Compiled and edited by Justin Snead
Last Update: July 2023
“Americans always do the right thing, once they have exhausted all other possibilities.”
–unatributed aphorism
The following archive contains most of the public statements and records provided by Executive Branch agencies on the topic of UFOs in the modern era. Use the links below to jump to each section.
Executive Office of the President
Each statement is placed in chronological order by agency. In order to qualify for entry into the archive, the source must be a public statement from a currently serving agent of the U.S. government. Statements made by future or former members of the Executive Branch are not included. As a result this archive will demonstrate the Executive’s official stance on UFOs, and can be used to track how that stance will shift (or not) over time. This archive will be updated as more statements are made.
See also:
- Timeline of U.S. Congressional Action on UFOs (2007 to Present)
- Archive of U.S. Congressional Statements & Actions on UFOs
NASA
June 2, 2021
Thomas Zurbuchen, an astrophysicist and NASA’s associate administrator for science, press briefing:
“People tend to underestimate nature. Nature is an amazing place where a lot of miracles happen. And once we understand, it’s like, ‘Why didn’t we think of that?’ In the realm of science we’re all about unidentified issues and objects…So, using the tools of science, we will do whatever we can to move our understanding forward.”
June 3, 2021
Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, CNN reporting:
Bill Nelson, the former Florida senator and spaceflight veteran, told CNN Business’ Rachel Crane during a wide-ranging interview on Thursday that it’s not clear to anyone — even in the upper echelons of the US space agency — what the high-speed objects observed by Navy pilots are.
Nelson added that he does not believe the UFOs are evidence of extraterrestrials visiting Earth. “I think I would know” if that were the case, Nelson said. But, he acknowledged, it’d be premature to rule that out as a possibility….
“We don’t know if it’s extraterrestrial. We don’t know if it’s an enemy. We don’t know if it’s an optical phenomenon,” Nelson said. “We don’t think [it’s an optical phenomenon] because of the characteristics that those Navy jet pilots described … And so the bottom line is, we want to know.”
NASA press secretary Jackie McGuinness said Nelson did not establish a formal task force to begin investigating UFOs. However, he did direct researchers to move forward with exploring any lines of questioning around the topic as they see fit.
“There’s not really a lot of data and…scientists should be free to follow these leads, and it shouldn’t be stigmatized,” McGuinness said, acknowledging that UFO research can be negatively associated with unfounded conspiracy theories. “This is a really interesting phenomenon and Americans are clearly interested in it [so if] the scientists want to investigate, they should.”
October 19, 2021
Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, livestream chat hosted by politics professor Larry Sabato, UVA’s Center for Politics:
“I’ve talked to those pilots and they know they saw something, and their radars locked on to it,” Nelson said. “And they don’t know what it is. And we don’t know what it is. We hope it’s not an adversary here on Earth that has that kind of technology. But it’s something. And so this is a mission that we’re constantly looking, ‘Who is out there?’ Who are we?’ How did we get here? How did we become as we are? How did we develop? How did we civilize? And are those same conditions out there in a universe that has billions of other suns and billions of other galaxies?’ It’s so large I can’t conceive it.
“Now there are even theories that there might be other universes,” Nelson added. “And if that’s the case, who am I to say planet Earth is the only location of a life form that is civilized and organized like ours?”
November 10, 2021
Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, Ignatius Forum: Our Future In Space:
Nelson: Do I think that in these billions of stars that are in our galaxy, and there are billions if not trillions of other galaxies, is there the opportunity for another star, a sun, to have planets going about it? Yes, I think that. Who am I to limit life right here?…
Ignatius: What is the coolest thing about NASA that we don’t know about.
Nelson: Well, it’s classified.
June 9, 2022
NASA announces independent UAP study, Media Teleconference.
Thomas Zurbuchen, astrophysicist, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA:
Asked by Marina Koren, space reporter for The Atlantic (and UFO skeptic): “Whose idea was it to establish this UAP study team?”
Zurbuchen: “The science discipline is where these questions should be addressed. It is my decision to put this up. I was not asked by anybody to do this.“
“The science discipline is where these questions should be addressed. It is my decision to put this up . I was not asked anybody to do this.”
“I’m not aware of any systematic or even sporadic examination of NASA data with that [UFOS] in mind. I’m sure there are some, but I’m not aware of any. […mentions numerous types of data from NASA, national science foundation, commercial entities…] Sifting through the data to finding some of these interesting events that have the characteristics of UAP. The data are here. The data are public. I really don’t know if other people use these data for their research. I sure hope they are.”
“The output from this particular study is not to sift through all the data, and do all this research. It’s to make a proposal for a research program that we can then implement based on the inputs and the principles that are there.”
“What we’re really trying to do here is start an investigation without an outcome in mind.”
”One of the outcomes of this study for me is to communicate… that the science process is a valid process for any and all problems.”
David Spergel, astrophysicist, UAP team leader:
“We want to start with synthesizing what information we have, and see what information we need. And our plan is to conduct an open inquiry that we hope will [pause] advance our understanding so that when this is done we at least have a road map for understanding in this area.”
“I think we will end up probably saying… ways of observing in the future, that might give further insight, ways of analysis in the future… I’m imagining we will end up pointing it perhaps in future directions that NASA may want to consider. We will hopefully at least lay out some of the road map of how we might make progress in the future.”
“I do not know of any systematic study to do that [use telescopes and satellites to collect UAP data]. Either ground based telescopes looking up, atmospheric observations, or downward-looking satellites. I do not know of any systematic study. There is a wealth of data that we have collected, just not looked at.”
“When you are looking for life on Mars you know what you are looking for, you start out with a hypothesis you want to test. The approach I think we want to take here is a different one. This is a phenomenon we don’t understand and we want to collect more data on the phenomenon. I don’t think we want to go in with a particular hypothesis.”
“I do not have classified clearance, and we want this to be an open study. … we will try to see what we can learn from the open data.”
Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, will serve as the NASA official responsible for orchestrating the UAP study:
“There is an enormous wealth of data that we’ve held in public archives that can be brought to bear on this problem. …That’s when we’ll really be able to answer those questions that are on the tips of everybody’s tongues about UAPs.”
“One of the things that we aim to do by setting up this study is .. to see what we can contribute using the tools of science. So it’s extremely important to us that this remain a fully transparent, open, and therefore unclassified study.”
“One of the things that we tangentially hope to do as part of this study, simply by talking about it in the open, is to help to remove some of the stigma associated with it.”
“NASA is commissioning a study team to start early in the fall to examine unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) – that is, observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena – from a scientific perspective. The study will focus on identifying available data, how best to collect future data, and how NASA can use that data to move the scientific understanding of UAPs forward.”
“The limited number of observations of UAPs currently makes it difficult to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of such events. Unidentified phenomena in the atmosphere are of interest for both national security and air safety. Establishing which events are natural provides a key first step to identifying or mitigating such phenomena, which aligns with one of NASA’s goals to ensure the safety of aircraft. There is no evidence UAPs are extra-terrestrial in origin.”
August 17, 2022
Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, will serve as the NASA official responsible for orchestrating the UAP study, NASA town hall:
“We’re going full force [on UAP study]. This is really important to us, and we’re placing a high priority on it. NASA really is uniquely positioned to address UAP, because we know how to use the tools of science and data to discern what might be happening out there in the skies. And, to be frank, no other agency is trusted as much by the public as us.”
NASA Press Release:
October 21, 2022
NASA Announces Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Study Team Members, press release:
“Unidentified aerial phenomena are of interest for both national security and air safety and the study aligns with one of NASA’s goals to ensure the safety of aircraft. Without access to an extensive set of data, it is nearly impossible to verify or explain any observation, thus the focus of the study is to inform NASA what possible data could be collected in the future to scientifically discern the nature of UAP. “
“Why is NASA involved with studying UAP? Exploring the unknown in space and the atmosphere is at the heart of who we are. The nature of science is to better understand the unknown – but the language of scientists is data. The limited number of high-quality observations of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, currently makes it impossible to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of such events. Without access to an extensive set of data, it is nearly impossible to verify or explain any observation, thus the focus of the study is to inform NASA what possible data could be collected in the future to shed light on UAP. NASA is commissioning the UAP Independent Study Team to examine unidentified aerial phenomena from a scientific perspective – with a focus on how NASA can use data and the tools of science to move our understanding forward. Data is the language of scientists and NASA wants to ensure a 360-degree understanding from a multitude of perspectives.”
“Are there any data supporting the idea that UAP are evidence of alien technologies? No. Most UAP sightings result in very limited data, making it difficult to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of UAP.”
Thomas Zurbuchen, astrophysicist, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA:
“Exploring the unknown in space and the atmosphere is at the heart of who we are at NASA. Understanding the data we have surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena is critical to helping us draw scientific conclusions about what is happening in our skies. Data is the language of scientists and makes the unexplainable, explainable.”
Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate:
“NASA has brought together some of the world’s leading scientists, data and artificial intelligence practitioners, aerospace safety experts, all with a specific charge, which is to tell us how to apply the full focus of science and data to UAP,” said Evans. “The findings will be released to the public in conjunction with NASA’s principles of transparency, openness, and scientific integrity.”
December 22, 2022
Katherine Rohloff, press secretary for the space agency’s Science Mission Directorate, statement:
“To be consistent with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), NASA will be calling UAP ‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena’ instead of ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.’ NASA’s UAP independent study will be largely focused on aerial phenomena.”
NASA also updated its October press release to reflect the new definition.
May 31, 2023
NASA’s UAP Panel Public Meeting
Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, will serve as the NASA official responsible for orchestrating the UAP study:
“Now, why do we value a scientific approach? It’s because science is built on evidence. It thrives on scrutiny, it demands reproducibility, and above all, objectivity when we approach UAPs. From a scientific perspective, we do not come in with an agenda, we come in needing a roadmap. Indeed, the primary objective of this incredible team of experts is not to go back and look at grainy footage of UAPs but rather to give us a roadmap to guide us for future analysis. This is the very scientific method that NASA holds true to its heart. “
“NASA believes that the study of unidentified anomalous phenomena represents an exciting step forward in our quest to uncover the mysteries of the world around us. By embracing a scientific lens, we ensure that our work is rigorous and reliable. And by valuing transparency and openness, we can foster trust and collaboration with the public.”
Nicky Fox, NASA Associate Administrator for Science:
“Right now there is very limited number of high quality observations and data curation of UAP. The existing data available from eyewitness reports are often muddled and cannot provide conclusive evidence that supports UAP recognition and analysis. Additionally, an object’s background can complicate the data further and render it unusable due to conventional objects that can mimic or overshadow the phenomena completely, such as commercial aircraft, military equipment, the weather, and ionospheric phenomena like auroras. This lack of high quality data make it impossible to draw scientific conclusions on the nature of UAP. “
David Spergel, chair of panel:
“…we have a lengthy charge. But the high level summary of it is how can NASA contribute to understanding the nature of UAPs. And our role here is not to resolve the nature of these events, but rather to give NASA guidance to provide a roadmap of how it can contribute to this in this area.”
“The current data collection efforts regarding UAPs are unsystematic and fragmented across various agencies, often using instruments uncalibrated for scientific data collection. And if I think about the data that people have out there, it’s in many ways what we’d like to think of as citizen science. But again, it is uncalibrated data, poorly characterized, not well curated. And we face looking through this data, a significant background. A background of many of these events are commercial aircraft, civilian American military, drones, weather and research balloons, military equipment, ionospheric phenomenon, we need to characterize how, what the date when the data is taken, when it sees events like this first. The current existing data and eyewitness reports alone are insufficient to provide conclusive evidence about the nature and origin of every UAP event. They’re often and uninformative due to lack of quality control, and data curation. To understand UAP, better, targeted data collection, thorough data curation, and robust analyses are needed. Such an approach will help to discern unexplained UAP sightings.”
“Another challenge in this area is what we call stigma, there’s a real stigma among people reporting events. And despite NASA’s extensive efforts to reduce the stigma, the origin of the UAP is remain unclear. And we feel many events remain unreported. commercial pilots, for example, are very reluctant to report anomalies. And one of our goals and having NASA play a role is to remove stigma, and get high quality data.”
