The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office leads the department’s efforts in investigating and understanding what it calls unidentified aerial phenomena, more commonly known as UFOs.
The office, which is within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, was formed last July due to a provision within the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act that expanded the scope of the previous iteration of the office, the Airborne Object Identification and Management Group.
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There are six primary lines of effort for the office — surveillance, collection, and reporting; system capabilities and design; intelligence operations and analysis; mitigation and defeat; governance; and science and technology.
Sean Kirkpatrick, the AARO’s first chief, revealed that the office is tracking a total of over 650 UFO cases during a hearing in front of a Senate Armed Services subcommittee in mid-April. He told lawmakers that the office had “prioritized about half of them to be of anomalous interesting value.”
“AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics,” Kirkpatrick added. “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.”
Kirkpatrick’s remarks came after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report in January of this year that noted that “there have been 247 new reports and another 119 that were either since discovered or reported after the preliminary assessment’s time period,” of its initial report from June 2021.
The AARO investigated the 366 claims and found that 163 were characterized as “balloon or balloon-like entities,” 26 were characterized as “unmanned aircraft systems,” and six were attributed to clutter. The office describes the remaining 171 reports as “uncharacterized and unattributed UAP reports,” though it later noted that “many reports lack enough detailed data to enable attribution of UAP with high certainty.”
This report was a follow-up to a “preliminary assessment” on UFOs from the ODNI’s office from June 2021, stating that 144 UFO reports originated from U.S. government sources, with “a handful” of the UFOs “appear[ing] to demonstrate advanced technology.”
“One of the first things that we’re doing” is assessing all existing sensors and calibrating them best to spot and monitor unidentified objects, Kirkpatrick added, according to Defense Scoop, and he noted that only 2%-5% of reported UFO sightings are deemed “possibly really anomalous.”
His more recent comments were made during NASA’s highly anticipated UFO Independent Study Team meeting in May.
Kirkpatrick also co-authored a draft paper for Harvard University in March that speculated about an alien “mothership” in the solar system and “extraterrestrial technological probes” visiting Earth.
A former intelligence official and Air Force veteran filed a whistleblower complaint to the Department of Defense’s inspector general last month alleging the existence of a covert public-private sector program to retrieve and exploit crashed UFOs. David Grusch also claimed the United States has retrieved bodies of other species. He has admitted that his knowledge is second-hand.
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“Every decade there’s been individuals who’ve said the United States has such pieces of unidentified flying objects that are from outer space,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said when asked on Fox News about Grusch’s claims. “There’s no evidence of this, and certainly, it would be quite a conspiracy for this to be maintained, especially at this level.”
While the Pentagon has denied any program regarding the possession of or reverse engineering of extraterrestrial material has existed past or present, the House Oversight Committee intends to investigate. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) are leading the investigation into UFOs, and Burchett confirmed they are in the planning stages of the first hearing.
