AARO’s 6 Mandates

Sean Kirkpatrick, Director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), likes to remind everyone of his office’s “broad scope of authorities and responsibilities.” With good reason. It is easy to lose track of just how many spinning plates–or flying saucers–AARO is holding on to. Below is a list of the six core functions of AARO, with excerpts from statutes and direct quotes from relevant parties that clarify what is entailed in each function. The quotes are especially illuminating because they reveal how members of Congress and Kirkpatrick himself interpret the function in practical and operational terms.    

Function 1) Collect and Analyze UAP Data

1a. Receiving UAP reports

AARO is charged with “Developing procedures to synchronize and standardize the collection, reporting, and analysis of incidents, links to adversarial foreign governments, and a threat assessment.” — 2023 NDAA

AAARO “shall supervise the development and execution of an intelligence collection and analysis plan to gain as much knowledge as possible regarding the technical and operational characteristics, origins, and intentions” of UAP. — 2023 NDAA

“AARO’s authorities ensure that UAP detection and identification efforts will span across DoD and relevant interagency partners, as well as the Intelligence Community (IC)” — 2022 UAP Report

“In May [2023], the military services and geographic combatant commands for the first time standardized UAP reporting, and required the information be transferred to AARO, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough said in an email. The group is also working to expand UAP reporting to the rest of the government, including the weather and oceanic agency NOAA, the Coast Guard, FAA and Department of Energy, she said. “One of AARO’s first efforts has been to establish a streamlined reporting system for all service members,” Gough said. The FAA also documents UAP sightings whenever a pilot reports them to an air traffic control facility, according to a statement from the agency. If the incident “is corroborated with supporting information, such as radar data,” the FAA shares it with AARO. — Politico article, August 10, 2023

NASA should therefore explore the viability of developing or acquiring such a crowdsourcing system as part of its strategy. In turn, the panel finds that there is currently no standardized system for making civilian UAP reports, resulting in sparse and incomplete data devoid of curation or vetting protocols. NASA should play a vital role by assisting AARO in its development of this Federal system.–NASA UAP Panel final report, September 2023

“Operationally, we have institutionalized how to respond to and mitigate these incidents. We have worked with the Joint Staff and the commands and the combat support agencies and the intelligence community on questions like: When one of these things is observed, how do we get more data? How do we save that data that’s been collected? That was historically a very big problem: That data was not retained. Now data is required to be retained so that we can have something to analyze.”–Sean Kirkpatrick, Politico Exit Interview, November 12, 2023 

1b. Analysis of UAP data

“The Director of the Office, acting in coordination with the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence, shall supervise the development and execution of an intelligence collection and analysis plan to gain as much knowledge as possible regarding the technical and operational characteristics, origins, and intentions of unidentified anomalous phenomena, including with respect to the development, acquisition, deployment, and operation of technical collection capabilities necessary to detect, identify, and scientifically characterize unidentified anomalous phenomena.”–2023 NDAA

“Since its establishment in July 2022, AARO has formulated and started to leverage a robust analytic process against identified UAP reporting. Once completed, AARO’s final analytic findings will be available in their quarterly reports to policymakers. …The broad scope of authority granted to AARO should enable them to leverage a multi-agency, whole of-government approach to understanding, resolving, and attributing UAP in the future.”–2022 UAP Report

“We have standardized the analytic framework for how we deal with these observations in a very rigorous fashion. We have run that framework successfully now, and are ramping up the number of cases that are being resolved. ”–Sean Kirkpatrick, Politico Exit Interview, November 12, 2023 

1c. Prioritization 

“AARO is prioritizing reports of UAP in or near military installations, operating areas, critical infrastructure and areas of national security importance.” — Sean Kirkpatrick press roundtable, December 16, 2022

AARO Mission: minimize technical and intelligence surprise, by synchronizing scientific, intelligence, and operational detection, identification, attribution, and mitigation of unidentified, anomalous objects in the vicinity of national security areas

AARO Vision: unidentified, anomalous objects are effectively and efficiently detected, tracked, analyzed, and managed by way of normalized DoD, IC, and civil business practices; by adherence to the highest scientific and intelligence-tradecraft standards; and with greater transparency and shared awareness —  AARO slide deck to Transportation Research Board, January 11, 2023

Question: What keeps you up at night? Answer: “Technical surprise, and that could be adversarial technical surprise, or extraterrestrial technical surprise.”–Sean Kirkpatrick ABC News interview, July 20, 2023

