Lacatski's last word, what *Future Visions* actually reveals about the Pentagon's covert UFO program

Mikey · 20 May 2026

TL;DR

James T. Lacatski was the Defense Intelligence Agency officer who actually ran the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, the $22 million, 2008-to-2010 Pentagon UFO contract the world only learned about because of the December 2017 New York Times story. Future Visions, signed January 2026 and DOPSR-cleared in February 2025, is the fourth and final volume in his series. It closes the technical map (signature reduction, armament, human interface, human effects), publishes twelve previously-unseen field investigations, and ends with the most consequential claim in the entire AAWSAP literature: that the program never really ended in 2010, it converted into a follow-on program inside the Department of Homeland Security called Kona Blue.

Read it. But read it twice. Once for the program history, once for the rhetorical pattern. Both readings are necessary.

Why this book matters

There is no other living person who can write this book. Lacatski was the contracting officer’s representative for AAWSAP. He wrote or reviewed every Defense Intelligence Reference Document, every Project Management Plan Addendum, every monthly report and every BAASS Special Report the program produced. He sat across the table from the Tic Tac aircrew in 2009, years before David Fravor’s name was a household one. He briefed two senior Department of Homeland Security officials in a SCIF for three and a half hours on 7 February 2011 and, on his telling, planted the seed that became Kona Blue.

Future Visions is the capstone of a four-book project: Skinwalkers at the Pentagon (2021), Initial Revelations (2023), New Insights (2024), and now this. The earlier books covered the Pentagon and Skinwalker Ranch story (book one), the program’s first nine months and the “engineering” technical areas of lift, propulsion, spatial/temporal translation and power generation (book two), and the next three technical areas of control, materials and configuration/structure (book three). Future Visions completes the technical inventory with the remaining four areas, then turns the second half of the book over to the actual case studies, the things BAASS investigators saw, photographed, sampled and wrote up between September 2009 and June 2010.

The Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review cleared the book for public release on 26 February 2025 (Case 24-SB-0182). What that clearance means in practice is narrow but important: it confirms nothing in the book leaks classified information. It does not validate, endorse, or vouch for any of the claims inside. That distinction matters more than it sounds.

The bombshell, AAWSAP never ended, it became Kona Blue

The most newsworthy material in the book is in its final chapter, “What’s Next?” Lacatski walks the reader through 7 February 2011, when he sat down in a Washington SCIF with two DHS officials he names as Jim Bell and “Sacha Mover.” The briefing was scheduled for one hour. It ran three and a half. Lacatski describes giving them the full data dump, the Tic Tac, the orbs, the Skinwalker creatures, the poltergeist activity, the lot. The two officials, he writes, “passed through the security gates and headed home for what was later described by both as sleepless nights.”

His conclusion is unambiguous:

“AAWSAP never ended, but converted to Kona Blue!”

This matters because the public record on Kona Blue is sparse and contested. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s December 2024 memo “History and Origin of KONA BLUE” describes it as a 2011 prospective Special Access Program proposed within DHS by individuals connected to AAWSAP, evaluated for six months, and disapproved by the Deputy Secretary for “insufficient justification and lack of credible supporting information.” End of story, in the AARO telling.

Lacatski’s framing is the opposite. He treats Kona Blue as the rightful continuation of work AAWSAP had earned, paused not because of any failure of evidence but because of a bureaucratic verdict. Where the public record sits between those two framings is one of the genuinely open questions in modern UAP research, and Future Visions gives us the AAWSAP-internal seed of that story for the first time.

The most controversial sentence in the book

In chapter 1, Lacatski writes a single sentence that will be argued about for years inside the UAP-research community:

“Without disclosing confidential information, we can say that this pattern also applied to pilots who encountered the Tic Tac object described in the New York Times article in December 2017, as well as to select members of AAWSAP.”

The “pattern” he is referring to is the pattern observed at Skinwalker Ranch, bizarre paranormal and psychic aftereffects experienced by witnesses to UAP encounters, sometimes persisting for years after the event, sometimes “hitchhiking” home with the witness.

