The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency disclosed this week that, from 2007 to 2012, it spent $22 million on bizarre science projects aimed at tracking and identifying potential threats in space.
The DIA this week made public the names of 38 research projects "funded by the program, many of which are highly conjectural and well beyond the boundaries of current science, engineering—or military intelligence," according to the Federation of American Scientists, or FAS, which filed freedom of information requests to unearth the information.
The programs—all of which have now been shutdown—range from the theoretically possible to the completely farfetched. Such titles include, "Invisibility Cloaking," "Traversable Wormholes," "Antigravity Aerospace Applications," and "Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions," among others.
"The DIA list of research papers, marked for Official Use Only, was previously provided to Congress in January 2018. It was publicly released yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act," according to FAS. The overall goal of the program was to combat possible threats from space, including those of an alien form.
The secret program "was apparently initiated at the behest of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, with most of the funding directed to a Nevada constituent of his," FAS reported in its newsletter.