Decoding the Pentagon UFO chief’s testimony to Congress
Tom Rogan
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Testifying before a sparsely attended Senate subcommittee on Wednesday, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of the government’s unidentified flying objects investigations unit, came across as a prudent scientist.
Kirkpatrick’s science professor look is helpful. After all, that only three of the eleven Senators on the relevant subcommittee attended the hearing was telling. It shows that UFOs remain a source of deep political, scientific and journalistic stigma. Kirkpatrick knows he cannot do his job effectively unless this dynamic shifts. Thus, in outlining his plans for the recently created All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, Kirkpatrick committed to scientific rigor and asked for time and trust.
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Still, it was odd and unfortunate that subcommittee members Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) were absent. Cotton retains a heavy national security focus and both men are decorated combat veterans. They should at least be interested in what Kirkpatrick called “concerning indicators” that some UFOs reflect breakthrough foreign adversarial technologies. These indicators likely include a saturation of witness reports proximate to China, and UFO-related apparent intelligence collection efforts targeting U.S. military capabilities such as air defense, radar systems, and nuclear facilities. A former career naval aviator, Kelly should be concerned for his fellow naval aircrews who are at the forefront of reporting on UFOs in naval training areas off the east and west U.S. coasts. The centerpiece of UFO investigations is the prevention of air accidents. This stems from a litany of near misses involving military aircrews in recent years.
Reflecting the literal decades of witness reports and data sets indicating a small, unconventional class of highly advanced UFOs, Kirkpatrick was open-minded as to an extraterrestrial hypothesis for a “single digit” percentage of UFO reports that AARO is investigating. He said that the scientific community plays “a very big role on [this investigative] end of the spectrum.” Specifically, in generating peer reviewed theories as to how the U.S. might improve its detection and categorizing of possible breakthrough technologies. But Kirkpatrick also stated clearly that AARO has “no credible evidence” of extraterrestrial activity that can yet explain these reports.
Bold but prudent investigation appears to be his guiding mantra.
As an example of a still-unidentified UFO that AARO is studying, Kirkpatrick showed a video of a metallic looking orb flying over an area of the Middle East, likely Syria or Iraq, in 2022. The orb lacked obvious flight surfaces or propulsion systems and conforms to other orb-like UFOs that military witnesses have seen moving slow and low in proximity to U.S. military activities. Indeed, the videographer and UFO researcher Jeremy Corbell last year released a different U.S. military video of a similar looking orb-like UFO flying over Mosul, Iraq in 2016.
Those videos offer an insight into why the UFO topic matters. Whatever these orbs are and whoever made them, their apparent intelligence collection role might be of value to the U.S. if replicated. Certainly the U.S. would want to ensure that they do not represent a covert intelligence platform belonging to an enemy.
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Yet Kirkpatrick showed another video which appeared to show a very strange looking UFO but that actually showed a commercial airliner. He identified the complexity of video imagery analysis where sensors like radar or infrared can produce deceptive artifacts or returns. As I reported in March, a similar data-analysis bias led to suspected Chinese surveillance balloons being disregarded by the military’s previous UFO research arm in favor of the belief that the objects were actually unexplained UFOs.
There is a broader concern here. Some involved in UFO research, even some who have done critically valuable work on this subject, are now often paid lucratively for appearances at UFO fairs or as hosts of entertainment shows. They have an interest in boosting the possibility of the extraordinary in UFO reports and in disregarding the conventional explanations involved with most UFOs. This dilutes the subject’s credibility, and the legitimate – I’d say and have previously said very likely – consideration that a small subset of UFOs are actually extraterrestrial/or “extra-something” in origin. The issue is that getting to that conclusion takes diligent research not excited conspiracy theories.
The reporter turned opinion journalist George Knapp, for example, recently claimed that the former Soviet leader Josef Stalin knew that the purported 1947 Roswell UFO crash in New Mexico involved extraterrestrials. His reliance on a now dead single, third-hand Russian government source is problematic (deception is a favored Russian government pastime). Similarly, the History Channel’s Travis Taylor, who while previously engaged in government UFO research efforts, now makes far-fetched claims that his critics are working for conspirators against the American people. Taylor has also suggested that a poltergeist decapitated one of his chickens. Such statements are not helpful in winning necessary political or intelligence community support for an escalated and truly open-minded investigation of UFOs.
Fortunately, AARO is, instead, focused on building structures and authorities that allow for a more effective assessment of UFOs. The key, Kirkpatrick said, is resources which “help us get to the determination” of what each UFO actually is. As an example of this, Kirkpatrick released the slide as reposted below. It shows a categorized breakdown of the reported witness hot spots and UFO-forms that AARO has collated. This, by itself, is a landmark testament to how far the U.S. has come in taking this subject seriously in recent years. Former government officials such as Lue Elizondo and Chris Mellon deserve special praise for this shift.
Most important of all, especially in the context of decades of secrecy and stigma on this subject, the interest of Senators like Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who arranged and chaired Wednesday’s hearing, and others like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), mean that this topic is not going away.