The leader of the Pentagon’s UFO identification office, who recently speculated about the potential for an alien “mothership” in the solar system and “extraterrestrial technological probes” visiting Earth, will testify in a rare congressional hearing.
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the recently formed All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, will appear as the sole witness in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. He is slated to discuss the “mission, activities, oversight, and budget” of the office created by the Pentagon in 2022, whose goal is identifying and attributing “unidentified aerial phenomena,” or UAPs, more commonly known as unidentified flying objects.
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Kirkpatrick’s high-profile testimony comes as Congress has pushed the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon in recent years to be more forthcoming about what they know about UFOs detected in the skies over the United States. It also comes just over a month after a draft paper he co-authored through Harvard University was published, with the abstract titled “Physical Constraints on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” and with it exploring “The Extraterrestrial Possibility.”
The Pentagon official wrote in March that “an artificial interstellar object could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth” and that these “small probes” or “dandelion seeds” could be separated from the “mothership” by either the gravitational force of the sun or by maneuvering capability. Kirkpatrick wrote that “these tiny probes would reach the Earth or other solar system planets for exploration, as the parent craft passes by within a fraction of the Earth-Sun separation.”
“Once an Earth-like planet is targeted, an interstellar device can plunge into its atmosphere. In principle, a multitude of tiny devices can be released from a mothership that passes near Earth,” Kirkpatrick wrote. “Within a close range to a star, extraterrestrial technological probes could use starlight to charge their batteries and liquid water as their fuel.”
Kirkpatrick added, “In analogy with actual dandelion seeds, the probes could propagate the blueprint of their senders. As with biological seeds, the raw materials on the planet’s surface could also be used by them as nutrients for self-replication or simply scientific exploration.”
The paper, co-authored by Kirkpatrick and Harvard professor Abraham Loeb, ended by stating that the work was “conducted in partnership” with AARO.
The Pentagon announced in July 2022 that Kirkpatrick would be leading its newly formed AARO, located within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. The UFO office leader had spent years at agencies including the National Reconnaissance Office, CIA, and National Security Council, and “his most recent assignment was as Chief Scientist at DIA’s Missile and Space Intelligence Center.”
The Defense Department said AARO’s mission would be to “synchronize efforts” across the Pentagon and the federal government more broadly “to detect, identify, and attribute objects of interest in, on, or near military installations” and “other areas of interest.” The department noted that the objects of concern include “anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged, and transmedium objects.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in January 2023 that the AARO “should facilitate more coordinated UAP efforts, resulting in greater attribution of UAP.”
Kirkpatrick spoke with the press in December 2022 and noted that “unidentified objects in the skies, sea, and space pose potential threats to safety and security.” He added that “the stigma associated with UAP reporting has been significantly reduced” but that “more work needs to be done.”
When asked if he had any evidence showing any of the anomalies were aliens from outer space, he said, “No.”
“There are things that appear to demonstrate interesting flight dynamics that we are fully investigating and researching right now,” he added.
When the U.S. intelligence community began releasing information on unidentified flying objects in U.S. airspace, the most prominent possible culprit in the popular imagination was extraterrestrials, but the Chinese spy balloon saga indicates more attention could be paid to Beijing’s possible role, with concern that advanced Chinese surveillance technologies may also be able to sometimes fly unobserved or unidentified above the U.S.
ODNI released a “preliminary assessment” on UFOs in June 2021, stating that 144 UFO reports originated from U.S. government sources, with 80 of the UFOs being observed with “multiple sensors.”
By definition, because the aerial phenomena are unidentified, it is not yet known if a foreign adversary is behind some of them.
“Frankly, if it’s something outside this planet, that might actually be better than the fact that we’ve seen some sort of technological leap from the Chinese or Russians or some other adversary that allows them to conduct this sort of activity,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in July 2020.
ODNI said in 2021 it could only identify one reported UAP with high confidence, saying, “We identified the object as a large, deflating balloon. The others remain unexplained.” The spy office divided the UFOs into five possible categories: foreign adversary systems, airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, U.S. government or U.S. industry developmental programs, and “a catchall ‘other’ bin.”
UFOs would “represent a national security challenge if they are foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology,” ODNI said.
A follow-up report by ODNI in January of this year revealed that, in addition to the 144 UFOs listed in its 2021 report, “there have been 247 new reports and another 119 that were either since discovered or reported after the preliminary assessment’s time period” — for a total of 510 UFO reports as of August 2022.
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UFOs “pose a possible adversary collection threat,” ODNI said at the time, and such UFO events “continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace.”
Kirkpatrick’s testimony is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Wednesday before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.