Nadia Drake, science journalists on the NASA UAP Panel:
“And my job is to try and synthesize the information that we’ve learned so far, and summarize the situation. So if you will put together a framework for thinking about UAP. Now I’m going to try and do this in a way that reflects the thoughts of the entire panel, although obviously we have a variety of opinions and ideas among us.”
“This includes eyewitness reports, which on their own can be interesting and compelling, but often lack the information needed to make definitive conclusions about an object’s provenance. We as a panel are thinking about the types of data that might add value to those reports, and which could be useful on their own. As a corollary to date, in the refereed scientific literature, there is no conclusive evidence suggesting an extra terrestrial origin for UAP. Collecting more good data for the scientific community to review and a peer reviewed context will be important for progress to be to be made here.”
“And to that end, when we’re thinking about making recommendations about how NASA can tackle this topic scientifically, I think it’s important to remember that it’s not NASA’s job to replicate the efforts of the department of defense, but rather to consider approaches that are complementary and to what the all domain anomaly resolution office is doing. And so one of the questions that we as a panel, I think need to center is what can we recommend that NASA can do that the DoD cannot?”
Federico Bianca, astrophysicist and data scientist on the NASA UAP committee:
“I can mention one, for example, is called the FAAIR standard, where FAAIR stands for find the ability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability. The current status of the data about UAPs does not meet the standards.”
“So, the alternative approach in detecting anomalies requires a thorough and deep understanding of what is normal and usual, to tease out what is unusual. And unlike the rest, these methods typically fall in the realm of what we call unsupervised machine learning. What is usual maybe the balloons the aircraft and wealth of natural phenomena that we have heard, and what is unusual what is an anomaly is anything that is not consistent with the way in which those things look in our data. Once the anomalous signal is detected, it can be studied in more depth either through the discovery data itself, but that may not be sufficient. So then we may need to collect additional data for to study these anomalies. And this is something that in astrophysics, we typically refer to as follow-up data. This can be very hard, especially if the phenomena that are anomalies are also ephemeral in time, so you have to promptly respond to the detection and set up follow up observations. It’s an extremely hard game, but it’s something that is seeing a large developing in astrophysics in recent years with the study of anomalous detections in the universe. This approach relies entirely on a comprehensive and systematic organization of the data, which is paramount and on a deep understanding of all the data that is actually usual and known. The data that we may want to collect ideally will be collected in a multi-sensor and multi-platform and multi-site manner. Witnesses reports, I want to elevate what Dr. Drake said, cannot ascertain the nature of UAPs. However, they should be considered because they may contain important information. For example, persistent sampling locations are seasonality, but they only really work if join with quantitative data collected by sensors as well as your physical and psychophysical assessments of the witness and the impact that the experience has on them to really reveal the nature of UAPs. You’ve heard it from my colleagues a number of times, the data needs to be collected by sensors. They need to be calibrated or calibratable.”
David Grinspoon, planetary scientist and astrobiologist, on NASA panel:
Question: NASA hasn’t been researching the techno-signature field for very long, and there’s been a stigma with techno-signatures for many decades. Are there any lessons learned, we can impose from the-techno signature in the SETI community, to the UAP, and solar system? Studies?
“So really good question. I guess the immediate thought it sparks in me is that, yeah, techno signatures, were kind of treated, kept at arm’s length for a long time by NASA because of stigma, and ultimately, can’t be kept away forever. If you’re, if you are an agency that is curiosity driven, trying to understand the whole universe, you have to move beyond stigmas, and just try to honestly look at whatever evidence there is. And so I think in that broad sense, the same lesson ought to apply to UAPs.”
Karlin Toner , aerospace engineer on NASA UAP Panel:
“I want to make a recommendation to my fellow panelists, that we consider advising NASA to more fully assess the cultural and social barriers to studying and reporting UAP. And for NASA to implement a plan to leverage its brand image to start removing these obstacles.”
Scott Kelly, Astronaut on NASA UAP panel:
“Yeah, just wanted to jump in here, I think, make a couple of comments. Just follow up on what Josh said and my experience of flying, you know, over 15,000 hours 30 something years in airplanes and both in space and the environment that we fly in space or you know, an atmospheric flight, very, very conducive to optical illusions. So I get why these pilots would look at that go fast video and think it was going really really fast. I remember one time I was flying in the warning areas off of Virginia Beach military operating area there. And my REO, the guy that sits in the back of the Tomcat, was convinced we flew by a UFO. So I didn’t see it. We turned around. We went to go look at it. It turns out it was Bart Simpson, a balloon. So, oftentimes in space, I would see things and I was like, Oh, that’s really not behaving like it should, it’s not, it doesn’t have the trajectory of a satellite or a planet on the back of the star field. And every single time, when I would look at it long enough, I would realize that it was atmospheric lensing. “
“But in my 20 years at NASA, no one, either officially or unofficially, in my recollection, have ever discussed or briefed us or had any kind of discussions about anything that would be considered UAP, or UFO or anything like that.”
Mike Gold, former NASA associate administrator:
“I’m very concerned that this could be effectively done on an ad hoc basis. And I’ve been a part of far too many panels and studies that end up sitting on the shelf. I don’t want this to be one of those exercises. And we can discuss this further. But I would call for and recommend a permanent office within NASA to support this activity, I’ll be likely a modest one, what’s collate this information, collate that data, to archive the information and act as the open forward facing counterpart to Sean [Kirkpatrick] and AARO, I think then we could continue and actually accomplish the reporting, the stigma issues that have been raised, and we could do so in a relatively affordable fashion. Because again, I don’t want to all of our work to end up being in vain.”
“I really consider it quite amazing that we’re here having this discussion, and the leadership deserves great kudos for this. And beyond, I think a recommendation that I’d like to make is that NASA participate in symposia in panels sponsor research, when you have the NASA logo on that sponsored research on the discussion. It really helps normalize and push back against the stigma. I think NASA can leverage its excellent reputation, both domestically and abroad. To help push back on that stigma. I think it’s important to do so not just for science and discovery, but for national security, that we’ve all seen what’s occurred with balloons from rival nations. We don’t want this stigma to be a vulnerability that rival nations can take advantage of.”
David Spergel:
“And I think this is something where, if we had, you know, some imaging software people, you know, citizen scientists with cell phone cameras identify some event that looks interesting. One of the places you’d like to be able to turn is the FAA data. And having, you know, if there is to go back to, you know, having a NASA responsibility for data NASA makes because a lot of experience in serving as a clearinghouse for data from across the government for civilian data, right. It’s something we do in lots of different areas. And I think there are some opportunities with datasets there and I think the radar data is one that comes to mind as well.”
Walter Scott:
“The short answer to what NASA’s current assets would be able to see would be really big haystacks that are moving very slowly… But that doesn’t mean that that data is not useful. Because if it’s able to characterize the background extremely well, that gives you a better idea of what unusual looks like basically, anything that you do that characterizes the background will contribute to an understanding.“
Dan Evans:
“From the agency perspective, we are of course, taking a set of actions to effectively normalize the study of UAP. … So in terms of promoting a rigorous scientific inquiry, the primary way we’re doing this is by being truly rigorous, and employing an evidence based methodology in everything that we do. That is characteristic of scientific research. It’s no accident that the people up on this stage are true experts in their reflect his respective fields. Okay. So that is, in turn going to help us to legitimize UAP studies… And it’s going to demonstrate the seriousness with which we’re approaching this issue.”
Anamaria Berea:
“We cannot make that kind of extraordinary claims at all, for any kind of big subjects in science, whether it’s UAPs, whether it’s bio signatures, whether it’s techno signatures, this question of whether we are alone in the universe is probably one of the largest questions that we’ve had in our history of science in our history of humanity. And it’s not one that we can take lightly. And that’s why we need so many scientists and multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary teams to work together and many organizations. So it’s a process. It’s a roadmap, and we work collectively on this. And we hope that within our lifetime, we will be able to answer this big question of whether we are alone or not. And also to better characterize this phenomenon, which is UAPs.”
David Spergel: “we have not seen the extraordinary evidence. I mean, there’s a sense to give, you know, to make the claim that we see something that is evidence of, non human intelligence, it would be it would require extraordinary evidence. And we have not seen that.”
“And there’s, I think, a long history in science, when you look back, and you realize that this discovery had a pre discovery that people had seen something before. And we’re missing it. And those pre discoveries were not of note, often because we had biases against seeing it, but also because there was limitations in data quality. … We need better data would be my my take away, and we need more uniform data.”
June 12, 2023 (release date)
Nadia Drake, NASA UPA Panel interview on That UFO Podcast:
“The phrase UFO Hunters was in a lot of headlines describing the initial [press release]… so a lot of what I’ve been doing over the last seven or eight months has just been kind of disabusing people of the notion that we are UFO hunting. That’s not our job. It’s not what we’re doing, and we’re going to tell NASA how to do that, if they want to.”
“Skepticism is not a bad thing to have. If you’re trying to prove the existence of something that’s really, truly extraordinary, you want to be doing that through the lens of skepticism. Otherwise nobody is going to believe you. Right, like how well is that going for the community so far? Everyone on the panel has a very open mind when it comes to looking at the data, and following the data where it takes us.”
“What I would say is that there’s a lot of interestingness out there, and I think it’s worth looking at. I don’t I don’t think we’re gonna end up finding evidence of extraterrestrial technology, but if we do, awesome.”
July 27, 2023
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson responds to a question about UAP: “I decided as the head of NASA, since there are so many suspicions about aliens, that I would appoint a committee of very distinguished scientists. That committee is deliberating, and they will make their report publicly next month. Now I can tell you in the meantime…they will consider using our scientific sensors in space in trying to determine this phenomenon.”
August 15, 2023
Dr. Laurie Leshin NASA JPL Director interview:
Q: Have you seen spacecraft made from outside of this world?
“Absolutely not. No.”
Q: Has anyone ever talked with you about that?
“No.”
Q: Anything else you make of those [UAP] hearings on Capitol Hill?
“I mean look, there’s clearly a lot of interest. Our interest is in actually scientifically following the evidence.”
September 14, 2023
NASA’s UAP Panel releases its final report. Key excerpts below.
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).
Engaging the public is also a critical aspect of understanding UAP. The panel sees several advantages to augmenting data collection efforts using modern crowdsourcing techniques, including open-source smartphone-based apps that simultaneously gather imaging data and other smartphone sensor metadata from multiple citizen observers worldwide. 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’s long-standing public trust, which is essential for communicating findings about these phenomena to citizens, is crucial for destigmatizing UAP reporting. The scientific processes used by NASA encourage critical thinking; NASA can model for the public how to best approach the study of UAP, by utilizing transparent reporting, rigorous analysis, and public engagement
Finally, the threat to U.S. airspace safety posed by UAP is self-evident. The panel finds that a particularly promising avenue for deeper integration within a systematic, evidenced-based framework for UAP is the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), which NASA administers for the FAA. This confidential and voluntary reporting system for pilots, air traffic controllers, and other professional aviation staff, receives approximately 100,000 reports per year. Although not initially designed for UAP collection, better harnessing it for commercial pilot UAP reporting would provide a critical database that would be valuable for the whole-of-government effort to understand UAP. I
Dr. Nicola Fox, Associate Administrator, Science Mission Directorate, Forward to the report: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) are one of our planet’s greatest mysteries. Observations of objects in our skies that cannot be identified as balloons, aircraft, or natural known phenomena have been spotted worldwide, yet there are limited high-quality observations. The nature of science is to explore the unknown, and data is the language scientists use to discover our universe’s secrets. Despite numerous accounts and visuals, the absence of consistent, detailed, and curated observations means we do not presently have the body of data needed to make definitive, scientific conclusions about UAP. … NASA is appointing a Director of UAP Research to centralize communications and leverage NASA’s extensive resources and expertise to actively engage in the whole-of-government UAP initiative. This individual will also ensure that the agency’s vast analytical capabilities, including its proficiency in data management, machine learning and artificial intelligence, are contributed to the government’s unified UAP effort.
The panel sees particular promise in future SAR-based Earth-observing satellites such as NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission, a partnership with the Indian Space Research Organization. The excellent resolution of NISAR will provide valuable radar data that will potentially be critical for examining UAP directly, in addition to their environmental context. SAR systems will also provide critical validation of any truly anomalous properties, such as rapid acceleration or high-G maneuvers through the Doppler signatures they produce.
