InvestigationAAWSAP / AATIP (2007–2012)

The Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program / Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was a $22 million DIA contract, requested by Sen. Harry Reid in 2007, conducted at Robert Bigelow's Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies facility outside Las Vegas.

Frame from the FLIR1 footage — one of the three videos AATIP's existence was confirmed via in 2017.Wikipedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · JMK · 2018

What's documented

AAWSAP was created in 2007 at the request of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), with co-sponsorship from Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). The $22 million contract was awarded sole-source to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), located at Bigelow’s facility on Skinwalker Ranch in Utah and at the Las Vegas headquarters. The program was housed within DIA’s Defense Warning Office. Luis Elizondo, a career Army counterintelligence officer, was the program manager of its successor AATIP from 2010 through his October 2017 resignation in protest. The program produced 38 technical reports on subjects including warp drive, traversable wormholes, and metallic glass materials.

Notable & intriguing

AAWSAP was funded for $22 million via FY2008–FY2010 black-budget appropriations at the request of Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), and contracted sole-source to Robert Bigelow's BAASS through DIA's Defense Warning Office.

Sen. Harry Reid, *The Search*, 2019; DIA contract record HHM402-08-C-0072
AAWSAP/AATIP produced 38 unclassified Defense Intelligence Reference Documents on subjects including 'Traversable Wormholes, Stargates, and Negative Energy' (DIRD-12, by Eric W. Davis) and 'An Introduction to the Statistical Drake Equation' (DIRD-17); the full list was made public in January 2019.

DIA FOIA release, January 2019; *The War Zone*, 17 January 2019
Luis Elizondo, AATIP program manager from 2010, resigned from the Department of Defense on 4 October 2017 with a public letter to Sec. of Defense James Mattis stating that the U.S. government's 'overall posture remains unwilling to take the issue seriously enough'; his resignation letter was first reported by *Politico* on 16 December 2017.

Politico, 16 December 2017; Luis Elizondo resignation letter, 4 October 2017