Read in context, the sentence is saying that the Tic Tac aircrew, Fravor, Dietrich, Slaight and the fourth backseater whose real name has still never been publicly released, experienced ongoing paranormal or psychic aftereffects of the same kind documented at the ranch. Lacatski offers no evidence for the claim, citing “confidential information.” But the claim itself is enormous. It is the single largest attempt anyone in the AAWSAP camp has made to unify the “nuts-and-bolts” Tic Tac tradition with the “high-strangeness” Skinwalker tradition.

Many serious UAP researchers, including some who have testified before Congress, have spent the last several years trying to keep those two traditions separate. Lacatski has now refused, in print and on the record, to keep them separate. Expect this sentence to define a lot of the disclosure conversation in 2026.

What’s actually new in the case studies

The bulk of Future Visions, twelve Project Management Plan Addenda and twelve BAASS Special Reports, is the part that hasn’t been published before. A few of them deserve a closer look.

The Tic Tac (B-001)

Three pages, dense with previously-undisclosed detail. The most important fact is the timing: AAWSAP found and interviewed the four pilots between January and June 2009, years before the 2017 Times article. The Naval Intelligence assessment Lacatski reproduces is unambiguous: the AAV “was not a known aircraft or air vehicle currently in the inventory of the United States or any foreign nation” and “exhibited advanced low-observable characteristics across multiple radar bands, rendering US radar-based engagement capabilities ineffective.” Lacatski also discloses for the first time that the fourth aircrew member is being referred to by a pseudonym (“Lt. John Agnelli”) at DOPSR’s request because the pilot is still active duty.

The blue orb that allegedly passed through a man’s body (PMPA #7)

This is the strangest and most consequential of the BAASS medical cases. “Ron Becker” (pseudonym) and his daughter were driving on Highway 20 southeast of Bend, Oregon, on the night of 1 May 2005. The daughter saw three bright blue orbs in a field beside the road. Two of them flew into the car. One of them, on her account, passed through her father’s upper left arm, across his chest, and out his bicep. Within days, Becker was nauseated, losing hair from the left side of his head, swelling, and progressively unwell. In February 2007, he was diagnosed with Ductal Carcinoma In Situ, a vanishingly rare breast cancer in men, and underwent a mastectomy in May 2007. BAASS’s contracted physicians documented dramatic shifts in his white blood cell counts in the years after the event, and concluded the symptom complex was consistent with a radiation insult.

BAASS itself notes the case is unique: “BAASS is not aware of other similar cases.” That uniqueness, in a category that is itself epistemically contested, should warrant caution rather than confidence. But the medical documentation is unusually detailed for this kind of literature, and the case is going to be discussed for a long time.

The Georgia triangle and the men in black sedan (PMPA #6)

“Derek Jones” was alerted by his dogs on 8 May 2009 to a large triangular craft hovering silently over his north Georgia backyard. He shone a million-candlepower flashlight at it. A bluish beam fired back, enveloped him, burned his neck and shoulders. The next morning he was bedridden, nauseated, with a metallic taste in his mouth. Within months, two dozen lumps had grown across his groin, abdomen and back. A BAASS-contracted physician hypothesised exposure to “approximately 300 Gy” of non-ionising radiation.

The detail that should give every reader pause is what happened the morning after the encounter. Two men in suits, one of whom introduced himself as “Mr. Michael,” knocked on Jones’s door at 7:30 a.m., interrogated him for 40 minutes, took copious notes, and left. A week later, the same men in the same black Ford sedan tailed Jones to a gas station. He recorded the plate. Lacatski writes:

“After some legwork by BAASS investigators and one of their senior managers, the license plate of the Ford sedan was unambiguously linked to a specific Department of Homeland Security (DHS) carpool.”

If true, this is a significant claim, DHS operationally tracking UAP witnesses in real time in 2009. No documentation is offered. Lacatski reports the claim and moves on. A reader has to decide what to do with that.