NASA’s adherence to FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability) data principles when generating curated data repositories enables both scientists and citizen scientists to conduct data-mining and meaningful analysis…. The application of NASA’s rigor to UAP data protocols will ultimately be essential for a detailed understanding of these phenomena.
NASA’s fleet of Earth-observing satellites must also play a key role in collecting future data on environmental conditions coinciding with UAP sightings. … NASA should also leverage sensors that expand its observational reach, such as penetrating deeper into the ocean or at the air/sea interfaces.
At present, UAP analysis is more limited by the quality of data than by the availability of techniques. As a consequence, it is a higher priority to obtain better quality data than it is to develop new analysis techniques.
Once AARO and other agencies, including NASA, accumulate an extensive and well-curated catalog of baseline data, these can be used to train neural networks so that they can characterize deviations from normal. The panel finds that standard techniques that are routinely applied in astronomy, particle physics, and other areas of science can be adapted for these analyses.
AARO has already begun this task by studying what “normal” phenomena such as solar glint or balloons look like to military sensors. The program of systematically calibrating observations of “normal” is an essential step before starting to search for the abnormal.
If the whole-of-government framework to understanding UAP – with NASA playing a crucial role – were to implement the preponderance of steps prescribed above, then the panel regards placing physical constraints on UAP, together with the suite of plausible natures and origins, as being within reach. If all unidentified events move at conventional speeds and accelerations, this likely points towards a conventional explanation for these events. Convincing evidence of verified anomalous accelerations and velocity would point towards potentially novel explanations for UAP.
current FAA guidelines suggest that citizens wanting to report UAP contact their local law enforcement or one or more non-governmental organizations, which is inadequate for drawing scientific inferences. Although such eyewitness reports are often interesting and compelling, they are insufficient on their own for making definitive conclusions about UAP. Thus, their effective corroboration within a robust reporting and follow-up framework based on systematically gathered data (including the ATM system) can provide a useful tool for understanding UAP
Recommends using NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), which NASA administers for the FAA, as a potential reporting tool: This system is a confidential, voluntary, non-punitive reporting system that receives safety reports from pilots, air traffic controllers, dispatchers, cabin crew, ground operators, maintenance technicians, and UAS operators that provides a unique data source for emerging UAS safety issues.
Excerpts from the press conference:
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson: “…we did so with a few goals in mind. First to examine how NASA can use our expertise and instruments to study UAP from a scientific perspective. Second, shift the conversation from sensationalism to science. And to make sure that whatever we find, or whatever we recommend, to make sure that information is shared transparently around the world. There’s a global fascination about UAP. On my travels one of the first questions I often get is about these sightings, and much of that fascination is due to the unknown nature of it. Think about it. Most UAP sightinghs result in very limited data. That makes it even more difficult to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of UAP.”
“And so this independent study panel … all with a specific charge from me, which is to tell how to apply the full focus of science and data to UAP. This is the first time NASA has taken concrete action to seriously look into UAP.”
“What’s the likelihood [of other life-harboring planets in the universe], at least a trillion, that’s from our [NASA] scientists. So we start this without any preconceived notions, but understanding we’re in a world of discovery.”
“The NASA independent study team did not find any evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin, but we don’t know what these UAP are.”
Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington: “UAP are one of our planet’s greatest mysteries. And it’s really due to the limited number of high quality data that surrounds such incidents, and often renders them unidentifiable. While there are numerous eye-witness accounts and visuals associated with UAP, they’re not consistent, they’re not detailed, and they’re not curated observations that can be used to make definitive scientific conclusions about the nature and origin of UAP.”
David Spergel: “The current approach to UAP data collection has let to a limited sample of events and limited data. Stigma has limited reporting by pilots, both civilian and military. So we know there’s missing data. For its anlayalis in other areas, NASA always takes a scientific approach–of systematic data collection, that involves calibrating instruments, multiple measurements, and ensuring censor metadata. Most UAP events lack this quality of data. … Once we have a large sample of well characterized events… will likely pove helpful in identifying interesting anomalies.It is essential to clarify, based on our current findings and methodology, that we find no evidence that UAP are extraterrestrial in origin.”
Question Section:
Bill Nelson, asked by James Fox if NASA had a plan to announce proof of extraterrestrial visitors: “If we are what I said we intend to be, which is transparent, then you bet your boots, we will say that. And I’ve tried to set the table for you by telling you what I personally believe… Whatever we find, we’re going to tell you.”
Bill Nelson, asked if the stigma is still a problem since NASA must refer to UFOs as UAP: “There’s a mindset. We’re all entertained [by UFO stories]. There’s a lot of folklore out there. That’s why we entered the stage, the arena, to try to get into the from a scientific perspective.” Nicola Fox: “I think you can blame The X-Files for a lot of this to.”
Marsha Dunn, AP: “I’m already receiving emails on Area 51 and Roswell, so I would like to ask… How much was your panel hassled or bombarded by this sort of thing.. from the fringe element?” David Spergel: “I would divide the emails and tweets into two types. There are some where people are honestly curious about things they’ve seen, they’ve heard. You know, they are things that are hard to respond to, like ‘My uncle, who’s dead, saw something strange’ and you get a report. You know, that’s not useful but that’s harmless.”
Asked about David Grush’s allegations. “I don’t speak for other parts of the government, but I can tell you that NASA, which I speak for, is open and transparent with our data…Whatever he said, where’s the evidence, is my response… A long time ago there was a TV show, Jack Friday, and he used to say, ‘Just the facts.’ Show me the evidence.”
September 14, 2023
NASA names a Director of UAP Research, Mark McInerney.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson: “At NASA, it’s in our DNA to explore – and to ask why things are the way they are. I want to thank the Independent Study Team for providing insight on how NASA can better study and analyze UAP in the future. NASA’s new Director of UAP Research will develop and oversee the implementation of NASA’s scientific vision for UAP research, including using NASA’s expertise to work with other agencies to analyze UAP and applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to search the skies for anomalies. NASA will do this work transparently for the benefit of humanity.”
Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington: “The director of UAP Research is a pivotal addition to NASA’s team and will provide leadership, guidance and operational coordination for the agency and the federal government to use as a pipeline to help identify the seemingly unidentifiable.”
McInerney’s name was initially going to be undisclosed, but NASA changed it’s mind seven hours after announcing the position. Nicola Fox tweeted: “Given the interest, I’m sharing NASA selected Mark McInerney director of UAP research. As we continue to digest the study team’s report and findings, please treat him with respect in this pivotal role to help us better scientifically understand UAP.”
Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research in NASA’s science mission directorate: “Some of them actually rose to actual threats [online harassment of members of the UAP Panel]. And yes, that’s in part why we are not splashing the name of our new director out there, because science needs to be free.” [NYTimes]
Intelligence Community
June 25, 2021
Office of the Director of National Intelligence released Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, excerpted below:
“Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP): Airborne objects not immediately identifiable. The
acronym UAP represents the broadest category of airborne objects reviewed for analysis.”
“This report provides an overview for policymakers of the challenges associated with
characterizing the potential threat posed by UAP while also providing a means to develop
relevant processes, policies, technologies, and training for the U.S. military and other U.S.
Government (USG) personnel if and when they encounter UAP…”
“There are probably multiple types of UAP requiring different explanations based on the
range of appearances and behaviors described in the available reporting. Our analysis of
the data supports the construct that if and when individual UAP incidents are resolved they will fall into one of five potential explanatory categories: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, USG or U.S. industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall “other” bin.”
“Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver
abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.”
“We currently lack data to indicate any UAP are part of a foreign collection program or indicative of a major technological advancement by a potential adversary.”
November 10, 2021
Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence, Ignatius Forum: Our Future In Space:
[Asked about the UAP “Other” category] “That basically indicated that we were not going to be able to characterize every single one of these reports, in the various categories that we’d identified, because frankly we were not able to understand everything about it. … The main issues that congress and others have been concerned about have been, basically, safety of flight concerns, and counterintelligence issues, but of course there is always the question of is there something else that we simply do not understand that might come extraterrestrial-ly.”
David Ignatius: “I’d love to hear your comments about what the tradecraft of UAP detection is, how we’ll know what we know, how would we know if we were being observed, for example…. What is the tradecraft?”
Haines: “The tradecraft isn’t any different for Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon than it is for the rest of our work in the intelligence community… We collect all of the information we can through a variety of different sensors, people are reporting things, we’re picking up things technically, we’re doing a variety of work to try to understand what it is we are seeing. We are then taking other information that we have to determine is it something that we know about in that area, is there some other reporting that we might not normally think of as being connected, and then we do our analysis as we normally would to … put it into context, what are the likely possible options, how do we characterize it, bucket it, and think about it. All of that is the standard way.
“But It doesn’t mean that we are definitely going to be able to tell if we are being observed under the circumstance. I mean I think there’s a lot of different ways that might be revealed. But certainly, we’re working to make sure that we understand what we do see, and what phenomenon is identified, and otherwise, we’re going to have to wait for Bill’s science work I think to actually reveal some of these additional possibilities.”
January 12, 2023
The Office of Director of National Intelligence released the 2022 Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.
March 8, 2023
CLIP OF U.S. INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORS TESTIFY ON GLOBAL THREATS
Senator Gillibrand askes DNI Director Avril Haines:
“DO I HAVE A COMMITMENT FROM YOU, AND EACH OF OUR WITNESSES, that YOU WILL WORK TO REDUCE STIGMA, SHARE INTELLIGENCE BETWEEN AGENCIES AND, AS WE’RE ABLE WITH THE PUBLIC, TO ENSURE WE HAVE AN UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT HAPPENS IN OUR SKIES AND seas?”
“AND IS THE ARROW OFFICE FULLY FUNDED IN YOUR BUDGET? Can you MAKE SURE? IT WAS LEFT OFF LAST YEAR, FOR BOTH THE D.O.D. AND INTELLIGENCE BUDGETS.”
September 15, 2023
Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (IC IG) Thomas A. Monheim responds to the August 21 request by six individual members of the House of Representatives for information corroborating David Grush’s claims [source]:
“As a matter of discretion, IC IG notes that it has not conducted any audit, inspection, evaluation, or review of alleged UAP programs within the responsibility and authority of the DNI [Director of National Intelligence] that would enable this office to provide a fulsome response to your questions.”
[]
Department of Defense
April 23, 2019
Source: Navy spokesperson, response to Politico reporting:
“There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years,” the Navy said in a statement in response to questions from POLITICO. “For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report.
“As part of this effort,” it added, “the Navy is updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities. A new message to the fleet that will detail the steps for reporting is in draft.”
…
“In response to requests for information from Congressional members and staff, Navy officials have provided a series of briefings by senior Naval Intelligence officials as well as aviators who reported hazards to aviation safety,” the service said in its statement to POLITICO.
The Navy declined to identify who has been briefed, nor would it provide more details on the guidelines for reporting that are being drafted for the fleet. The Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
May 26, 2019
Source: Navy spokesperson, response to New York Times reporting:
Joseph Gradisher, a Navy spokesman, said the new guidance was an update of instructions that went out to the fleet in 2015, after the Roosevelt incidents.
“There were a number of different reports,” he said. Some cases could have been commercial drones, he said, but in other cases “we don’t know who’s doing this, we don’t have enough data to track this. So the intent of the message to the fleet is to provide updated guidance on reporting procedures for suspected intrusions into our airspace.”
September 18, 2019
Source, CNN report:
[Navy spokesman Joseph] Gradisher said the Navy’s transparency about unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, is largely done to encourage trainees to report “incursions” they spot in the airfield, which threaten pilots’ safety.
“This is all about frequent incursions into our training ranges by UAPs,” he said. “Those incursions present a safety hazard to the safe flight of our aviators and the security of our operations.”
The public clips capture just a fraction of the frequent incursions Navy training ranges see, he said.
“For many years, our aviators didn’t report these incursions because of the stigma attached to previous terminology and theories about what may or may not be in those videos,” he said.
The only way to find out what those UAP are, he said, is to encourage trainees to report them when they see them.
April 16, 2020
UAP Security Classification Guidance approved by Scott Bray, Director of Naval Intelligence, FOIA-released to The Black Vault on December 22, 2021:
Section 2.7
Definitions: Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP): Any aerial phenomenon that
cannot be immediately identified.
