Scientists working on a classified aerospace project disappeared without a trace. In total, eight scientists are now missing or dead. What’s going on? Let’s separate the facts and reality from the UFO conspiracy theories.
A retired Air Force general who oversaw billions in classified weapons research walked out of his Albuquerque home on February 27 and never came back. He left his phone on the counter. His prescription glasses. His smartwatch. He took hiking boots, a wallet, and a .38-caliber revolver.
Five weeks later, despite a search involving the FBI, Air Force personnel, drones, helicopters, K-9 units, and more than 700 door-to-door canvases, there is no trace of Major General William Neil McCasland.
Nine months before McCasland vanished, a woman named Monica Jacinto Reza was hiking with a companion on the Mount Waterman Trail in Angeles National Forest. She was 30 feet behind him. He looked back at her and she waved. Moments later, he turned around and she was gone.
Reza is 60 years old, an experienced hiker on a trail she walked regularly, in clear weather. Months of searching with helicopters, radar, dogs, and dozens of volunteers turned up a beanie and a tube of lip balm. Nothing else.
Here’s what makes these two cases more than routine missing persons reports: Reza and McCasland were professionally connected. She was a materials scientist at Aerojet Rocketdyne and later NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory, which funded her work.
She co-invented Mondaloy, a nickel-based superalloy engineered for the rocket engines that replaced America’s dependence on Russian propulsion technology. He ran the $4.4 billion research portfolio that bankrolled it.
Two people from the same classified aerospace pipeline. Both vanished during outdoor activities. Both left behind almost no physical evidence. And the institutions that employed them have said almost nothing.
What We Know — and What We Don’t
McCasland’s career touched some of the most sensitive programs in the U.S. military. He served as chief engineer on the GPS program, directed the Space Based Laser Project Office, and commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio — a facility that has been the subject of decades of speculation about recovered aerospace materials.
After retiring in 2013, he briefly consulted for Tom DeLonge’s To The Stars Academy, an organization focused on UFO disclosure. His name surfaced in the 2016 WikiLeaks release of John Podesta’s emails, in which DeLonge described McCasland as deeply knowledgeable about classified aerospace matters.
McCasland’s wife, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, has publicly pushed back against conspiracy theories. In a Facebook post, she wrote that her husband “does not have any special knowledge about the ET bodies and debris from the Roswell crash stored at Wright-Patt.”
She also rejected the characterization in the Silver Alert that he suffered from mental confusion, saying he does not have dementia and “was not confused and disoriented.”
I’d like to gently push back against the statement from McCasland’s wife: Government officials working on classified aerospace (or any type) projects aren’t permitted to say anything to anyone—including spouses (below)—so she can’t say for certain that he doesn’t have knowledge of Roswell crash materials. —Editor
Government officials and contractors with security clearances are strictly prohibited from sharing classified information with spouses, regardless of marital trust, as there is no exception for spouses under the law. Revealing classified details can lead to losing clearance, criminal prosecution, and imprisonment under 18 U.S.C. § 798.
The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office said there is no evidence of foul play but that investigators are examining all available information. A gray Air Force sweatshirt was found about a mile and a quarter from the home; it hasn’t been confirmed as his. The case remains active.
Reza’s disappearance is equally baffling. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department transferred her case to its Homicide Bureau’s Missing Persons Unit after the initial search concluded without results. No body has been recovered.
Four days after she vanished — and three days before the official search was even suspended — someone created a memorial page for her on Find a Grave, listing her death date as June 22, 2025, and her remains as a “green burial.” The memorial was created by a contributor whose profile is no longer publicly accessible. (OK, that gave me chills.)
JPL has said nothing publicly about Reza’s disappearance. Neither has NASA. Neither has the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, where she was an Associate Fellow. The silence from every institution connected to her work has been deafening.
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Matt Gaetz appeared on Benny Johnson’s podcast, where he talked about how he had been briefed by ‘someone wearing a military uniform’ on the government’s “hybrid breeding” program involving humans and aliens.
Keep in mind where Gaetz decided to reveal this story and also how it’s possible this is part of a Republican effort to distract from the President’s unhinged address to the nation Wednesday evening, his falling poll numbers, or the Iran war.