“While I assure you that AARO will follow scientific evidence wherever it leads, I ask for your patience as DoD first prioritizes the safety and security of our military personnel and installations, in all domains.” — Sean Kirkpatrick, Senate hearing, April 19, 2023

 “I want to support the warfighter. I want to go after the cases that we received this week. That’s where I want to be. I want to have my officers out in the field, you know, talking to witnesses, trying to gather and preserve evidence, trying to work with the services and the other departments in the government on how to preserve data when there is an incident, helping to write force protection standards so I can capture this in real-time.”–Tim Phillips, DoD media engagement, March 6, 2024

1d. Maintain Sensors

“After all, UAP encountered first by highly-capable DoD and IC platforms, featuring the nation’s most advanced sensors, are those UAP most likely to be successfully resolved by my office, assuming the data can be collected.” — Sean Kirkpatrick, Senate hearing, April 19, 2023

“Yet, time and again, with sufficient scientific-quality data, it is fact that UAP often, but not always, resolve into readily-explainable sources. Humans are subject to deception and illusions, sensors to unexpected responses and malfunctions, and in some cases, intentional interference. Getting to the handful of cases that pass this level of scrutiny is the mission of AARO.” — Sean Kirkpatrick, Senate hearing, April 19, 2023

“…an important first step to understanding what sensors are going to be relevant. From there, we are augmenting with dedicated sensors that we’ve purpose built, designed to detect, track and characterize those particular objects. And we will be putting those out in very select areas for surveillance purposes.” –Sean Kirkpatrick, NASA UAP panel discussion, May 31, 2023

“We realized for AARO to really work better we are going to need a lot more sensors around military bases, nuclear sites, on our aircrafts. “–Senator Gillibrand interviewed by City And State New York, August 2023

“First, we have a lot of our reporting comes from military sensor platforms, F-35s, F-22s, Aegis radars, whatnot. All of those sensors have to be calibrated against known objects, right. So, we’re running a campaign and have been for the last year or so on here’s what a weather balloon looks like in an F-35 when you fly it at Mach 1 in all of the sensors. Here’s what it looks like on from Aegis, and then take all that data and turn it into models that we can then put back into the trainers so that the operators can understand what they’re looking at. That’s part one. Part two is then looking at, where are our data gaps? So, our domain awareness gaps don’t necessarily arise because we don’t have a sensor. It arises because we have a lot of data that are tuned for missiles, aircraft, large things that we’re looking at, coming over the poles, that sort of thing. There’s a lot of data that’s not looked at. And so, my team is going through all that systematically with a lot of our S&T partners and our operational partners to go, if I put a calibration sphere out in the middle of the U.S. and I have, say, FAA radar data on it, what does it look like? And can I pull those signatures out and turn them into something that we can then queue off of? The idea being we want to reduce the number of UAP reports that are actually just balloons or actually just drones. Right? I need to get those off of our plate because those aren’t UAP. 

“Then when we have gaps, and by gaps I mean either operational gaps or a capability gap, then we will put a purpose-built sensor out in place to do search and track and ID and characterization. We have a couple of those already built and deployed. They’ve been calibrated against known objects, and we’re using them to do pattern of life analysis. And what do I mean by that? We have a lot of our airspaces, for example, we don’t understand, because nobody’s measured it, what all of the stuff is that comes through the airspace on a daily basis.

“So, we have to do that. Well, you can’t just run the sensors 24/7, because it costs a lot of money to do that, because we pay, you know, staff to go out there and run them. But we can build some — some dedicated sensors that are automated, that will just survey an area for a long period of time, couple that with some overhead collect, and now you can get kind of a picture of what’s there, what’s there 24/7 for three months at a time. Then you’ll know if there’s a difference in that, and we can try to figure out if there are anomalies in there.” –Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO Press Roundtable, October 31, 2023