Section 3.1
Identification: Where information pertaining to UAP has been obtained or developed through the use of classified sources or methods, the proper classification of a resultant item of information or material will be the highest classification set forth in either this classification guide, or the classification guide or guides applicable to the sources or methods used to obtain the UAP information or material. Accordingly, in Cormation about UAP designated herein as SECRET/IREL FVEY may well be TOP SECRETIISCIIINOFORN due to the sources or methods through which the UAP information was collected
Section 3.3
Goal and Mission: The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze, catalog, consolidate and exploit advanced non-traditional aerospace vehicles posing an operational threat to U.S. National Security ond ovoid strategic surprise
April 27, 2020
The Pentagon officially authenticates and publicly releases the three UAP videos, FLIR, GOFAST, and GIMBAL. The press release states:
“The Department of Defense has authorized the release of three unclassified Navy videos, one taken in November 2004 and the other two in January 2015, which have been circulating in the public domain after unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017. … The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified.’”
June 25, 2020
Kathleen H. Hicks, Deputy Secretary of Defense, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Assessments memo:
“It is critical that the United States maintain operations security and safety at DoD ranges. To this end, it is equally critical that all U.S. military aircrews or government personnel report whenever aircraft or other devices interfere with military training. This includes the observation and reporting of UAPs.”
“UAP activity expands significantly beyond the purview of the Secretary of the Navy, who heads the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF)”
“I direct the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security to develop a plan to formalize the mission currently performed by the UAPTF…. synchronize collection, reporting and analysis on the UAP problem set… establish recommendations for securing military test and training ranges… include the organizational alignment, resources and staffing required”
“All members of the Department will utilize these processes to ensure that the UAPTF, or
its follow-on activity, has reports of UAP observations within two weeks of an occurrence.”
August 2021
Frank Kendall, Secretary of the Air Force, Politico interview:
“I don’t consider it an imminent threat to the United States or the human race, these phenomena occurring,” he said in response to a question from POLITICO. “I would have to see evidence that it was something worthy of the attention of the United States Air Force as a threat.”
“Our job is to protect the United States against threats,” Kendall added. “I have a lot of known threats out there that we’re working very hard to protect the United States against. I’d like to focus on those.” However, he did say that “if we’re asked to take that on, we will.”
November 23, 2021
Kathleen H. Hicks, Deputy Secretary of Defense, memo
The Pentagon announces that the UAP Task Force will become the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG).
“The AOIMSG will synchronize efforts across the Department and the broader U.S. government to detect, identify and attribute objects of interests in Special Use Airspace (SUA), and to assess and mitigate any associated threats to safety of flight and national security.”
“Incursions by any airborne object into our SUA pose safety of flight and operations security concerns, and may pose national security challenges. DOD takes reports of incursions – by any airborne object, identified or unidentified – very seriously, and investigates each one.”
May 17, 2022
The House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation holds a public congressional hearing on UFOs (C-SPAN video and transcript)
Ronald Moultrie, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security:
“What are UAP? Put simply, UAP are airborne objects that when encountered cannot be immediately identified. However, it is the department’s contention that by combining appropriately structured collected data with rigorous scientific analysis any object that we encounter can likely be as isolated, characterized, identified, and if necessary mitigated. We know that our service members have encountered unidentified aerial phenomenon. And because UAPs pose potential flight safety and general security risk, we are committed to a focused effort to determine their origins. Our effort will include the thorough examination of adversarial platforms and potential breakthrough technologies, us government or commercial platforms, allied or partner systems and other natural phenomenon.”
“With regard to the importance of transparency, the department is fully committed to the principle of openness and accountability to the American people. However, we are also mindful of our obligation to protect sensitive sources and methods. Our goal is to strike that delicate balance, one that enables us to maintain the public’s trust while preserving those capabilities that are vital to support of our service personnel.”
“We also understand that there has been a cultural stigma surrounding UAP. Our goal is to eliminate the stigma by fully incorporating our operators and mission personnel into a standardized data-gathering process.”
“I’m familiar with Blue Book. I’m familiar with AATIP. I haven’t seen other documented studies that have been done by DOD in that regard. Not aware of anything that’s official that was done in between those two. It hasn’t been brought to my attention.”
Scott Bray, Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence:
“Our main objective was to transition UAP efforts from an anecdotal or narrative based approach to a rigorous science and technology engineering focused study. This data driven approach.”
“If and when individual UAP incidents are resolved, they likely fall into one of five potential explanatory categories, airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, US government or US industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems or a other bin that allows for a holding bin of difficult cases and for the possibility of surprise and potential scientific discovery.”
“We attribute this increase in reporting to a number of factors, including our work to destigmatize reporting, an increase in the number of new systems such as quadcopters and unmanned aerial systems that are in our airspace. Identification of what we can classify as clutter, mylar balloons and other types of air trash and improvements in the capabilities of our various sensors to detect things in our airspace.
“I don’t mean to suggest that everything that we observe is identifiable, but this is a great example of how it takes considerable effort to understand what we’re seeing in the examples that we are able to collect. … We recognize that can be unsatisfying or insufficient in the eyes of many. This is a popular topic in our nation with various theories as to what these objects may be and where they originate. By nature, we are all curious and we seek to understand the unknown. And as a lifelong intelligence professional, I’m impatient, I want immediate explanations for this as much as anyone else. However, understanding can take significant time and effort. It’s why we’ve endeavored to concentrate on this data-driven process, to drive fact-based results. And given the nature of our business, national defense, we’ve had to sometimes be less forthcoming with information and open forums than many would hope.”
“We do not want, we do not want potential adversaries to know exactly what we’re able to see or understand or how we come to the conclusions we make. Therefore public disclosures must be carefully considered on a case by case basis.”
“The question then becomes in many of these cases where we don’t have a discernible mean of propulsion in the data that we have, in some cases, there is likely sensor artifacts that may be hiding some of that.”
“When I say we can’t explain, I mean, exactly as you described there, that there is a lot of information like the video that we showed in which there’s simply too little data to create a reasonable explanation. There are a small handful of cases in which we have more data that our analysis simply hasn’t been able to fully pull together a picture of what happened.”
“Again, we’ve made no assumptions about what this is or isn’t. We’re committed to understanding these and so we’ll go wherever that data takes us.”
“What I will commit to is, at least for that material that’s under my authority as the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, for information that we have, when it does not involve sources and methods, and when we can, with a reasonable degree of confidence, determine that it does not pose a foreign intelligence or national security threat, and it’s within my authority to do so, I commit to declassifying that.”
“The UAP task force doesn’t have any wreckage that isn’t explainable, that isn’t consistent with being of terrestrial origin.”
“I can’t point to something that definitively was not manmade, but I can point to a number of examples and which remain unresolved.”
“The message is now clear, if you see something, you need to report it.”
July 20, 2022
The DoD announces the establishment of a new UAP office called the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick is named as director.
Kathleen H. Hicks, Deputy Secretary of Defense, memo:
“…renaming and expanding the scope of the Airborne Object Identification and Management Group (AOIMSG) to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)”
“The mission of the AARO will be to synchronize efforts across the Department of Defense, and with other U.S. federal departments and agencies, to detect, identify and attribute objects of interest in, on or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace and other areas of interest, and, as necessary, to mitigate any associated threats to safety of operations and national security. This includes anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects.”
Ronald Moultrie, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security, memo:
“The AARO will leverage Department of Defense capabilities and synchronize with the Intelligence Community to tackle the unique challenges posed by the presence of anomalous objets across all domains. I will manage the processes to enable the AARO Executive Council to provide oversight and direction to the AARO along these primary lines of effort:
1. Surveillance, Collection and Reporting
2. System Capabilities and Design
3. Intelligence Operations and Analysis
4. Mitigation and Defeat
5. Governance
6. Science and Technology”
“I expect the DoD components to continue to meet their responsibilities for timely reporting of UAP, as they have done to this point.”
July 21, 2022
Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of both NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, (NORAD), Aspen Security Forum roundtable:
“I have not changed or been asked to change any of my posture, taskings or anything… First of all, let’s be clear. My job as the NORAD commander is to identify every single UAP or …whatever it is. What I would report to you is I’ve yet to find one that had aliens or was a spaceship that we’ve identified. If any of our NORAD fighters or, or any assets assigned to NORTHCOM, came across some type of UAP, we would absolutely report that. I’m just telling you, we haven’t seen that.”
August 5, 2022
Ronald Moultrie with Bill Nelson, Twitter:
“#NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and I are looking forward to our teams collaborating on unidentified phenomena. We greatly appreciate all that our @NASA colleagues are doing in the areas of science and exploration!”
September 7, 2022
Department of the Navy, FOIA Program Office, FOIA denial letter:
“The UAP Task Force has responded back to DNS-36 and have stated that the requested videos contain sensitive information pertaining to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) and are classified and are exempt from disclosure in their entirety under exemption 5 U.S.C. § 552 (b)(1) in accordance with Executive Order 13526 and the UAP Security Classification Guide. The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.”
“While three UAP videos were released in the past, the facts specific to those three videos are unique in that those videos were initially released via unofficial channels before official release. Those events were discussed extensively in the public domain; in fact, major news outlets conducted specials on these events. Given the amount of information in the public domain regarding these encounters, it was possible to release the files without further damage to national security.”
September 8, 2022
Frank Kendall, Secretary of the Air Force, CBS Mornings interview:
Q: From where you sit, are UFOs a real issue?
“To be quite honest, not for me. I have real threats that I worry about every day, and they are severe threats. I’m aware of–I don’t have direct responsibly for investigating these phenomenon. I’ve looked at the reports. There are things that we haven’t been able to explain. But I think that the important thing for us to do is do some real technical investigation of what they are and try to resolve these.”
October 28, 2022
Source: Susan Gough, Defense Department spokeswoman, quoted in New York Times article:
Sue Gough, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said the Pentagon remains committed to principles of openness but must balance that with its “its obligation to protect sensitive information, sources and methods.”
While the Pentagon will not “rush to conclusions in our analysis,” Ms. Gough said, no single explanation addresses the majority of unidentified aerial phenomenon reports.
“We are collecting as much data as we can, following the data where it leads and will share our findings whenever possible,” she said.
December 16, 2022
Pentagon press roundtable on the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, transcript excerpted below.
Ronald Moultrie, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security:
“You may have caught that I just said unidentified anomalous phenomena, whereas in the past the department has used the term unidentified aerial phenomena. This new terminology expands the scope of UAP to include submerged and trans-medium objects. Unidentified phenomena in all domains, whether in the air, ground, sea or space, pose potential threats to personnel security and operations security, and they require our urgent attention.”
“We have not, to the best of my knowledge, had any credible reporting, that we’ve been able to analyze of trans-medium activity or trans-medium objects. …I would say that we have not seen since the — the May hearing, we have not seen any – any indications that there have been trans-medium activities with UAPs.”
[Asked by The New York Times if UAP are from space aliens] “So, we can say it in unison, and we can do it separately? At this time, the answer’s no, we have nothing…. We have not seen anything that would — but we — we’re certainly very early on — that would lead us to believe that any of the objects that we have seen are of alien origin, if you will. If we are — if we find something like that, we will look at it and analyze it and take the appropriate actions.”
[Asked by Politico about transmedium] “So, just to go back and — and level set, how we approach this. We are concerned about objects that appear — and this has happened for decades, right? — objects that appear on the sea. … But we can resolve those to adversarial activities, or we resolve those to, sometimes to amateur activities, if you will. … We’re trying to ensure that we do a complete characterization of that with any of the things that may fall under the criteria that the — has really hit the forefront over the last year and a half. And this is this anomalous activities and things that Congress has said that they — we’re really concerned about.”
“I think our ability right now to resolve things in the space domain, and what we have in the space domain, is something that would fall under sensitive sources and methods and means, so would be — would prefer not to respond to that — that comment or that question, excuse me, in this forum.”
“In terms of holdings that I have seen and holdings, that that we have gone through — and we are being very thorough about this, and we are going back and trying to understand all the compartmented programs that this department has had, understand all the relationships that we may have had with any other organizations and all the predecessor organizations that were established before we were officially a Department of Defense. We’ve looked at all that; I have not seen anything in those holdings to date that would suggest that there has been an alien visitation, an alien crash, or anything like that.”
