For more than three quarters of a century, reports of strange objects in the sky have unsettled pilots, challenged scientists, and tested the credibility of governments.
What began in the late 1940s as scattered sightings of so-called flying saucers has evolved into a modern national security issue discussed openly in Congress under the term Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAP. Two men, separated by generations but united by military service and a refusal to accept official dismissals, played defining roles in that transformation. Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe and Luis Elizondo each forced the United States to confront uncomfortable questions about what is operating in its airspace and how much the government should tell the public.
Their work reflects not only changing technologies but also changing attitudes toward secrecy, transparency, and the responsibilities of democratic institutions. Together, they form a continuous historical thread linking the earliest UFO debates of the Cold War to today’s formal federal reporting systems.
Hellbound and Down 