Skinwalker Ranch, an unusual moment of intellectual independence

PMPA #2, the on-site scientific analysis of Skinwalker Ranch, contains the single most interesting moment of credibility in the entire book. The post-2016 era of the ranch, owned by Brandon Fugal and televised on the History Channel as The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, has been characterised by some highly dramatic on-camera claims, including the detection of hazardous gamma radiation on the property.

Lacatski went back to his 2009-2010 BAASS Canberra Colibri Geiger Counter readings and re-examined them. His finding:

“The AAWSAP found no evidence of gamma radiation in any location on Skinwalker Ranch.”

He writes this knowing it contradicts the most dramatic radiation claim made by the team currently running the ranch, a team he separately thanks in the Acknowledgments. That kind of public correction of one’s own side is rare in UAP literature and counts in Lacatski’s favour as an intellectual matter.

The Russian parallel program (PMPA #8)

BAASS spent months in 2009-2010 translating and analysing more than 100 pages of Russian-language documents that George Knapp obtained on two trips to Moscow in 1993 and 1996. The documents describe the Soviet Ministry of Defence’s 1991-1995 “Thread III” study of Abnormal Aerospace Phenomena, run by Military Unit 73790 (decommissioned in 1997). The parallels with AAWSAP are striking: both programs sought to identify UAP, both did biological threat assessments, both tried to extract “non-traditional propulsion” concepts, both ran on limited time horizons, and both were terminated by their host institutions.

Lacatski’s framing is that “the AAWSAP Thread III report highlights the intense concern that Senator Harry Reid had about other countries gaining a technological advantage in UAP research over the United States.” A more deflationary reading is also available from the same data: two well-funded national-security UAP programs, separated by twenty years, both produced inconclusive results.

The red spheres that turned out to be ion-exchange beads (PMPA #12)

In 1993, Knapp brought back from Russia a vial of small red spheres that the Soviet biologist Yuri Simakov claimed were “seeds” containing “the building blocks of life,” recovered from two purported UAP landing sites. BAASS sent samples to the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies at UNLV. The conclusion was deflationary: the spheres superficially resembled commercial ion-exchange resin beads in shape, size and pore structure. Their chemistry was not identical to any control resin, but no anomalous or exotic properties were detected, and Simakov’s “seed” and “building blocks of life” claims were not supported.

This is exactly the kind of negative finding that strengthens a research program’s credibility. The fact that Future Visions publishes it, alongside the gamma-radiation negative at the ranch, should make the careful reader update slightly in Lacatski’s favour.

What this book reliably establishes, and what it does not

After working through all 296 pages, the line between the two is sharp enough to draw.

The book reliably establishes that AAWSAP existed and was extensive. The $22 million contract, the September 2008 award to BAASS, Lacatski’s COR role, Colm Kelleher’s program-management role, Hal Puthoff and Eric Davis leading the technical-study work, John Schuessler leading the indicator-cataloguing, Jacques Vallée advising on the data warehouse, all of this is documented and cross-checkable against the FOIA-released contract record. AAWSAP produced 38 DIRDs, 24 monthly reports, 12 PMPAs, 12 BAASS Special Reports, an 11-database data warehouse, and a comprehensive threat assessment. AAWSAP was the first US-government-funded entity to investigate the Nimitz Tic Tac incident. AAWSAP partnered formally with MUFON in February 2009. Lacatski briefed DHS on 7 February 2011 and Kona Blue was proposed shortly thereafter. AAWSAP found only background gamma radiation at Skinwalker Ranch. The “red spheres” were not anomalous.

The book does not reliably establish that the Tic Tac aircrew experienced paranormal aftereffects (this is asserted, not demonstrated). It does not reliably establish that orbs are objectively real intelligent entities capable of entering and injuring human bodies (the Becker case is unique and unreplicated). It does not reliably establish that DHS was operationally tracking UAP witnesses in 2009 (the carpool-plate claim is unsupported). It does not reliably establish that the Tennyson Indiana, Buckeye Arizona “Grey aliens with samurai swords,” or Bigelow Building B “shadow” cases represent genuine paranormal phenomena (BAASS did not directly observe paranormal activity in any of them during the investigation window). It does not reliably establish that UAP constitute a quantifiable threat to US national security, only that there is “a correlation,” in Lacatski’s own careful phrasing.