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office:
“We have an important and yet challenging mission to lead an interagency effort to document collect, analyze, and when possible, resolve reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena. … Unidentified objects in the skies, sea and space pose potential threats to safety and security, particularly for operational personnel.”
“AARO is prioritizing reports of UAP in or near military installations, operating areas, critical infrastructure and areas of national security importance. Our team is partnering with the services, the intelligence community, the Department of Energy, NASA, the FAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – NOAA – and others to share information about UAP and tap into the vast resources of the interagency. NASA has been a particularly valuable partner. We are also engaging with a wide range of select partners from across academia, industry and the scientific community, as well as our allies and partners.”
“As you heard at the opening hearing in May, the stigma associated with UAP reporting has been significantly reduced. While that’s good news, more work needs to be done. Building on that progress, AARO is working with the military departments and the Joint Staff to normalize, integrate and expand UAP reporting beyond the aviators to all service members, including mariners, submariners and our space guardians.”
“AARO is integrating and executing a focused collection campaign using both traditional and nontraditional sources and sensors. We are bringing in outside expertise to help design and deploy ‘detect and track’ capabilities.”
“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. While we’re committed to declassifying and sharing information related to UAP to the greatest extent possible, we must, of course, balance the desire for transparency with the need to protect classified information, sources and methods in the interest of national security.”
“Remember, AARO is just getting started. It is crucial that we are rigorous and thorough in our collection, analysis and S&T; that we apply the highest analytic and scientific standards; that we execute our mission objectively and without sensationalism; and when we do not rush to conclusions.”
[Asked by The New York Times if UAP are from space aliens] No… So, I would just say we are — we are structuring our analysis to be very thorough and rigorous. We will go through it all. And as a physicist, I have to adhere to the scientific method, and I will follow that data and science wherever it goes.
“I believe our cut off [for modern UPA reporting]; going backwards was 1996 through now.”
[On decline of UFO stigma] “So, it’s the quality and quantity reporting that we’re getting across all the services; all the services have also instigated their own reporting mechanisms. And what we’re doing right now is working with all the services and the Joint Staff to raise the threshold for reporting, the standards for reporting and the requirements for reporting so that we can unify that across the entire department.”
[Q: Have you detected UAP demonstrating technology which you are unable to explain?] “There are things that appear to demonstrate interesting flight dynamics that we are fully investigating and researching right now…. Some of that could be sensor phenomenology. Some of that could be flight dynamics of the platform. Some of that could be just an illusion. There’s lots of different ways that we have to investigate all of those in order to get to that truth.”
December 20, 2022
Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, press briefing:
“I think the important thing is, looking at the bigger picture, ensuring that we’re all working towards common objectives through interagency dialogues and — and discussions, which I would fully expect will happen in this case going forward. We have a very close working relationship with the — in the Department of Defense, with NASA — and I have no reason to think that that will change anytime soon.”
January 11, 2023
AARO Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick presented a slide deck to the Transportation Research Board (TRB), National Academy of Engineering, on AARO’s “UAP Mission & Civil Aviation.”
The slide deck contains the following new details about AARO.
Translation of logo inscription: “This world is mere change, and this life, opinion.”
Slide 2
AARO emerged from Congressional and Departmental recognition that UAP present
complex hazards and threats across service, regional, and domain boundaries.
UAP are sources of anomalous spaceborne, airborne, seaborne, or transmedium observations that are not yet attributable to known actors or causes
Slide 3
AARO is a uniquely-capable, Defense Department organization that integrates
operational, scientific, and intelligence capabilities to resolve UAP.
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
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
Key scientific and intelligence questions:
- Physical, technical, behavioral, and contextual characteristics of phenomena, their composition, and their movement
- Capabilities, limitations, and vulnerabilities of phenomena and any assessed technological gap between phenomena and the United States
- Indications and characteristics of hazards, risks and/or threats by phenomena to the United States, its people, its equities, and/or its instruments of national power
- Attribution of phenomena to natural and/or artificial sources
- Indications of foreign observation of and reaction to phenomena
- The disposition of observed phenomena
Slide 4
The potentially ubiquitous presence of UAP defines the national-security implications and drives the broad range of stakeholders and demand for rigorous scientific understanding of and intelligence on phenomena
| US Territory & Operating Areas | US Strategic Capabilities | Foreign Territory & Operating Areas |
| DoD observations and reporting of UAP most often in the vicinity of US military facilities and operating areas Threats to the immediate safety of US citizens and Government facilities, across domains, is priority Safety and security risks of UAP heighten US Government awareness and drives research and mitigation efforts | Reporting on UAP proximity to strategic capabilities and critical infrastructure primarily historical; analysis limited by information currency and source reliability Consequence of UAP in the vicinity of strategic capabilities is high, potentially threatening strategic deterrence and safety of civil society DoD strengthening observations and reporting capabilities near US strategic capabilities and critical infrastructure | Reporting on UAP activity in foreign territory or operating areas limited by source reliability Consequence of such moderate-to high, potentially leading to adversarial misattribution of UAP to the United States Allies and strategic competitors apply resources to observe, identify, and attribute UAP |
| Key partners and stakeholders include: DoD, IC, DoJ, NASA, FAA | Key partners and stakeholders include: DoD, IC, DoE and NNSA, DoJ, DHS | Key partners and stakeholders include: DoD, IC, STATE, international partners |
Slide 5
AARO leads integration of the Department’s UAP operations, research, analyses, and
strategic-communications to deliver exquisite data, advanced sensors, sound analytics,
and shared mission awareness and ownership
| Integrated-Operations | S&T Research & Application | Interdisciplinary Analyses | Focused Communications |
| synchronizing and sequencing Theater, IC, and other capabilities for optimized, cross- functional UAP detection, tracking, mitigation, and recovery | revealing and exploiting elusive and enigmatic signatures through advanced technologies and focused, cross- sector partnerships | delivering peer-reviewed conclusions through deliberate syntheses of scientific and intelligence method, tradecraft, tools, and expertise | driving shared awareness across mission partners, oversight authorities, and stakeholders— normalizing cross-sector partnerships and building trust with transparency |
Slide 6
Our mission success and our ability to contribute to aviation safety depends on observations and insights from the aviation community
| Educate Aviators and Crews | Encourage Reporting | Leverage Our Expertise & Systems |
| The subject of UAP is laden with decades of imprecise—and often sensational–information Promulgating accurate information about UAP, their implications to flight safety and national security, and our commitment to resolving them is foundational to our partnership with the community. Sharing what UAP data is critically-important for scientific and intelligence analyses allows aviators and crews to optimize the value of their observations and reporting of phenomena | Historically, reticence to UAP reporting has limited the Government’s ability to guard against aerial safety and security threats Destigmatizing discussion about and reporting of UAP is essential for tracking, resolving, and defending against such phenomena Government efforts to encourage military aviators and crews to report phenomena have substantially increased the quantity and quality of UAP data | Aviators and crews informed about UAP and willing to report have historically had few official channels to submit observational data We are working with military, civil, and industry partners to develop and field reporting mechanisms available to aviators and crews By leveraging our systems, we will be able to quickly incorporate aviators’ and crews’ reporting into the corpus of data, to optimize scientific and intelligence analyses, and to provide feedback to the reporting individual and/or organization |
Slide 7
What kind of information would be necessary and sufficient for UAP analyses?
about the phenomenon
- UAP-event description or narrative
- UAP location relative to the observer, with as much precision as practicable
- Number of UAP-objects observed during the phenomenon and indications of intra UAP-object coordination and/or communication
- Indications of advanced and/or enigmatic capabilities
- UAP characteristics, including physical state (e.g., solid, liquid, gas, plasma); description (e.g., size, shape, color); signatures; propulsion means; payload
- UAP performance envelope, including altitude and/or depth; travel path and trajectory; velocity; maneuverability
- UAP behavior, including whether under apparent intelligent control, apparent response to observation and/or observer presence, and apparent indications of indifference or hostility
about the observer
- Observer’s date, time, location, and travel path for first and last observation of the UAP, with as much precision as practicable
- Observer’s behavior toward the UAP
- Sensors that detected the phenomenon (e.g., visual, radar)
- Any physiological, psychological, or other effects apparently corresponding to the UAP observation
- Observer’s assessment of the UAP, including the nature of the phenomenon and whether it was benign, a hazard, or a threat
- Identification of any other observers
January 12, 2023
Statement by Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder on the Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), excerpt:
“The safety of our service personnel, our bases and installations, and the protection of U.S. operations security on land, in the skies, seas, and space are paramount. We take reports of incursions into our designated space, land, sea, or airspaces seriously and examine each one.
“The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is leading DOD’s efforts, in coordination with ODNI and other government agencies, to document, analyze, and when possible resolve UAP reports using a rigorous scientific framework and a data-driven approach. “
February 8, 2023
Pentagon press conference about the Chinese spy balloon:
Question: Do these Chinese surveillance balloons somehow explain the UAP, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon that were reported in that report to Congress? Are some of those UAP incidents perhaps some of those Chinese surveillance balloons?
Answer: So your first questions, that’s really best addressed by the Director of National Intelligence, that puts that report together. … The DNI would be the best folks to address that.
February 12, 2022
Press Call regarding the NORAD shoot down of three unidentified objects.
Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of both NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, (NORAD):
What I would tell you is what we’re seeing is very, very small objects that produce a very, very low radar cross-section. … radars essentially filter out information based on speed. So you can set various gates. We call them velocity gates that allow us to filter out low-speed clutter. So if you have radars on all the time that we’re looking at anything from zero speed up to, say, 100, you would see a lot more information.
We have adjusted some of those gates to give us better fidelity on seeing smaller objects. You can also filter out by altitude. And so, with some adjustments, we’ve been able to get a better a categorization of radar tracks now. And that’s why I think you’re seeing these overall. Plus, there’s a heightened alert to look for this information.
To get with our history, I believe this is the first time within United States or America airspace that NORAD or United States Northern Command has taken kinetic action against an airborne object.
So we have scrambled in the past against radar tracks that we’ve been unable to correlate with fighters. That has happened over years. And sometimes it’s attributed to potentially being birds. Sometimes it’s been attributed to weather. Sometimes we don’t know what to attribute it to.
Helene Cooper, New York Times: Hi, thanks, Pat, and thanks for doing this. This is for General VanHerck. Because you still haven’t been able to tell us what these things are that we are shooting out of the sky, that raises the question, have you ruled out aliens or extraterrestrials? And if so, why? Because that is what everyone is asking us right now.
GEN. VANHERCK: Thanks for the question, Helena. I’ll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven’t ruled out anything. At this point, we continue to assess every threat or potential threats unknown that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it.
February 26, 2023
Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough, response to the Daily Mail about AARO staffing and funding:
“I can tell you that AARO has more than three full-time staff, but I’m not going to comment on the details. AARO is growing quickly to meet its mission and is on track to reach full operating capacity in FY2024. We will continue to work across DoD, ODNI, OMB [White House Office of Management and Budget], and with Congress, to determine appropriate funding and personnel levels.”
March 7, 2023
AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick publishes a draft version of a peer-reviewed paper titled: PHYSICAL CONSTRAINTS ON UNIDENTIFIED AERIAL PHENOMENA
Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough, response to Christopher Sharp: “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.”
April 14, 2023
Major General John Olson, Mobilization Assistant to the Chief of Space Operations for the U.S. Space Force, Foreign Press Center briefing
Question: “Major General Olson, what do you think about the unidentified aerial phenomena, UAP, and UFOs?
MAJOR GENERAL OLSON: Well, this is a very hot topic, and I appreciate the question. I know, admittedly, Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force is quite a mouthful in an acronym. I’ve gotten that question a couple other times – what do you think about UFOs or aliens? And quite frankly, having flown 83 different airplanes and had lots of hours, we’ve all seen lots of unexplainable elements. And the cosmos – the space realm is so large. If we look at the Earth, it is this tiny blue dot in an unlimited, almost incomprehensibly large cosmos. I personally believe that there absolutely, from a probability perspective, is life out there.