“We’re working with some of the government labs such as the Department of Energy labs. And we have a great partner with Georgia Tech. And what we’re doing is developing a deployable configurable sensor suite that we can put in Pelican cases.  And we’re this — we’re going to go deploy it to the field to do a long-term collect.Since the UAP target, the signature, is not clearly defined. We really have to do hyperspectral, you know, surveillance to try to capture these incidents. So we are going to declare a mission capability IOC for our GREMLIN system. That’s the name of the deployable surveillance system that we’ve been developing for the last year.*7 We’re currently at a very large range in Texas. We’ve been out there going against some known UAS targets, but some unknown targets, picking up a lot of bats and birds. We’re learning a lot about solar flaring. We’re really starting to understand what’s in orbit around our planet and how we can eliminate those as anomalous objects. So we’re going to do that and then we’re going to go to the department and say, we are ready to deploy our system in response to a national security site or a critical infrastructure with a UAP problem.”[*7 Eds. note:  While GREMLIN is approaching IOC, AARO is also in the early stages of developing a smaller suite of deployable sensors for rapid response to a UAP incident.]–Tim Phillips, DoD media engagement, March 6, 2024

Function 2) Science Plan: Underlying Theories for UAP

“scientific, technical, and operational analysis of data” — 2023 NDAA

AARO must develop a science plan that will produce “scientific theories to–(1) account for characteristics and performance of unidentified anomalous phenomena that exceed the known state of the art in science or technology, including in the areas of propulsion, aero dynamic control, signatures, structures, materials, sensors, countermeasures, weapons, electronics, and power generation; and (2) provide the foundation for potential future investments to replicate or otherwise better understand any such advanced characteristics and performance.”–2023 NDAA

S&T Research & Application: revealing and exploiting elusive and enigmatic signatures through advanced technologies and focused, cross-sector partnerships

Interdisciplinary Analyses: delivering peer-reviewed conclusions through deliberate syntheses of scientific and intelligence method, tradecraft, tools, and expertise–AARO slide deck to Transportation Research Board, January 11, 2023

“…all these things, which now thou seest, shall within a very little while be changed, and be no more: and ever call to mind, how many changes and alterations in the world thou thyself hast already been an eyewitness of in thy time. This world is mere change, and this life, opinion. … That which the nature of the universe doth busy herself about, is; that which is here, to transfer it thither, to change it, and thence again to take it away, and to carry it to another place. So that thou needest not fear any new thing. For all things are usual and ordinary.” —Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, italicized portion is AARO’s motto. 

“AARO is taking a collaborative, objective, & data-driven approach to its mission, & partnering with a wide range of stakeholders, including academia. As part of its work, AARO is developing several peer-reviewed articles on UAP with the scientific community.”–Susan Gough response to question about Kirkpatrick/Loeb paper, March 2023

“The UAP challenge is more an operational and scientific issue than it is an intelligence issue. As such, we are working with industry, academia, and the scientific community, which bring their own resources, ideas, and expertise to this challenging problem set. Robust collaboration and peer-review across a broad range of partners will promote greater objectivity and transparency in the study of UAP.”–Sean Kirkpatrick, Senate hearing, April 19, 2023

“In the event sufficient scientific data were ever obtained, that a UAP encounter can only be explained by extraterrestrial origin, we are committed to working with our interagency partners at NASA to appropriately inform U.S. Government’s leadership of its findings. For those few cases that have leaked to the public previously, and subsequently commented on by the U.S. Government, I encourage those who hold alternative theories or views to submit your research to credible, peer-reviewed scientific journals. AARO is working very hard to do the same. That is how science works, not by blog or social media.”–Sean Kirkpatrick, Senate hearing, April 19, 2023

“AARO’s work will take time if we are committed to doing it right. It means adhering to the scientific method and the highest standards of research integrity. It means being methodical and scrupulous. It means withholding judgment in favor of evidence. It means following the data where it leads, wherever it leads. It means establishing scientific, peer-reviewed, theoretical underpinnings of observed data.” –Sean Kirkpatrick, Senate hearing, April 19, 2023

“In 1979, Carl Sagan said, ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ I would go one step further, and I would say, extraordinary claims require not only extraordinary evidence, but extraordinary science….” ​​–Sean Kirkpatrick, Senate hearing, April 19, 2023

“Because people don’t understand the scientific method and why, why we have to do the things we have to do. Right. And because we can’t just come out and say, you know, the greatest thing that could happen to me is I could come out and say, Hey, I know where all these things are. Here you go. Alright, but I don’t, right. And it’s gonna take us time to research all that. When people want answers now, they’re actually feeding the stigma by exhibiting that kind of behavior to all of us.–Sean Kirkpatrick, NASA UAP panel, May 31, 2023 

“for the few objects that do demonstrate potentially anomalous characteristics, AARO is approaching these cases with the highest level of objectivity and analytical rigor. This includes physical testing and employing modeling and simulation to validate our analyses and the underlying theories, and then peer reviewing those results before reaching any conclusions.” –Sean Kirkpatrick, NASA UAP panel, May 31, 2023

