to it, but yes, we’re hitting your inboxes a day later than usual. Not to worry though, we have plenty to unpack as you head into the weekend. Between exploding drones out of North Korea, the arrest of an intelligence leaker, the sentencing of another, and the ongoing race to fill important Cabinet positions, there’s no shortage of weighty national security headlines flooding the airwaves.

And just when we thought the relative chaos of today’s national security threat landscape had hit a fever pitch, the cosmos decided to enter the fray. “We are not alone,” said retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet in testimony to joint subcommittees of House Oversight on Wednesday. Gallaudet and other former defense officials were invited by legislators to discuss Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), the U.S. government’s “less loaded and stigmatized” rebrand of an old classic: UFOs.

UFO, er, UAP fans got quite the show on Wednesday. In addition to an acknowledgement from all witnesses of the existence of UAPs, Luis Elizondo, former head of the DoD’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program alluded to, in no uncertain terms, sweeping efforts by the U.S. government to cover-up a “multi decade, secretive arms race” and journalist Michael Shellenberger pointed to a secretive special access program working without congressional oversight or authorization.

We won’t comment on the veracity of the claims, but we do acknowledge that the nature of national security is sometimes … unpredictable. That is precisely why the Pentagon has invested heavily in researching these unexplained phenomena and, earlier this week, briefed its annual report to Congress. The report read, in part, that there has been “no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology” and that none of UAP investigations have “pointed to advanced capabilities or breakthrough technologies.”

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