However, this task force is a very serious U.S. Government approach to systematically investigating and understanding these, because of course unidentified elements present a national security concern, present a safety of flight, present a risk that we must take and diligently pursue.
But I think the question is actually more broadly put, and that is – is we will continue this effort, and in fact, I believe it will be getting more funding and more of a structural support level within the department. But I also believe that this is part of our never-ending quest to learn and understand and explore. And as we have on our probes that have exited the solar system to our probes to the Moon, we have gone in peace to explore and discover. And we continue that yearning to see and discover is there life out there and what does that mean for humanity.
April 19, 2023
Sean Kirkpatrick, excerpts from opening statement and question responses during the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities hearing on AARO [full transcript]:
AARO has accomplished much in the 9 months since it was established. The AARO team of more than three dozen experts is organized around four functional areas: operations, scientific research, integrated analysis, and strategic communications. In the nine months since AARO’s establishment, we have taken important steps to improve UAP data collection, standardize the Department’s UAP internal reporting requirements, and implement a framework for rigorous scientific and intelligence analysis, allowing us to resolve cases in a systematic and prioritized manner. Meanwhile, consistent with legislative direction, AARO is also carefully reviewing and researching the U.S. Government’s UAP-related historical record.
AARO is the culmination of decades of DoD, Intelligence Community, and congressionally-directed efforts to successfully resolve UAP encountered, first and foremost, by U.S. military personnel, specifically Navy and Air Force pilots.
The law establishing AARO is ambitious, and it will take time to realize the full mission. We cannot answer decades of questions about UAP all at once, but we must begin somewhere. 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.
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. 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.
Without sufficient data, we are unable to reach defendable conclusions that meet the high scientific standards we set for resolution, and I will not close a case that we cannot defend the conclusions of.
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.
In the wake of the PRC HAB event [February balloon shootdowns], the interagency is working to better integrate and share information to address identifiable stratospheric objects, but that is not AARO’s lane.
Meanwhile, for the few cases in all domains, space, air and sea, that do demonstrate potentially anomalous characteristics, AARO exists to help the DoD, IC, and interagency resolve those anomalous cases.I should also state clearly, for the record, that in our research, AARO has found no credible evidence, thus far, of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics. 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.
I think we’re currently sitting at around – if I remember correctly – we’re around twenty to thirtyish, or about halfway through that analytic process. A handful of them have made it all the way out to the other side, gone through peer review, we’ve got case-closure reports done and signed. We’re gonna get faster as we get more people on board and we get more of the Community tools to automate some of the analysis that has to be done.
And I have indicators that some are related to foreign capabilities. We have to investigate that with our IC partners, and as we get evidence to support that, that gets then handed off to the appropriate IC agency to investigate. Again, it becomes an SEP at that point [Somebody Else’s Problem.]
So, I would like to lay down…here’s one of my, you know, sort of my mission and my goal and my vision here. So the vision is, at one point…at some point in the future, you should not need an AARO. If I’m successful in what I’m doing, we should be able to normalize everything that we’re doing into existing processes, functions, agencies and organizations, and make that part of their mission and their role. Right now, the niche that we form is really going after the unknowns. I think you articulated it early on, this is a hunt mission for what might somebody be doing in our backyard that we don’t know about. Alright, well, that, that, that is what we are doing, right? But at some point, we should be able to normalize that. That’s why it’s so important the work we’re doing with Joint Staff to normalize that into DoD policy and guidance. We are bringing in all of our interagency partners. So NASA is providing a liaison for us. I have FBI liaison, I have OSI liaison, I have service liaisons. Half of my staff come from the IC. Half of my staff come from other scientific and technical backgrounds. I have DOE. And so, what we’re trying to do is ensure, again, as I make UAP into SEP, they get handed off to the people that that is their mission to go do. So that we aren’t duplicating that. I’m not gonna go chase the Chinese high-altitude balloon, for example. That’s not my job. It’s not an unknown and it’s not anomalous, anymore. Now it goes over to them.”
“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. And so how do you do that? You do that with the scientific method, right? And so as AARO is developing and implementing its science plan, it has to do so grounded in a solid foundation of scientific theory, across the entire range of hypotheses that have been presented for what UAP are. That range spans, adversary-breakthrough technology on one hand, known objects and phenomena in the middle, all the way to the extreme theories of extraterrestrials. All of that has physics-based signatures associated with it. Whether it’s theoretical, from the academic community, known from things like hypersonic weapons, or adversary-breakthrough technologies, as we’ve talked about before. Or the known objects that we have to go measure. The idea is, across that entire range, you have to come up with peer-reviewed, scientific basis for all of it. “
May 2023
Ronald Moultrie, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security, approves an email address that individuals can use to directly contact AARO.
The Joint Staff also separately published a “GENADMIN” message on “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Reporting and Material Disposition” that offers guidance to the military services and commands about reporting UAP worldwide, using a standard reporting template. The template is a result of work AARO has pursued with military leaders to improve and standardize reporting procedures across the force, since its inception.
(Source: Defense Scoop)
May 31, 2023
Ronald Moultrie, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security, tweets:
Dr. Kirkpatrick, AARO Director, participated in NASA’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Independent Study Public Meeting today. Partners like NASA are crucial to better understanding the nature and origin of UAP. Watch the stream here.
Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO Director, speaking at NASA’s UAP Panel Public Meeting
“I also emphasize to Congress that the only a very small percentage of UAP reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as anomalous. The majority of unidentified objects reported to AARO and in our holdings demonstrate mundane characteristics of readily explainable sources. While a large number of cases and AARO’s holdings remain technically unresolved, this is primarily due to a lack of data associated with those cases, very much along the lines of what David was just speaking about. Without sufficient data, we are unable to reach defendable conclusions that meet the high scientific standards we set for resolution. Meanwhile, 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. “
“Given what we’ve got so far is going to be an important first step to understanding what sensors are going to be relevant. From there, we will we are augmenting with dedicated sensors that we’ve purpose built, designed to detect, track and characterize those particular objects. And we will be been putting those out in very select areas for surveillance purposes.”
“We have partnerships with both DOD and DOE labs to explore our current state of the art fundamental physics of UAP observations, both current and historical. In other words, if I have objects, those few that are doing some things that are anomalous, what is our current understanding of maneuverability? Speed? Signature management, propulsion? What are those underlying signatures that we would expect to see? And how do I then pull on that?”
“And then finally, our pattern of life analysis. This is essentially baselining. What is normal, I have all these hotspot areas, but we only have hotspot areas, because that’s when the reports come in from the operators that are operating at that time. They don’t operate all the time. So to have a 24/7 collection monitoring campaign, in some of these areas for three months at a time is going to be necessary in order to measure out what is normal, then I’ll know what is not normal, right when we have additional things that come through those spaces. And that includes space and maritime. “
“…we roughly get I mean, you can do the math, you know, it depends anywhere from from 50 to 100-ish new reports a month. Now, the reason we had such a big jump recently is because I got FAA data integrated. …But the numbers I would say that we see are possibly really anomalous are less than single digit percentages of those, that total database, so maybe two to five-ish percent.”
“The stigma has improved significantly over the years since the Navy first took this on, some years ago. It is not gone and in fact, I would argue the stigma exists inside the leadership of all of our our buildings, wherever that is. My team and I have also been subjected to lots of harassment, especially coming out of my last hearing. 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 by exhibiting that kind of behavior to all of us. Right? That is a bad thing. Where can NASA help I made that recommendation on NASA should lead the scientific discourse, we need to elevate this conversation. We need to have this conversation in an open environment like this, where we aren’t going to get harassed. Because this is a hard problem. “
“Your first question on what makes it anomalous to me, we actually developed some definitions on all of these things. We gave it both to the White House into Congress, I think we’ve gotten some of that into law now. But essentially anomalous is anything that is not readily understandable by the operator or the sensor. Right, so it is doing something weird, whether that’s maneuvering against the wind at Mach two with no apparent propulsion, or it’s going into the water, which we have, we have shown is not the case, that is actually a sensor anomaly that we’ve now figured out, and we’re going to be publishing all that. You know, those kinds of things, make anomalous signature. We’ll call it signature management. But it’s things that are not readily understandable in the context of, hey, I’ve got a thing that’s out in the light, it should reflect a certain amount of light. If it doesn’t reflect that amount of light, something weird.”
June 5, 2023
Susan Gough, Pentagon spokesperson statement about David Grusch :
July 20, 2023
Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO Director, interviewed by ABC News, his first televised press interview:
“I’m a long term intelligence officer, scientists, and military officer.”
Q: What keeps you up at night?
“Technical surprise, and that could be adversarial technical surprise, or extraterrestrial technical surprise.”
Q: What are the most common misconceptions that people have of UAP and the work you are doing?
“That they are all the same thing, and they are all extraterrestrial. Neither of those are true.”
Q: What’s your best guess about what happened there [2004 Tic Tac incident]?
“It’s really hard to guess, and I don’t like to guess…
Q: So have you hit a dead end on this one?
“The more things that I see that resemble a Tic Tac, then I can get more and more information about what that is.”
ABC: “Kirkpatrick says between 95 and 98% of cases reviewed by his office are readily explainable. … But a small number remain a mystery.”
Q: So that 2-5% that are anomalous incidents, could potentially be extraterrestrial activity?
“We are going to follow our data and our investigations wherever it goes. I have a full range of hypotheses. I can’t rule it out. But I don’t have any evidence that says that yet.”
Q: You can say categorically you’ve seen no convincing, confirmable evidence of intact spacecraft kept by the US government?
“No. I have seen nothing that leads me to that conclusion.
Q: Is it possible that there is some secret program that you’re just not aware of?
“I don’t think so. I have access to anything and everything I need.”
Q: Why do you think these whistlesblowers are coming forward?
“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.
Q: Are we gong to find it on your watch?
“Wouldn’t that be fun. That would probably be the best outcome of this job.”
July 21, 2023
Pentagon spokesperson responds to Mid Bay News question about Congressional complaints of stonewalling during a February UAP briefing: “Eglin Air Force Base supported a visit from Representatives Gaetz, Burchett, and Luna on Feb 21. Air Force officials provided a classified briefing on intelligence collection threats to Eglin Air Force Base during their visit. The Congress members halted the briefing and requested instead a briefing focused on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Base officials responded to present additional available classified information on UAPs to all three members but were only able to discuss a certain portion of the information with Representative Gaetz, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. Representatives Burchett and Luna, not being members of a congressional defense committee, did not possess the access required to join the portion of the discussion reserved for Representative Gaetz.”
July 27, 2023
Sean Kirkpatrick response to the House Oversight Committee hearing on UAP. Douglas Dean Johnson “received verification directly from Dr. Kirkpatrick that he wrote it.”
July 31, 2023
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks convened stakeholders to discuss AARO’s website and formally directed DOD to provide that office with any administrative and technical support needed to build and launch the online portal successfully. (Source: Defense Scoop)
Pentagon spokesperson Eric Pahon: “She has the ability — and used it — to bring together all the top actors in the department. I think what she found was that this was being worked at a working level, but it didn’t have the right level of senior leader attention until she really kind of drove it home to say, ‘Hey, you people around the table are going to make this thing happen,’”
August 4, 2023
General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, exit interview with the Washington Times.
“The guy was under oath. I’m sure that he was trying to say whatever he thought was true. … I’m not going to doubt his testimony or anything like that. I can tell you, though, that as the chairman I have been briefed on several different occasions by the UAP office [AARO]. And I have not seen anything that indicates to me about quote-unquote ‘aliens,’ or that there’s some sort of cover-up program. I just haven’t seen it.”
“There is a lot of unexplained aerial phenomena out there. That’s true,” he said. “And they’ve got pilot reports, there’s various other sensors out there, and some of it is difficult to explain.” “Most of it, actually, they can explain away by a variety of things, like balloons for example — the whole Chinese balloon thing comes to mind. They can explain a lot of it, but there is some that’s really kind of weird and unexplainable. But I’ve seen nothing to suggest that we, the United States military or the United States government, has in fact recovered any sort of vehicle that is not man-made, or made here on earth, or that there’s any kind of remains … I haven’t seen any of that kind of stuff.”
