Thomas DeLonge

Music Career Foundation

Thomas Matthew DeLonge (born December 13, 1975, in Poway, California) co-founded the rock band Blink-182 while in high school alongside bassist Mark Hoppus and drummer Scott Raynor. The band achieved massive commercial and critical success across three separate active periods (1992–2005, 2009–2015, and 2022–present), selling over 25 million records worldwide and becoming one of the defining bands of 1990s and 2000s pop-punk. DeLonge's distinctive vocals and songwriting shaped the band's sound and cultural impact. Between his 2005 first departure from Blink-182, he founded Angels & Airwaves, which he continues to lead as primary creative force, exploring more experimental rock and electronic sounds.

Beyond music, DeLonge has pursued diverse business ventures including Macbeth Footwear (vegan organic apparel) and Modlife (artist monetization platform), demonstrating entrepreneurial ambition and willingness to engage unconventional markets.

The UFO Pivot (2011–2015)

In 2011, DeLonge launched Strange Times, a website dedicated to exploring extraterrestrial life, paranormal phenomena, cryptozoology, and conspiracy theories—signaling a growing personal fixation on UFO disclosure. By 2015, he had committed to a dramatic career reorientation, stepping away from intensive music touring to establish To The Stars, Inc., an entertainment company explicitly designed to legitimize and explore fringe science, particularly unidentified aerial phenomena.

This pivot surprised many in the music industry: a globally recognized rock icon with decades of career momentum was essentially abandoning that trajectory to pursue what mainstream culture typically relegated to tabloid speculation. Yet DeLonge's move coincided with a subtle but genuine shift in public discourse—the 2015 emergence of credible whistleblowers and Pentagon insiders willing to discuss classified UAP programs with increasing openness.

To The Stars Academy and Pentagon Collaborations

In 2017, DeLonge transformed To The Stars into the To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences, a multi-division organization spanning aerospace, science, and entertainment. Critically, he assembled a team of former government and defense-sector officials who shared his conviction that disclosure was strategically necessary. The most significant collaboration was with Luis Elizondo, who joined the organization in October 2017 immediately after resigning from the Department of Defense's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). Elizondo's involvement lent credibility and insider credentials, though his Pentagon role claims remain contested in official records.

Other co-founders included physicist Harold E. Puthoff (parapsychologist and aerospace researcher) and Jim Semivan (former intelligence community officer and author), creating a hybrid entity that blended entertainment industry capital with legitimate scientific and military-industrial expertise.

Declassified Footage and Media Strategy

In December 2017, To The Stars Academy coordinated the release of previously declassified military UFO footage in partnership with the New York Times—a strategic media choice that conferred legitimacy through established journalism. The videos, captured by Navy pilots, documented the 2004 USS Nimitz incident (Tic-Tac UFO) and subsequent incidents. While the Pentagon had not officially released this footage prior to DeLonge's involvement, the 2020 official Pentagon declassification of three videos (confirming their authenticity and stating they were "not classified," only "unclassified") vindicated the To The Stars strategy.

DeLonge's entertainment background proved invaluable: he understood media narrative construction, celebrity leverage, and audience psychology in ways career government officials typically did not. The History Channel's 2019 series "Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation" featured DeLonge alongside Elizondo, packaging Pentagon UAP analysis within premium television production values, reaching millions beyond traditional ufology circles. This represented a paradigm shift: UFO disclosure was no longer fringe media territory but mainstream entertainment backed by vetted official sources.

Sustained Advocacy and Controversy

DeLonge continued directing To The Stars' output while maintaining sporadic music commitments (reuniting with Blink-182 in 2022) and directing the 2023 film "Monsters of California." His sustained commitment to UAP advocacy, combined with his entertainment industry credibility and willingness to platform contested government figures like Elizondo, established him as a pivotal disclosure-era figure—someone who successfully weaponized celebrity and media infrastructure to normalize conversations about government UAP possession and non-human intelligence that earlier ufologists could only pursue from margins of respectability.