A recent New York Times article recaps the current state of public knowledge about the Military's investigations of airspace incursion by unidentified flying craft. Two lines sparked the most interest, both quotes from Eric Davis.
Unfortunately, this has been repeated in other media as some kind of official Pentagon statement that they have pieces of an off-world craft. It is not.
What it is is a statement (with very little context) by Eric W. Davis, and Eric Davis is not the Pentagon. He's a scientist at Earthtech, an organization formally known as "The Institute for Advanced Studies." Earthtech basically is composed of two people, Harold Puthoff and Eric W. Davis.
Puthoff is well known in the skeptical community for being fooled by Uri Geller into thinking Geller actually had psychic powers when Geller was just using conjuring tricks. But he's also very interested in the holy grails of alternative science: free (zero-point) energy, and reactionless propulsion.
So Puthoff's and Davis' work is, by its very nature, highly speculative. In his list of EarthTech publications, the first one is "Are Stars Conscious?" - but we don't see people shouting "The Pentagon thinks that stars are conscious!"
The military sometimes funds very speculative research projects, just in case, or perhaps just because someone overly-hopeful though something was worth studying. Eric Davis has been part of this for quite a long time. Some of the research is fairly reasonable - things like space elevators or laser-powered spacecraft. Some is borderline ridiculous, like his 2004 "Teleportation Physics Study," in which he bases his conclusion, in part, on Uri Geller's conjuring tricks.
Of course, many people think that PK phenomena are real, and hence this all does not reflect badly on Davis. They are demonstrated wrong by the simple fact that stage magicians have consistently demonstrated that they can fool scientists, and no psychic of any kind has managed to replicate their powers in an environment under the observation of stage magicians skilled in this art (like James Randi).
So no, it's just Eric Davis (and the people around him, Puthoff, Harry Reid (tentatively, he's still a politician), Tom DeLonge, and the rest of the TTSA/Unidentified crowd. The Pentagon is no more saying they have pieces of flying saucers than they are saying that Uri Geller could bend a spoon with his mind.
Article: Eric W. Davis, an astrophysicist who worked as a subcontractor and then a consultant for the Pentagon U.F.O. program since 2007, said that, in some cases, examination of the materials had so far failed to determine their source and led him to conclude, "We couldn't make it ourselves."
The constraints on discussing classified programs — and the ambiguity of information cited in unclassified slides from the briefings — have put officials who have studied U.F.O.s in the position of stating their views without presenting any hard evidence.
Mr. Davis, who now works for Aerospace Corporation, a defense contractor, said he gave a classified briefing to a Defense Department agency as recently as March about retrievals from "off-world vehicles not made on this earth."
Mr. Davis said he also gave classified briefings on retrievals of unexplained objects to staff members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Oct. 21, 2019, and to staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee two days later.
Unfortunately, this has been repeated in other media as some kind of official Pentagon statement that they have pieces of an off-world craft. It is not.
What it is is a statement (with very little context) by Eric W. Davis, and Eric Davis is not the Pentagon. He's a scientist at Earthtech, an organization formally known as "The Institute for Advanced Studies." Earthtech basically is composed of two people, Harold Puthoff and Eric W. Davis.
Puthoff is well known in the skeptical community for being fooled by Uri Geller into thinking Geller actually had psychic powers when Geller was just using conjuring tricks. But he's also very interested in the holy grails of alternative science: free (zero-point) energy, and reactionless propulsion.
So Puthoff's and Davis' work is, by its very nature, highly speculative. In his list of EarthTech publications, the first one is "Are Stars Conscious?" - but we don't see people shouting "The Pentagon thinks that stars are conscious!"
The military sometimes funds very speculative research projects, just in case, or perhaps just because someone overly-hopeful though something was worth studying. Eric Davis has been part of this for quite a long time. Some of the research is fairly reasonable - things like space elevators or laser-powered spacecraft. Some is borderline ridiculous, like his 2004 "Teleportation Physics Study," in which he bases his conclusion, in part, on Uri Geller's conjuring tricks.
Article: Psychic Uri Geller (1975) is the original model for demonstrating
PK [Psychokinetic] metal bending. During a talk that he gave at the U.S. Capitol building, Uri caused a spoon to curve
upward with no force applied, and then the spoon continued to bend after he put it back down and
continued with his talk (Alexander, 1996). Jack Houck continues doing extensive experimental work and
data collection on micro- and macro-PK phenomena. [...] In the 1980s,
Jahn attended a meeting on the PK topic at the Naval Research Laboratory, and warned that foreign
adversaries could exploit micro- or macro-PK to induce U.S. military fighter pilots to lose control of their
aircraft and crash.
Of course, many people think that PK phenomena are real, and hence this all does not reflect badly on Davis. They are demonstrated wrong by the simple fact that stage magicians have consistently demonstrated that they can fool scientists, and no psychic of any kind has managed to replicate their powers in an environment under the observation of stage magicians skilled in this art (like James Randi).
So no, it's just Eric Davis (and the people around him, Puthoff, Harry Reid (tentatively, he's still a politician), Tom DeLonge, and the rest of the TTSA/Unidentified crowd. The Pentagon is no more saying they have pieces of flying saucers than they are saying that Uri Geller could bend a spoon with his mind.