August 28, 2023 (week of)
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and Pentagon spokesperson Eric Pahon briefed DefenseScoop, providing the following updates on AARO:
- Hicks recently moved to personally oversee the Pentagon’s unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP)
- Hicks now holds regular meetings with AARO’s inaugural director, Sean Kirkpatrick — who she’s also repositioned to report directly to her.
- AARO public reporting website will be activated on August 30.
Hicks: “I believe that transparency is a critical component of AARO’s work, and I am committed to sharing AARO’s discoveries with Congress and the public, consistent with our responsibility to protect critical national defense and intelligence capabilities,”
“The UAP mission is not easy, and AARO’s mission, to minimize technical and intelligence surprise by synchronizing scientific, intelligence, and operational detection identification, attribution, and mitigation of UAP objects of national security issues, is being orchestrated by a small, but growing team. AARO is not yet at full operational capability, and I look forward to AARO achieving that in fiscal year 2024.”
“The department takes UAP seriously because UAP are a potential national security threat. They also pose safety risks, and potentially endanger our personnel, our equipment and bases, and the security of our operations. DOD is focusing through AARO to better understand UAP, and improve our capabilities to detect, collect, analyze and eventually resolve UAP to prevent strategic surprise and protect our forces, our operations, and our nation.”
“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,”
Pahon: “In the near future, the authorized reporting mechanism consistent with section 1673 of the fiscal 2023 NDAA will reside on the website, as well. 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.”
August 31, 2023
DOD Press Secretary AF Brig. General Pat Ryder announces new AARO Website.
“There are a couple of phases here. What you have today is information from AARO that has been declassified as it relates to looking into UAP reportings. The next step will be in the relatively near future enabling service members and civilians–DOD civilians–who have reports to make regarding UAPs, to be able to submit those for consideration and review by AARO. As it relates to the public being able to provide inputs, that is something we will look to do in the future.”
The AARO website launched on this day is www.aaro.mil.
September 20, 2023
DoD spokesperson, Susan Gough: “Rep. Matt Gaetz received a classified briefing while visiting Eglin Air Force Base earlier this year, but we cannot comment on the content of that briefing.
“I can confirm that AARO is reviewing a report from Eglin AFB. AARO has prioritized its analysis of that case and intends to publish the findings on its website once the information is cleared for public release. I have nothing further for you.” [Source: Liberation Times]
October 18, 2023
Sean Kirkpatrick quotes in excerpts from CNN report on AARO:
“There are some indicators that are concerning that may be attributed to foreign activity, and we are investigating those very hard,” said Kirkpatrick, speaking exclusively to CNN ahead of the release of the annual report on unidentified aerial phenomena.
About half of the reports contain enough data that they can be ruled out as “mundane things,” such as errant balloons or floating trash, Kirkpatrick said, but 2-4% are truly anomalous and require further investigation.
The report said only “a very small percentage” of observations have “interesting” signatures, such as high-speed travel or “unknown morphologies.”
Kirkpatrick’s office has transferred “a lot” of cases to law enforcement for further investigation and, if necessary, counterintelligence. But some sightings could potentially be foreign adversaries spying on the United States, like the Chinese spy balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina in February.
The annual report on UAPs, put together by the Defense Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said, “Although none of these UAP reports have been positively attributed to foreign activities, these cases continue to be investigated.”
Asked if the Pentagon could definitively identify a sighting of an unidentified object as belonging to a foreign adversary, Kirkpatrick said that his office is “looking at some very interesting indicators of things, and that’s about all I can tell you.” But the office, which has more than 40 employees and is expected to grow, can’t say that for sure yet.
“There are ways to hide in our noise that always concern me,” Kirkpatrick said, referring to the extraneous readings picked up by US radars and other sensors. “I am worried from a national security perspective.”
But Kirkpatrick could offer few details about why certain reports raised suspicions about foreign involvement.
“It could just be a foreign entity. It could be a hobbyist. It could be anybody,” he said. “And those are the things that we have to look into.”
On Grusch claims:
Kirkpatrick dismissed the sensational claims, saying he has “no evidence that suggests anything extraterrestrial in nature.”
“If anybody thinks that they know where those things are, they should be coming to talk to us,” said Kirkpatrick. “That’s why we have set up this entire architecture for people to securely come in and talk to us.”
… Asked if the US government should have created an effort to handle unidentified objects earlier, Kirkpatrick demurred. He said the new office came “probably at the right time for the right reasons.” But in an acknowledgment of the interest and the mystery of the subject matter, he added, “I think the government as a whole – that includes Congress – should have probably addressed some of this years ago in a more directed fashion.”
October 18, 2023
Statement by Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder on the Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP):
Yesterday the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence delivered to Congress the Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) as required by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022, as amended by the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2023. Analyzing and understanding the potential threats posed by UAP is an ongoing collaborative effort involving many departments and agencies, and the Department thanks the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and other contributing departments and agencies for their collaborative efforts to produce this report. The safety of our service personnel, our bases and installations, and the protection of U.S. operations security on land, in the skies, seas, and space are paramount. We take reports of incursions into our designated space, land, sea, or airspaces seriously and examine each one. The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is leading DOD’s efforts, in coordination with ODNI and other government agencies, to document, analyze, and when possible, resolve UAP reports using a rigorous scientific framework and a data-driven approach. This year’s UAP report covers UAP reports from Aug. 31, 2022, to April 30, 2023, as well as any UAP report from previous time periods that were not included in an earlier report. AARO received a total of 291 UAP reports in this time period, consisting of 274 that occurred during this period and another 17 that occurred from 2019-2022 but had not been included in previous annual reports. This brought the total cases that AARO has been reviewing to over 800 as of April 30, 2023.
October 31, 2023
Sean Kirkpatrick takes questions at a press roundtable:
Today, per Section 1673 of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, AARO launched the second phase of our secure reporting mechanism on the aaro.mil website.
This phase of the reporting mechanism is for current or former U.S. government employees, service members, or contractors with direct knowledge of alleged U.S. government programs or activities related to UAP dating back to 1945 to contact AARO, to voluntarily submit a report. These reports will be used to inform AARO’s congressionally directed Historical Record Report and investigations into alleged U.S. government UAP programs, due to Congress in June of 2024.
The form on the website is intended as an initial point of contact with AARO. It is not intended for conveying potentially sensitive or classified information. The form will take individuals through submission guidance, including determining their eligibility, and then will gather contact information, data on their affiliation with the U.S. government, and some basic information on the UAP program or activity that they have a direct knowledge of. AARO personnel will then catalog and review the submissions and follow up with the individuals as needed.
…
I’d also like to take this opportunity to strongly encourage any current or former U.S. government employees, military or civilian, or contractors who believe that they have firsthand knowledge of a U.S. government UAP program or activity to please come forward using this new secure reporting mechanism. We want to hear from you. As I’ve said, the information you submit in the form will be protected.
Additionally, any information that you provide in a subsequent interview will be protected according to its classification. By law, AARO can receive all UAP related information, including any classified national security information involving military intelligence or intelligence related activities at all levels of classification, regardless of any restrictive access controls, special access programs, or compartmented access programs.
Moreover, there is no restriction to AARO receiving any past or present UAP related information, regardless of the organizational affiliation of the original classification authority within the department, the intelligence community, or any other U.S. government department or agency.
…
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.
…So, Mr. Grusch, since AARO has stood up and since I’ve been director, has not come to see us and provided any information.
So, the last time I believe I spoke with Mr. Grusch was when I was in the J2 at U.S. Space Command about five years ago, and it was not on this topic. Now, we have interviewed a whole range of people, over 30 people now. I think we’ve interviewed most of the people that he may have talked to, but we don’t know that. And we have extended an invitation at least four or five times now for him to come in over the last eight months or so and has been declined
…. What they are reporting, we are documenting. They are reviewing and then revalidating that this is what they want to say. We then research all of that collectively. There is a – there is a, if you think of it as a story arc, there’s a number of people that kind of fit into this story arc.
But then there’s these little offshoots and variations on themes. We’re investigating each and every one of them. We’re cross-referencing those. There are some bits of information that are turning out to be things and events that really happened. A lot of it is still under review, and we’re putting all that together into our historical report.
On the 2004 Tic Tac: Okay, so cases, the way we investigate cases, we really prioritize more the operational ones from today than we do going backwards in time. And the reason for that is there is no supporting data to actually analyze. Right? So, that video, that’s all there is. There is no other data to put behind it. So, understanding what that is off of that one video is unlikely to occur. Now, whereas today, if we have a lot of data, somebody sees something, there’s going to be a lot more data associated with it that we can pull that apart. Radar data and optical data and IR data…. The farther back in time you go, the less data you have. It is highly unlikely we’re going to get any resolution out of that that’s going to satisfy anybody, just because there is no data to be looked at.
Q: are you finding any at all obstacles within the bureaucracy of the U.S. Department of Defense or U.S. government that’s preventing you in any way from looking over old – looking over classified information to find the existence of programs?
DR. KIRKPATRICK: Absolutely not. We’ve had – we’ve had great cooperation, and we have access to anything we need.
Q: you are asking current and former government employees if they have evidence of a former clandestine UAP program. What makes you believe that such a thing might have existed? And if the government kept it secret before, why should a government employee trust you now?
DR. KIRKPATRICK: Well, let’s see, I currently have no evidence of any program having ever existed as a to do any sort of reverse engineering of any sort of extraterrestrial UAP program. We do have a requirement by law to bring those whistleblowers or other interviewees in who think that it 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.
November 7, 2023
Kirkpatrick announces his resignation from AARO in an exclusive interview with Politico:
“I’m ready to move on. I have accomplished everything I said I was going to do,” Kirkpatrick said, adding that he still wants to finish a few tasks, including wrapping up the first volume of a historical review of the unidentified anomalous phenomena issue, before leaving.
Kirkpatrick’s deputy, Tim Phillips, will lead the office in an acting role until the Pentagon hires a permanent replacement, Kirkpatrick said.
…In fact, he believes “the best thing that could come out of this job is to prove that there are aliens” — because the alternative is a much bigger problem.
“If we don’t prove it’s aliens, then what we’re finding is evidence of other people doing stuff in our backyard,” he said. “And that’s not good.”
November 8, 2023
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks statement on Kirkpatrick’s retirement:
All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick announced that he will retire from federal service in December.
During his distinguished 27-year career of public service in the Department of Defense and the United States Intelligence Community, and since assuming leadership of AARO, Dr. Kirkpatrick has served the American people with honesty and integrity, tackling an incredibly difficult mission to explain the unknown.
During his tenure, Dr. Kirkpatrick stood up the office and its operations, investigated more than 800 unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) cases, led an extensive search for U.S. Government and contractor programs associated with UAP, and established the department’s first public-facing website, www.aaro.mil, to bring greater transparency to the department’s work.
His commitment to transparency with the United States Congress and the American public on UAP leaves a legacy the department will carry forward as AARO continues its mission.
Our department is stronger and better prepared for future scientific and national security challenges because of Sean’s distinguished service to our country.
We are deeply appreciative of his tenacity, insight, and undying dedication to our national security mission, and wish him the greatest of success in his future endeavors.
The Department of Defense, in coordination with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is in the process of searching for the next AARO Director, and it will publicly announce its selection once made.
November 12, 2023
Sean Kirkpatrick in his Politico Exit Interview:
When I took the job, I promised going in that I would do a year, and we would reevaluate. I have decided to stay on until towards the end of this year because there’s a couple more things I need to finish…. I deferred my retirement because I was asked to come do this. I set out those goals. It’s been about 18 months. I’m ready to move on. I have accomplished everything I said I was going to do.
David Grusch is a unique instance in that he has refused to come and share any of that information. We still can’t get him to come in. I’ve got five different people who have gone to talk to him to get him to come in. And the answers have always been everything from “We’re not cleared” to “It would jeopardize his whistleblower protections” to “Why can’t we just go get the information that he shared from the IG?” It’s every excuse that I have heard, why not to come in. And that’s been a challenge because now here we are, we’re about to put out Volume One of the historical review, which I believe captures most all of the people that he’s spoken with, but I can’t say that 100 percent because I can’t hear what he thinks he has. If he has evidence, I need to know what that is.
If I go back to the fundamental definition of a UAP [unidentified anomalous phenomena] that we had written into law, it is an unknown object that is not initially understood by the sensor or the people observing it. That doesn’t mean that it’s not understandable. It just means that initially when you look at it, you may not understand what that is.