The gap between those two lists is where the real interpretive work lives.

How to read it

Five rhetorical patterns repeat enough that they become part of the texture of the book.

The first is assertion-without-source. The most consequential factual claims, the DHS-carpool linkage, the “300 Gy” radiation hypothesis, the pseudonym for the fourth Tic Tac aircrew member, are presented as fact without footnote or supporting document.

The second is the absence of failure cases. Outside the red-spheres negative and the Skinwalker gamma negative, there is almost no case in the book where BAASS deployed, investigated, and concluded “this was probably a misidentification.” This is editorial selection, not operational reality. Lacatski has said in interviews that AAWSAP routinely disposed of cases as conventional. Future Visions does not represent that fact.

The third is the cumulative-anecdote argument. The Indicators sections of chapters 4-7 are long lists of anecdotal cases from 1948 onward, treated as a single cumulative argument for the reality of various UAP technological signatures. This is a useful pedagogical device but a weak evidentiary one.

The fourth is the protective-paraphrase pattern around active-duty personnel. Pseudonymisation of witnesses creates the appearance of corroboration without exposing the corroborators to follow-up.

The fifth is the Lacatski narrator persona, a flat, declarative voice without any internal disagreement, doubt, or change of mind. This is unusual for a memoir of a national-security investigation.

None of these patterns means the book is wrong. All of them mean the book requires more critical reading than its tone invites.

The bigger picture, insider narrative vs AARO narrative

There are two grand interpretations of AAWSAP currently in public circulation.

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s March 2024 Historical Record Report Volume 1 concluded that AAWSAP deliverables “lacked utility” for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s mission and that the program drifted into paranormal research.

Lacatski’s four-book series, of which Future Visions is the capstone, is one of two principal counterweights to that conclusion. His argument is that he was the COR, he wrote and reviewed every output, the data warehouse was built, the case investigations were conducted, the threat assessment was delivered, and the program achieved exactly what it was contracted to do.

Neither side is going to convince the other, and the public record alone probably cannot resolve the dispute. What Future Visions does is significantly strengthen Lacatski’s hand on the existence-and-output side. It does very little to address AARO’s deeper criticism, that the outputs lacked the rigour that would have made them actionable intelligence products.

A serious follow-up project for anyone with the time would be a side-by-side disagreement table between the AARO report and Future Visions, paragraph by paragraph, naming the DIRDs and PMPAs at issue. That is a piece of journalism that has not been written yet.

Bottom line

Future Visions is the most complete first-person record we have of what AAWSAP was, who ran it, what it produced, and how its principals understood the UAP problem. As a primary source about a national-security program that operated almost entirely outside public view between 2008 and 2010, the book is indispensable. As evidence for any of the specific empirical claims it summarises, it is significantly weaker than its tone suggests.

The honest reader should read it twice. The first read will leave the impression that AAWSAP was a serious, methodical investigation systematically frustrated by the strangeness of its subject matter. The second read will leave the impression that AAWSAP was a small, ideologically committed group inside DIA whose framing of UAP-as-paranormal was already in place before the contract was awarded and which used the contract’s resources to elaborate that framing.

Both readings are probably correct. Both are needed.

Read it with the AARO Historical Record Report Volume 1 next to it for ballast. Then come back here and tell me which of the two narratives you believe, and why.

References and further reading

• Inside the U.S. Government Covert UFO Program: Future Visions, James T. Lacatski, RTMA LLC, 2026
• AARO, Historical Record Report Volume 1, March 2024, media.defense.gov
• AARO, History and Origin of KONA BLUE, December 2024, aaro.mil
• Skinwalkers at the Pentagon, Lacatski/Kelleher/Knapp, RTMA 2021
• “The Feds Spent $22 Million Researching Invisibility Cloaks, UFOs, and a Tunnel Through the Moon”, Reason
• “Kona Blue Insiders Reveal How Agencies Involved In UFO Programs Rattled DHS”, Liberation Times