“You’ve got a range of hypotheses for any given event, right. You’ve got the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis on one end. [holds up left hand] You’ve got the foreign intel ISR platforms on the other end, or advanced breakthrough technologies, if you will. [hold usp right hand] And in the middle you’ve got all the known stuff [misidentified balloons, drones, atmospheric phenomena, etc.]. Occam’s Razor still applies, no matter how much you don’t want it to, it does. But before you get to that, each of those things, each of those hypotheses have signatures associated with them. If it’s a foreign breakthrough technology, there are signatures associated with what that is based on what we know in our intelligence record. In the middle, if we’ve got the known objects, that’s where our calibration campaign comes into play because we measure those signals. This is what a balloon looks like, this is what a drone looks like, and now I have something to compare it to.  On the far extreme when you’ve got the extraterrestrial one, that’s where the scientific and academic community come into play, right. … But most of my data, in fact all of my data, matches either the middle [proasic] or the left [foreign tech]. And I can tell you with certainty that we have absolutely no evidence that anything matches the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. We have no evidence of any of that. All of the evidence we have, and all of the observations we have, including the ones where people say ‘I don’t understand it. It looks like it’s violating the laws of physics’  I guarantee you it’s not. There is advanced state of the art technologies out there today that can maneuver, and flight controls that don’t have control surfaces, that don’t leave a trail, and they are being commercialized. …That’s the whole purpose here is to understand where we are in that spectrum of hypotheses. What is in our space? And what are we doing about it?”–Sean Kirkpatrick, Hayden Center talk, November 15, 2023

Function 3) Reporting UAP to Congress

Annual and Quarterly Reports; Establishing procedures to require the timely and consistent reporting of such incidents.–2022 NDAA

The 2022 NDAA contains thirteen basic requirements that the report’s authors “shall include.” These are spelled out in Subsections A through P, each of which is listed below. 

Req.	Subsection	Description of NDAA Report Requirement
1	A & B	Tally of UAP Events
2	C & D	Analysis, judgements, and explanatory categories
3	E	Restricted air space incursions (number)
4	F	Restricted air space incursions (analysis)
5	G	National Security Threat of UAP
6	H	Adversarial foreign governments
7	I	Breakthrough aerospace capability
8	J	Coordination with allies
9	K	Capture and exploit UAP
10	L	Health-related effects of UAP
11	M, N & O	US nuclear technology and UAP
12	P	Line organizations providing UAP data
13	3	Unclassified format

Find a full summary and links for the legislation here. Find a review of the 2022 UAP report here. 

“not later than September 30, 2023, and at least once each fiscal year thereafter through fiscal year 2026, provide to such committees and congressional leadership briefings and reports on such records.”–2023 NDAA

“CONGRESSIONAL NOTIFICATION.—Not later than 72 hours after determining that an authorized disclosure relates to a restricted ac2 cess activity, a special access program, or a compartmented access program that has not been explicitly and clearly reported to the congressional defense committees or the congressional intelligence committees, the Secretary shall report such disclosure to such committees and the congressional leadership. “– 2023 NDAA

Function 4) Historical Assessment of Government Involvement with UAP

A Historical Record Report is required:

• Produced by the Director of AARO
• Released 540 days after passage [July 2024]
• “a written report detailing the historical record of the United States Government relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena”
• “focus on the period beginning on January 1, 1945”
• “any program or activity that was protected by restricted access that has not been explicitly and clearly reported to Congress”
• “any efforts to obfuscate, manipulate public opinion, hide, or otherwise provide incorrect unclassified or classified information about unidentified anomalous phenomena or related activities” –2023 NDAA

“Meanwhile, consistent with legislative direction, AARO is also carefully reviewing and researching the U.S. Government’s UAP-related historical record.”–Sean Kirkpatrick, Senate hearing, April 19, 2023

“AARO welcomes the opportunity to speak with any former or current government employee or contractor who believes they have information relevant to the congressionally mandated historical review,” Gough said in an email.– Politico article, August 10, 2023