People are subject to optical illusions, sensors are subject to being fooled or spoofed or even just having errors. Understanding what all of that is out in the real world is a very challenging mission space. It is hard to apply science and technology to the real world. It’s easy to do in a lab.
So putting all that together and putting it into an institutionalized space and getting it formalized and getting it into policy and getting it into orders: Those have all been major accomplishments that we set out to do, that I set out to do. And that has been achieved today.
Seligman: Are aliens real?
Kirkpatrick: That is a great question. I love that question. Number one, the best thing that could come out of this job is to prove that there are aliens, right? Because if we don’t prove there are aliens, then what we’re finding is evidence of other people doing stuff in our backyard. And that’s not good.
Two, from a scientific perspective: The scientific community will agree that it is statistically invalid to believe that there is not life out in the universe, as vast as the universe is and the number of galaxies and solar systems and planets. That is what part of NASA’s mission is to look for that life. The probability, however, that that life is intelligent and that it has found Earth and that it has come to Earth and that it has repeatedly crashed in the United States is not very probable.
So part of what we’ve been trying to do, and part of what I will continue to do until I’m done, is raise the level of the conversation. Let me explain. If you are talking with NASA or the European Space Agency, and you’re talking about looking for life out in the universe, it is a very objective, very scientifically sound discussion and discourse. As that discussion gets closer to the solar system, somewhere around Mars, it turns into science fiction. And then as you get even closer to Earth, and you cross into Earth’s atmosphere, it becomes conspiracy theory.
We need to change the level of the [public] conversation. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve engaged academia to work on a number of scientific papers that look at the probabilities of these things, and what are the signatures associated with that? So that we can benchmark what we’re doing in scientific proofs and in scientific fact and not hearsay and pointing fingers and government cover ups and conspiracies with no evidence of any of them.
January 9, 2024
Susan Gough on AARO hiring status, Defense Scoop:
“AARO is completing personnel hiring for its [fiscal year 2024] authorized billets and is working to ensure adequate facilities for its growing team. AARO is currently on track to reach FOC by the end of FY2024 [September].”
“AARO looks forward to reaching its full capabilities to detect, identify, and attribute UAP on or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace, and other areas of interest.”
Executive Office of the President
September 2011
In response to two petitions submitted to the Obama White House’s We the People website, one asking for immediate disclosure of the U.S. government communication with extraterrestrials, and one asking for formal acknowledgment of an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race, the White House released the following response.
Phil Larson, White House Office of Science & Technology Policy:
Thank you for signing the petition asking the Obama Administration to acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.
The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.
However, that doesn’t mean the subject of life outside our planet isn’t being discussed or explored. In fact, there are a number of projects working toward the goal of understanding if life can or does exist off Earth. Here are a few examples:
- SETI—the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence—was originally stood up with help from NASA, but has since been moved to other sources of private funding. SETI’s main purpose is to act as a giant ear on behalf of the human race, pointing an array of ground-based telescopes towards space to listen for any signal from another world.
- Kepler is a NASA spacecraft in orbit that’s main goal is to search for Earth-like planets. Such a planet would be located in the “Goldilocks” zone of a distant solar system—not too hot and not too cold—and could potentially be habitable by life as we know it. The Kepler mission is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover Earth-sized, rocky planets in or near the habitable zone of the star (sun) they orbit.
- The Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity, is an automobile-sized rover that NASA is launching soon. The rover’s onboard laboratory will study rocks, soils, and other geology in an effort to detect the chemical building blocks of life (e.g., forms of carbon) on Mars and will assess what the Martian environment was like in the past to see if it could have harbored life.
A last point: Many scientists and mathematicians have looked with a statistical mindset at the question of whether life likely exists beyond Earth and have come to the conclusion that the odds are pretty high that somewhere among the trillions and trillions of stars in the universe there is a planet other than ours that is home to life.
Many have also noted, however, that the odds of us making contact with any of them—especially any intelligent ones—are extremely small, given the distances involved.
But that’s all statistics and speculation. The fact is we have no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.
December 8, 2013
Barack Obama, President of the United States, Kennedy Centers Honors ceremony:
“Now, when you first become President, one of the questions that people ask you is what’s really going on in Area 51. When I wanted to know, I’d call Shirley MacLaine. I think I just became the first President to ever publicly mention Area 51. How’s that, Shirley?”
February 13, 2015
John Podesta, Counselor to the President, tweet:
June 15, 2019
Donald Trump, President of the United States, interview with Good Morning America:
“I want them [Navy aviators] to think whatever they think. I did have one very brief meeting on it. But people are saying they’re seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly.”
“I think our great pilots would know. And some of them see things a little bit different from the past. … We’re watching, and you’ll be the first to know.”
April 29, 2020
Donald Trump, President of the United States, Oval Office interview:
Regarding the recently released Navy UAP videos: “I just wonder if it’s real. That’s a hell of a video.”
June 18, 2020
Donald Trump, President of the United States, interview:
Asked about whether he will declassify information about Roswell: “I won’t talk to you about what I know about it, but it’s very interesting… Well, I’ll have to think about that one,”
February 13, 2023
Press briefing regarding NORAD’s downing of three unidentified objects.
Karine Jean-Pierre, White House Press Secretary:
And one last thing before I turn it over to the Admiral. I just wanted to make sure we address this from the White House. I know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no — again, no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity — (laughter) — with these recent takedowns.
Again, there is no indication of aliens or [extra]terrestrial activity with these recent takedowns. Wanted to make sure that the American people knew that, all of you knew that. And it was important for us to say that from here because we’ve been hearing a lot about it.
I’m just — you know, I loved “E.T.,” the movie. But I’m just going to leave it there. (Laughter.)
With that, with all seriousness, I know there’s a lot of questions about the flying objects.
John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications:
The President also instructed the Intelligence Community to take a broad look at the phenomenon of unidentified aerial objects.
Indeed, President Biden conducted the first-ever Daily Intelligence Briefing session devoted to this phenomenon back in June of 2021. He was briefed that this is not just an issue for the United States but one for the rest of the world.
And as I said, our friends and our partners are dealing with this as well.
We worked on a bipartisan basis to stand up an office at the Pentagon to study this, in partnership with the Intelligence Community, academic institutions, and the private sector.
And these unidentified aerial phenomena have been reported for many years, without explanation or deep examination by the government.
President Biden has changed all that. We are finally trying to understand them better.
…the President, through his National Security Advisor, has today directed an interagency team to study the broader policy implications for detection, analysis, and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risks.
Every element of the government will redouble their efforts to understand and mitigate these events.
…
And — and also, it comes down to — a lot to our ability to track, detect, and engage.
Having come from the Pentagon, I can tell you that some of these UAPs, while we may not be able to know what each and every one is doing, some of the big concern there was that
A lot — not — many of those reports were happening around our training ranges, were happening around air training ranges. So combat pilots were seeing these things. And it was — and there was a potential impact to the safety of flight of our pilots. But you may not have but a fleeting moment on some of these things to see it. And so, it’s different.
In these cases, we had time to detect, time to analyze, time to engage, time to make those kinds of decisions.
February 16, 2023
Joe Biden, Remarks by President Biden on the United States’ Response to Recent Aerial Objects
NOTE: President Biden is referring to three unidentified objects shot down on February 10, 11, and 12. His remarks do not refer to Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, but to conventional airborne objects that are unidentified within U.S. airspace. The excerpt below is included in this archive because the objects were conflated with UAP and even UFOs by some in the public and the media, and this event will likely bear some influence on future government with those two topics.
We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were. But nothing — nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from other — any other country.
The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation, or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research.
When I came into office, I instructed our intelligence community to take a broad look at the phenomenon of unidentified aerial objects.
We know that a range of entities, including countries, companies, and research organizations operate objects at altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious, including legitimate scientific research.
I want to be clear: We don’t have any evidence that there has been a sudden increase in the number of objects in the sky. We’re now just seeing more of them, partially because the steps we’ve taken to increase our radars — to narrow our radars. And we have to keep adapting our approach to delaying — to dealing with these challenges.
That’s why I’ve directed my team to come back to me with sharper rules for how we will deal with these unidentified objects moving forward, distinguishing — distinguishing between those that are likely to pose safety and security risks that necessitate action and those that do not.
… Going forward, these parameters will guide what actions we will take while responding to unmanned and unidentified aerial objects. We’re going to keep adapting them as the challenges evolve, if it evolves.
February 16, 2023
John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications:
Aerial objects have recently been taken down by U.S. military aircraft. Watch as National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby provides an update:
Question: Are these objects UFOs or aliens?
Kirby: “I don’t think that the American people need to worry that this has anything to do with aliens or extraterrestrial technology. These were high flying, most likely balloons of some sort. So we think that this is technology that is, again, not very sophisticated and definitely tied to somebody here on the planet Earth, and one of our leading assumptions is that this could very well be just research balloons, weather balloons, that kind of thing.”
May 31, 2023
Mike Freie, Technical Advisor, Surveillance Services, Federal Aviation Association, presentation to the NASA UAP committee meeting:
“Weather Stations are released balloons twice a day. It’s 6am and 00 100, Zulu and 1200. Zulu, typically two hour duration they fly up to 100,000 feet where the the envelope bursts and then the payload descends back back to Earth. So certainly 100 At least 184 balloon flights daily in the NASS you know not to consider universities and hobbyist balloons that may be launched, but those are typically small, small in size. And finally, Sean did talk about UAPs and FAA data, a couple of data points that we do report there is a process by which air traffic controllers can report UAP sightings or, or events. Historically, those have been in the range of about three to five reports per month that have been reported. We did see an uptick of reports in August of 22. That went up to about eight to 10 Perhaps due to start like Starlink launches. And finally the with the Chinese weather, or the Chinese balloon incidents in February, we did see a significant uptick and uptick and there’s like 68 UAP reports that that started in February.”
“That is three to five reports per month for all the controllers and all of us. So there’s a process by which if they see something and they want to report that they can go with to report that to the, the Den we call it but report, Hey, I saw something I don’t know what it was sets three to five per month across the entire 14,000 controllers per month. So, you know, 45,000 operations, any given day, 30 months, 30 days, however many days in a month, you know, it’s a very small percentage.”
[on stigma]: “I’m not aware of…I’ll answer it this way. The the process by which UAP is reported is part of the air traffic controller order. So basically, the aircraft controllers are allowed to say, you know, if you see something, here’s a process by which the procedure by which you would report it. Other than that, I’m not aware of any any specific stigma or, or limitations and really I’m not in a good position to, you know, to speak to that other than there is that process.”
July 17, 2023
John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, press conference response to a question about UAP (C-SPAN link):
Yes. I know what that is. (Laughter.) Well, without speaking to proposed legislation – I won’t do that – as you know, the Pentagon has stood up an entire organization to help collate and coordinate the reporting and analysis of – of sightings of UAP across the military. Before that, there wasn’t really a coordinated, integrated effort to do that.And, of course, we will always want to be as transparent with members of Congress and with the American people as we can, considering national security concerns.
Question: But there – this used to get laughed at for quite some time, for years and then decades –
What gets laughed at?
Question:The idea of Congress taking this up. I mean, Gerald Ford talked about this as a congressman back in 1966, and here we are – what is that? – 60 years later, give or take.Is this a legitimate issue? Does the administration believe that getting to the bottom of these sightings in the air – is it a real concern? Is it a real, legitimate issue as you see it?
Yeah. I mean, we wouldn’t stood – we wouldn’t have stood up an organization at the Pentagon to analyze and – and try to collect and – and coordinate the way these sightings are reported if we didn’t take it seriously. Of course, we do.I mean, some of these phenomena, we know, have already had an impact on our training ranges for – you know, when pilots are out trying to do training in the air and they see these things, they’re not sure what they are, and it can have an impact on their ability to perfect their skills.It’s already had an impact here, and we just want to better understand it.Now, we’re not saying what they are or what they’re not. We’re saying that there’s something our pilots are seeing. We’re saying it has had an effect on some of our training operations. And so, we want to get to the bottom of it. We want to understand it better.So, yes.
Department of Homeland Security
logo
August 29, 2023
The United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released documents and videos it has compiled related to UAP on their website.