Ex-intelligence officer breaks silence on government UFO investigations
LAS VEGAS ( KLAS ) — Jay Stratton is one of the US government’s most experienced UFO hunters. During his long career working with various intelligence agencies Stratton may have seen more hidden Pentagon UFO files than anyone else. He is the only person in the federal government who has worked directly on all three of the latest UFO programs, including one based in Las Vegas.
When a mysterious unidentified flying object nicknamed “tic tac” alerted US Navy aviators and sensors off the coast of San Diego in 2004, the federal government abandoned the incident instead of investigating it. The first in-depth investigation into the incident took place five years later, under the auspices of a then-secret program called AAWSAP, or the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program created by the defense intelligence agency with “black budget funding” led by the Sen. Harry Reid.
A mysterious unidentified flying object nicknamed “tic tac” alerted US Navy aviators and sensors off the coast of San Diego in 2004.
The “tic tac” was the first UFO incident addressed by AAWSAP and its contractor, Las Vegas aerospace pioneer Robert Bigelow. The US released the report in 2018 and Stratton is the man who wrote it.
Stratton said his work on the incidents was just that, rather than a passion project.
“I didn’t really have a crush growing up,” Stratton said. “I didn’t have all the books, I didn’t watch all the TV shows, I got a job at the Defense Intelligence Agency where some things lay on the table.”
From 2008 until 2021 almost everything related to UFO activity came to Jay Stratton’s desk. It was he who decided to abandon the acronym UFO in favor of UAP or unidentified aerial phenomena.
Stratton worked at the highest levels of Naval Intelligence who lent him to the Defense Intelligence Agency where he excelled in reverse engineering. He and his colleague Dr. James Lacatski a rocket scientist saw reports of the unknown craft. Stratton assumed a central location was reviewing these reports.
“As we tried to find that office, we found nothing,” Stratton said.
They decided to create an office that fit that bill. The Doctor. Lacatski was reading about a UFO searchlight called “Skinwalker Ranch”. After a tour of the property, Dr. Lacatski launched the creation of a formal investigation into the site. Reid agreed to finance it, and Bigelow closed the deal. Stratton consulted the AAWSAP program, and later its successor AATIP, or the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.
In 2017 then-head of AATIP Luis Elizondo resigned and revealed the program’s existence to the New York Times. Stratton’s boss asked him to go back and create a new program. Congress finally formalized this effort under a new name, the UAP Task Force.
One of Stratton’s projects was the creation of a comprehensive but classified report that included UAP videos and photos collected by the military. Most of these images remain unpublished. Some leaked, including photos of objects found on the east coast and navy ships on the west coast.
Stratton scoffed at debunkers who explained the objects as flares, drones or birds.
“It’s frustrating because you know the rest of the story and you can’t tell it,” Stratton said.
In 2021 Stratton left the UAP Task Force, but only after his work formed the basis of an impressive congressional report. Of the 144 incidents investigated by the task force, 143 were considered unidentified.
Stratton and lead scientist Dr. Travis Taylor now works for Radiance Technologies a defense contractor with offices in 17 states including Nevada. When the two appeared in the audience at an Alabama UAP conference in the summer of 2022 they asked about what Radience Technologies might be doing. Stratton admits there are more questions than answers.