“So, this reporting mechanism that is on the website is for people who think they have firsthand knowledge of clandestine programs that the government has been hiding. Really, this is about the historical report. The part of the AARO’s mission that Congress has asked us to do in this review going back to 1945, to include in interviewing all of the whistleblowers and anyone that wants to come forward and have — present their case and make their statement, for the record. …We’re able to bring all that information together and actually research it and cross reference it with the archives, across all of the — National Archives have been great partners in this. In fact, I’d like to highlight for you all that in our research, we have with them uncovered a whole bunch of new documents that they have digitized and put out on their website. And then we’ve got some more that we’re going to be releasing here fairly soon. So, it’s a – it’s a very powerful mechanism to allow us to dip into anybody’s information.” –Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO Press Roundtable, October 31, 2023

“One of those is finishing Volume One of the historical review [required by the law], which really encompasses all of the interviewees that have come in to talk to us. And then laying that out as “Here’s what we’ve been able to prove is true, here’s what we’ve been able to prove is not true,” as a very thorough and objective research product. The legislative requirement for the historical report is not due until June of next year. I decided, because of the desire for more transparency faster, we are doing a Volume One, and then Volume Two will be delivered next year. Volume One covers everything up to about a month ago. Volume Two is going to cover anything new that comes up since we’ve turned on the reporting button on our website. “–Sean Kirkpatrick, Politico Exit Interview, November 12, 2023

 “I need to bring in all of the people who have that claim, what they have information to share, about programs they believe to be, relative to reverse engineering programs, whatnot. … We ask them questions to try to get to things that I can go investigate, what can I go pull on, what can I go research, how can I go get evidence that helps support their case or their statements. That’s very time consuming. I have a whole team that does nothing but that….Unless I have something to research, and we can go validate–and we have access to all of the National Archives, all of the agency archives, all of the service archives, every program we need access to, and we go and dig into those.”–Sean Kirkpatrick, Hayden Center talk, November 15, 2023

“Half of our office is almost dedicated to doing the research and then drafting and finalizing the report. In a way, I’m really happy to get this behind us because look I want to support the warfighter…. Doing it forensically after the fact is difficult. You know, as a marine and as an Intel officer, I want to be ahead of my opponent. And I want to capture it in real-time.”–Tim Phillips, DoD media engagement, March 6, 2024

“Anybody with knowledge of UAPs or the government covert attempt to reverse engineer or to exploit these materials, we would love to talk to them. So, aaro.mil, you go online. I’d give my phone numbers, but I’ve been told I can’t do that, but contact us. We want to talk to you. And I will tell you, you know, I’m a guy from Tucson, Arizona, and we treat people — we are government civil servants. We treat the citizens that come in with respect. We listen to their stories. And if we can prove what they’re telling us, we’ll do everything we can to do so. You know, we don’t have barriers. We aren’t biased. We’ll let the evidence take us where it takes us.” –Tim Phillips, DoD media engagement, March 6, 2024

Function 5) Tip of the Spear: Government Lead on UAP 

5a. Government Coordination

AARO is the single focal point for all DoD UAP efforts, leading a whole-of-government approach to coordinate UAP collection, reporting, and analysis efforts throughout DoD, the IC, and beyond, to include other government agencies not in the IC, as well as foreign allies and partners of the United States.–2022 UAP Report

AARO is the DoD focal point for these issues and related activities. AARO will represent DoD to the interagency, Congress, media, and public, in coordination with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs and the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs (OSD[PA])–2022 UAP Report 

Focused Communications: driving shared awareness across mission partners, oversight authorities, and stakeholders—normalizing cross-sector partnerships and building trust with Transparency.–AARO slide deck to Transportation Research Board, January 11, 2023

“However, it would be naive to believe that the resolution of all UAP can be solely accomplished by the DoD and IC alone. We will need to prioritize collection and leverage authorities for monitoring all domains within the continental United States. AARO’s ultimate success will require partnerships with the interagency, industry partners, academia and the scientific community, as well as the public.”–Sean Kirkpatrick, Senate hearing, April 19, 2023

“The NDAA [2023] language strengthens AARO and establishes it as the nation’s clearinghouse and analytic center for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) to inform both the Intelligence Community (IC) and U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) leaders about UAP and to avoid strategic surprise.” –Warner/Rubio letter, April 2023

NASA – with its extensive expertise in these domains and global reputation for scientific openness – is in an excellent position to contribute to UAP studies within the broader whole-of-government framework led by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).–NASA UAP Panel final report, September 2023 

5b. Press and Public Communications

“Our team knows that the public interest in UAP is high. We are developing a plan to provide regular updates and progress reporting to the public on our work.” — Sean Kirkpatrick press roundtable, December 16, 2022

Senator Gillibrand: “Do you have any plans for public engagement that you want to share now, that you think it’s important that the public knows what the plan is?”