A Broader Pattern — With Important Caveats
Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett, a member of the House Oversight Committee who has been vocal about government transparency on UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) issues, says these cases are part of a disturbing trend.
“Something dark is going on,” he said in a recent interview. “There have been several others throughout the country that have disappeared under suspicious circumstances. I think we ought to be paying attention to it.”
Burchett and some of his Republican colleagues — including Reps. Eric Burlison and Eli Crane — have pointed to additional cases of scientists dying or disappearing in the past year.
These include Nuno Loureiro, a plasma physicist and director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, who was shot and killed at his home in December 2025; Carl Grillmair, a Caltech astrophysicist, shot dead on his front porch in February 2026; and Jason Thomas, an assistant director at Novartis, whose remains were found in a Massachusetts lake in March 2026.
It’s important that we are honest about what these cases do and don’t have in common. Loureiro’s killer was identified — a former university classmate from Portugal who had also committed a shooting at Brown University two days earlier. Grillmair’s alleged killer, a 29-year-old named Freddy Snyder, was arrested after a related carjacking; he had actually trespassed on Grillmair’s property weeks earlier, been arrested on a weapons charge, and then released.
These appear to be cases of violent crime with identifiable suspects, not shadowy government silencing operations.
The McCasland and Reza Cases are Different.
There are no suspects. No bodies. No clear explanations. And the professional connection between them — the same aerospace research program, the same funding chain, the same strategic technology — is not speculation. It’s documented in Air Force press releases and patent records.
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Tim Burchett’s Claims
During a recent appearance on Newsmax, Republican Congressman Tim Burchett claimed that Americans would become “unglued” if they learned the truth behind a classified alien briefing he received recently.
Again, as with the first video, keep in mind the platform on which Burchett revealed this information and the possibility that it’s just part of a coordinated Republican distraction campaign.
As Jordan Uhl pointed out on The Damage Report earlier today, if you go back and look at previous examples where UFO or alien-related revelations were coming from Congress, they had something in common: Congress just happened to be working on an appropriations bill at the time.
It’s possible the timing is coincidental, but it makes sense that they would reveal UFO sightings when they are attempting to pass an appropriations bill. Scare Americans into supporting any amount of additional funding for the Pentagon because they’re concerned about “national security.”
Regardless, Burchett’s comments are an interesting part of the missing scientists news story, with Burchett saying, “I’m not suicidal,” as if he’s fearful he could end up “missing” as well. His claims are definitely interesting and worthy of discussion.
The Real Question isn’t UFOs
Much of the media coverage of these cases has been filtered through a UFO lens, driven partly by Burchett’s own framing and partly by McCasland’s tangential connection to the UAP disclosure community. That framing generates clicks, but it also obscures a more grounded and arguably more important set of questions.
If two people connected to the same classified aerospace research program disappear without explanation within nine months of each other, that’s a national security concern regardless of whether you believe in extraterrestrial technology. The superalloy Reza invented is built into engines that the United States depends on for national security launches.
McCasland oversaw the research infrastructure that produced it. The knowledge those two people carry — about advanced materials, propulsion systems, and classified defense programs — has strategic value to foreign adversaries.
Investigative journalist Ross Coulthart, a NewsNation correspondent who has reported extensively on the McCasland case, called the disappearance “a grave national security crisis,” noting that McCasland possesses “some of the most sensitive secrets of the United States.” That concern exists independent of any UFO theory.
Coulthart discusses the disappearances in recent episodes of his Reality Check podcast.
And yet the institutional response has been muted to the point of absurdity. Caltech’s statement on Grillmair said he “passed away suddenly” without using the word “shot.”
Wright-Patterson offered counseling services. JPL and NASA have said nothing about Reza. At every level, the organizations that employed these people chose the minimum possible disclosure.
That institutional silence deserves scrutiny from Congress — not because it confirms a conspiracy, but because it suggests a government that reflexively withholds information even when transparency would serve the public interest.
Burchett’s approach may be heavy on dramatic claims about aliens and government cover-ups. Still, the core demand is reasonable: when people connected to classified aerospace research programs disappear under unexplained circumstances, the public deserves a fuller accounting than what we’ve gotten so far.
McCasland has been missing for over a month. Reza has been missing for more than nine. Their families deserve answers.
And so does anyone who cares about what happens to the people entrusted with America’s most sensitive scientific work.
