James Lacatski
James T. Lacatski is a retired United States Army ballistic missile defense scientist who served as a senior physicist and Defense Intelligence Agency program manager. He is widely regarded as one of the top propulsion and rocketry scientists in US government service and is notable for directing the government's investigation of Skinwalker Ranch and, later, for authoring classified-adjacent disclosures about UAP materials programs. Lacatski recruited Luis Elizondo into the program that would become AATIP, asking him directly about his views on UFOs before disclosing the nature of the program.
Biography
Lacatski's career centered on ballistic missile defense and advanced propulsion physics within the Defense Intelligence Agency. Hal Puthoff, who worked with Lacatski on the AAWSAP program, described him as "one of the top physicists on propulsion and rocketry" in the US government, and credited him specifically with initiating the formal request for proposal that led to the post-2017 government UAP investigation. Senators Harry Reid, Daniel Inouye, and Ted Stevens — who were aware that UAP investigations were continuing despite the official closure of Project Blue Book in 1969 — asked Lacatski to issue a formal request for proposal, which was ultimately awarded to Robert Bigelow's Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS).
Disclosure and public activities
AAWSAP and BAASS
Lacatski directed the Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) program, through which the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application Program (AAWSAP) — the broader classified program of which the publicly known Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was a component — contracted investigations of paranormal and UAP phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. This work was carried out in partnership with Hal Puthoff and journalist and researcher George Knapp, among others. The AAWSAP program, under Lacatski's direction, funded 38 technical reports on advanced physics and propulsion topics relevant to UAP — including warp drive, traversable wormholes, time metric engineering, and antimatter propulsion — as part of a systematic effort to understand the physics behind the observed phenomena.
Lacatski's early career conversation with Elizondo is notable as a recruiting moment for what became one of the most significant UAP investigation programs in US government history. Lacatski explicitly asked Elizondo to set aside personal bias before disclosing the program's subject matter: "don't let your personal bias get the best of you, because what you may learn may surprise you and may challenge any preconceived notion of what you think something is or is not."
Skinwalker Ranch investigations
The BAASS program under Lacatski's management conducted systematic field investigations at Skinwalker Ranch, the Utah property previously owned by Robert Bigelow that has been associated with a wide range of anomalous phenomena including UAP sightings, poltergeist-like activity, cattle mutilation, and apparent interdimensional intrusions. Luis Elizondo reported that colleagues in the AATIP/AAWSAP program were "very convinced" that phenomena at Skinwalker warranted further scientific investigation and characterized them as "things that probably go bump in the night that probably need further explanation."
Disclosure publications and Congressional testimony
Lacatski co-authored two books about the classified dimensions of the UAP program with colleagues Colin Kelleher and George Knapp. The books contain disclosures significant enough that both the Aero Office — the DoD UAP Task Force's successor — and members of Congress sought Lacatski's classified testimony, based on statements in the book that he had "close personal knowledge" of relevant programs.
Lacatski's books are considered among the most significant semi-official disclosures on UAP materials programs because they were authored by a serving or recently retired government scientist with direct program management responsibility — rather than by a whistleblower, journalist, or outside researcher — and because the language they used was sufficiently specific about the existence of classified programs and non-human materials to trigger official requests for testimony.
Key role in AATIP's founding
The structure of the US government's UAP investigation from 2007 onward traces directly to Lacatski's initiative. The sequence described by both Elizondo and Puthoff places Lacatski as the originating figure: senators with special access wanted a new program; Lacatski issued the request for proposal; Bigelow won the contract; BAASS stood up the AAWSAP program; Puthoff was brought in to lead physics analysis; and Elizondo was recruited to lead counterintelligence and security for the program. The public emergence of AATIP — including the 2017 New York Times article and the subsequent UAP disclosure movement — thus traces its institutional origin to Lacatski's 2009 initiative.