Kirkpatrick: “So we have a number of public-engagement recommendations, according to our strategic plan. All of those have been submitted for approval, they have to be approved by USD(I&S). We are waiting for approval to go do that.”– Senate hearing, April 19, 2023

“We have not seen evidence of an AARO strategic communications strategy. AARO established a Twitter presence in July 2022, but has yet to post anything further, despite attracting over 31,000 followers. This highlights the lack of communication and transparency with the public. We seek to understand why AARO has not made use of its social media presence and the future plan for educating the public on the mission and findings of AARO.”–Warner/Rubio letter, April 2023

“AARO’s intent is for this website to be a one-stop shop on AARO and UAP, and we look forward to continuing to refine the website to provide the most transparency possible regarding AARO’s work and findings.” – Pentagon spokesperson Eric Pahon, Defense Scoop, week of August 28, 2023

The website is a living thing. It’s going to evolve as we do more and more here. We’ve got a package of a lot of new material that we’ve got ready for release. We’ve uncovered some things that we are having declassified. Not just operational videos, but historical documents that we’ve had declassified that we’re about to release in the coming days and weeks. We’ve got some educational material that will help inform the public. So, you should expect to see things evolve on this platform every one to two months.” –Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO Press Roundtable, October 31, 2023

 

Function 6) Receive Witness (Whistleblower & Civilian) Evidence on UAP

“One of the tasks Congress set for AARO is serving as an open door for witnesses of UAP events, or participants in government activities related to UAPs, to come forward securely and disclose what they know without fear of retribution for any possible violations of previously signed non-disclosure-agreements.”–Senator Gillibrand, Senate hearing, April 19, 2023

Senator Gillibrand: “As you know, Dr. Kirkpatrick, Congress has mandated that your office establish a discoverable and accessible electronic method for potential witnesses of UAP incidents and potential participants in government UAP-related activities, to contact to your office and tell their stories. Congress also set up a process whereby people subject to non-disclosure agreements, preventing them from disclosing what they may have witnessed or participated in, could tell you what they know without risk of retribution from the…or violation of their NDAs. Have you submitted a public-facing website product for approval to your superiors, and how long has it been under review?

Kirkpatrick: “I have. We submitted the first version of that before Christmas.”–Senate hearing, April 19, 2023

“thank you all very much for referring the witnesses that you have thus far to us. I appreciate that. We’ve brought in nearly two dozen, so far. It’s been very helpful. I’d ask that you continue to do that until we have an approved plan. We have a multi-phased approach for doing that, that we’ve been socializing and have submitted for approval, some time. And once that happens, then we should be able to push all that out and get this a little more automated. What I would ask, though, is, as you all continue to refer to us and refer witnesses to us – I’d appreciate if you’d do that – please try to prioritize the ones that you want to do, because we do have a small research staff, dealing with that.”–Sean Kirkpatrick, Senate hearing, April 19, 2023

“The FY23 NDAA established a secure process for AARO to interview witnesses. We are pleased with the number of interviews AARO has conducted, but ask that Congress be regularly informed about the content of the interviews going forward.”–Warner/Rubio letter, April 2023 

“The FY23 NDAA also directed AARO to stand up a secure public-facing website, or communication mechanism, to outline the secure process for witnesses to come forward with relevant information. To date, we have seen no efforts to communicate the existence of the secure process to the public. We request that you provide us an update on the plan to publicize the secure process for witnesses to come forward.” –Warner/Rubio letter, April 2023 

Q: Why do you think these whistleblowers are coming forward? Answer: “Well, one, I think the recent law which extended whistleblower protections to them, and named AARO as the authorized disclosure authority, opens the door for them to come and tell us exactly what they think they saw or know about. I believe that they believe what they are telling me. And my job–it’s not a question of belief, it’s a question of what can I go research.–Sean Kirkpatrick, ABC News interview, July 20, 2023

The Pentagon… has encouraged witnesses to come forward with any information related to the effort to investigate UAPs — but has not yet provided a public avenue to do so. AARO is required by law to launch a public-facing website where witnesses can directly report potential UFO sightings. But the website is tied up in Pentagon red tape: It is still “under development” after officials submitted a first version to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks for review before Christmas, Gough said. — Politico article, August 10, 2023

[Ryan] Graves and others in his organization are working with lawmakers and officials in the Pentagon to bridge this gap. In some cases, Graves has introduced witnesses to trusted senators — who he declined to name — and the next step is to arrange meetings with AARO. “We are hand-walking people in to do that, because AARO is negligent on having the proper public-facing procedures to have people do it themselves,” Graves said. Gough said the Pentagon is still working on the more easily accessible portal for the general public. “Once established, we will issue guidance for how to access the secure mechanism for authorized reporting,” Gough said. — Politico article, August 10, 2023

“If there are special access programs – they are called SAP programs – that Congress was not read in on, we put an amendment in the defense bill to say they can’t be funded. We do not want to be misled. We do not want to be led astray. We want to get to the bottom of this and this office is perfectly positioned to do that work.” –Senator Gillibrand interviewed by City And State New York, August 2023

“In the near future, the authorized reporting mechanism consistent with section 1673 of the fiscal 2023 NDAA will reside on the website, as well. … The process for submitting these reports, via the AARO website, is going through a significant security review to ensure that we protect both the privacy of the participants and the security of the site. AARO and the Department recognize that members of the general public also desire to make UAP reports, and this capability will be established in the next phase of the website development in the coming months.”  – Pentagon spokesperson Eric Pahon, Defense Scoop, week of August 28, 2023

“AARO is also working to standardize and destigmatize reporting on UAP and to thoroughly analyze reports of both current and historical events. We still have a long way to go, but I have charged AARO to aggressively pursue efforts to make its findings as widely available as possible to the Congress and, whenever possible, the public,” – Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks, Defense Scoop, week of August 28, 2023

“The Pentagon is preparing for a flood of new reports as it readies two new portals for submissions: one for historical sightings from current or former government employees and contractors and a second for public submissions of new reports.

“The portal for historical sightings is set to open sometime in the next month or so, Kirkpatrick told CNN. Its purpose is to validate or refute past reports of unidentified objects, checking them against other reports and cataloging them for possible further analysis.

“It is the opening of the public portal, still several months away, that Kirkpatrick says could flood the system with ‘hundreds, if not thousands’ of new reports to sort through. Even so, Kirkpatrick has a plan for his office, which involves a system that will automatically match known objects to public reports, allowing the government to dismiss sightings of identified bodies. But the reports of unknown objects could prove to be valuable, Kirkpatrick says.

“’If it’s a foreign adversary and I got 100,000 people with cell phones who can collect it, well now it makes it really hard for the foreign adversary to do anything,’ Kirkpatrick says.” — CNN report, October 18, 2023

“So, this reporting mechanism that is on the website is for people who think they have firsthand knowledge of clandestine programs that the government has been hiding…. We do have a requirement by law to bring those whistleblowers or other interviewees in who think that it [secret UAP program] does exist, and they may have information that pertains to that. We do not have any of that evidence right now. And why should they come to us? Well, they should come to us because, well, it’s in law that we are the authorized reporting authority for them to come to, they are protected under the Whistleblower Act that they extended those protections to last year’s legislation and we have the security mechanisms by which to anonymously and confidentially bring them in, hear what they have to say, research that information and protect it if it is in truly classified. And if it’s not classified, then we can validate that as well. We can do a couple of things, right, and we can be very flexible depending on where these folks are in the country. We have facilities here that are able to take any classification level.  So, if they wanted to come in and they really think that they have a named program and they know what that program is and it’s somebody’s program that’s a SAP of some sort, then they can come in into a protected space that is allowed to take that information and discuss that information, and then we can document it there. If they’re uncertain, we can actually do it via other secure mechanisms, whether it’s a classified phone call, or we can send somebody to them to debrief them in places that — around the country that we can take them to and bring them in securely. But all of our staff are – are cleared, all of our debriefers are cleared to do all that. …I just need to know about the program so that I can research what they’re saying that program is. And since we’re the ones that are authorized by law to go do that research, and as was pointed out earlier, address any classification from any organization, we’re going to be the ones that you’re going to want to go do that with.” –Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO Press Roundtable, October 31, 2023

“The whistleblowers are an interesting bit. We’ve had greater than 30 people now come in to talk to us. We have investigated every single one of them, every single story, every lead that provided any substantive evidence for us to go after.”–Sean Kirkpatrick, Politico Exit Interview, November 12, 2023