A new report from the Pentagon on unidentified flying objects and unidentified anomalous phenomena has partially confirmed high-profile whistleblower allegations about planned clandestine government programs for the retrieval and reverse-engineering of non-human aircraft via private contractors.
The report has also, however, drawn sharp rebuke among academic skeptics and disclosure advocates after raising more questions and concerns than it answered. Concluding the Department of Defense’s investigation into itself, the report from the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office claims to have found «no empirical evidence» of UAP, yet also declassifies the DOD origins and developmental plans for a UAP-related program called Kona Blue, that AARO says never got off the ground.
Disclosure advocates have since roundly criticized the report for its alleged lack of scientific rigor and failure to fully disclose firsthand accounts and significant details involving the programs mentioned in the report. The report’s critics include famed Pentagon Papers lawyer Dan Shehan, former Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) director Lue Elizondo and the DOD’s former top civilian intelligence official, Christopher Mellon. The 63-page report is not only notably laden with typographical errors, misplaced URLs, self-referential citations and statements misrepresenting the public conclusions of UAP scholars — but also omits a significant amount of the historically declassified data which the office was tasked with compiling in the report.
In a Friday press conference ahead of the report’s release, DOD officials said the United States has «found no evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.»
But acting AARO director Tim Phillips also revealed plans to deploy what AARO calls «Gremlin» surveillance technology — a configurable sensor array designed in partnership with the Department of Energy and Georgia Tech — to capture more UAP-related data in military hotspots where sighting reports are numerous.
ARRO is testing the Gremlin system at a large range in Texas, with hopes that it can be used in the event of any UAP-related problem with critical infrastructure or national security — echoing concerns from witnesses who have attested to heightened UAP activity near facilities with nuclear capabilities.
«Examining reports of ‘shadow figures’ and ‘creatures,’ and exploring ‘remote viewing’ and ‘human consciousness anomalies.'»
«We’ve been out there going against some known UAS [unmanned aerial systems] targets, but some unknown targets, picking up a lot of bats and birds. We’re learning a lot about solar flaring. We’re really starting to understand what’s in orbit around our planet and how we can eliminate those as anomalous objects. So we’re going to do that. And then we’re going to go to the department and say we are ready to deploy our system in response to a national security site or a critical infrastructure with a UAP problem,» Phillips told reporters.
The report’s release follows a months-long, tense standoff between Congress and AARO, with lawmakers and UAP whistleblowers on one side and the now-retired former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick on the other. In January, Kirkpatrick denounced Congressional inquiry into UAP, claiming top members of Congress hold a “religious belief” in UFOs “that transcends critical thinking and rational thought.» Kirkpatrick similarly misrepresented UAP whistleblower claims, saying “none of [the UFO whistleblowers] have any firsthand evidence or knowledge» — a statement repeatedly proven incorrect by members of Congress who have spoken to witnesses of clandestine UAP programs.
U.S. Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray explains a video of unidentified aerial phenomena, as he testifies before a House Intelligence Committee subcommittee hearing at the U.S. Capitol on May 17, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Government UAP programs, paranormal research and «human consciousness anomalies»
In addressing whistleblower claims of a collaborative program between the DOD and private companies to «reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology» and hide it, the report appears to contradict itself repeatedly while incidentally confirming the existence of a number of government operations that may de facto fit the bill.
On one hand, AARO states that «no empirical evidence» for the claims exists and that «claims involving specific people, known locations technological tests and documents allegedly involved in or related to the reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial technology, are inaccurate.»
«It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected — this material was only assumed to exist by KONA BLUE advocates and its anticipated contract performers,» the report says.
On the other hand, however, the report in doing so not only confirms evidence that three such programs were in varying stages of development, but provides additional context for their potential funding sources and role in Defense Intelligence Agency strategy, further supporting several whistleblower claims.
«The organization also planned to hire psychics to study ‘inter-dimensional
phenomena’ believed to frequently appear at that location.»
«AARO confirmed the existence of one Intelligence community controlled access program that was unnecessarily expanded in 2021 to include a UAP reverse-engineering mission,» the report says, adding that appropriate congressional committees were notified.
Yet the report claims «this program was expanded despite the lack of any evidence or mission need to justify the expansion» and that it «never recovered or reverse-engineered any technology, let alone off-world spacecraft. This controlled access program was disestablished due to its inactivity, absence of mission need, and lack of merit.»
The expansion of this program may or may not be related to the other two programs, depending on how the report’s language is interpreted. The report’s lack of clarity is compounded when the AARO authors then seem to play a shell game, both admitting and denying the existence of two other such programs related to whistleblower claims. Arguing at times over semantic minutia, the report also seems to spotlight what may have been a keyhole opportunity for disclosure advocates in the bureaucratic labyrinth of esoteric DOD acronyms and classification protocols.
«At the direction of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), the Defense Appropriations Acts of Fiscal Years 2008 and 2010 appropriated $22 million for the DIA to assess long-term and over-the-horizon foreign advanced aerospace threats to the United States. In coordination with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, DIA established AAWSAP (Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program) in 2009, which was also known AATIP. The contract for this DIA-managed program was awarded to a private sector organization,» the report says.
Then, contradicting their own recognition of official documentation, the authors add that «unlike AAWSAP, AATIP was never an official DoD program.» Rather, this was an «unofficial UAP community of interest within DoD» which also happened to have been officially directed to do this — and thus, under DOD direction, «researched UAP sightings from military observers as part of their ancillary job duties.»
«The selected private sector organization conducted UFO research with the support of the DIA program manager. This research included: reviewing new cases and much older Project BLUE BOOK cases, operating debriefing and investigatory teams, and proposals to set up laboratories to examine any recovered UFO materials.»
The report goes on to explain that «AAWSAP/AATIP also investigated an alleged hotspot of UAP and paranormal activity at a property in Utah — which at that time was owned by the head of the private sector organization — including examining reports of ‘shadow figures’ and ‘creatures,’ and exploring ‘remote viewing’ and ‘human consciousness anomalies.’ The organization also planned to hire psychics to study ‘inter-dimensional phenomena’ believed to frequently appear at that location.»
Phillips told reporters Friday that the Kona Blue program was declassified for the report’s release, which details the program’s origin as an effort to reestablish the UAP program under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security. The report claims that Kona Blue was «supported by individuals who believed the US government was hiding off-world technology» and was actively readied for formal authorizations to the extent that Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks notified congress «in the spirit of transparency.”
«The program was never approved by DHS and its supporters never provided empirical evidence to support their claims,» the report says, adding that «many of these (transparency advocates) were involved in or supportive of a cancelled DIA program and the subsequent but failed attempt to reestablish this program under DHS.»
Retired Maj. David Grusch, former National Reconnaissance Office representative on the Defense Department’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, testifies during the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs hearing titled «Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency,» in Rayburn Building on Wednesday, July 26, 2023. Grusch alleged that clandestine US government programs existed which aimed to reverse-engineer UAP technology (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“Although many UAP reports remain unsolved or unidentified, AARO assesses that if more and better quality data were available, most of these cases also could be identified and resolved as ordinary objects or phenomena. Sensors and visual observations are imperfect; the vast majority of cases lack actionable data or the data available is limited or of poor quality,” the report says. «All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification.»
In explaining how it came to these contradictory conclusions — that the government had both undertaken known programs of UAP study and that reported sightings and firsthand encounters with those programs simultaneously never happened — AARO’s top reason given was that the government has always said they never happened.
«AARO assesses that the incidents of UAP sightings reported to US government organizations, the claims that some constitute extraterrestrial craft, and the claims that the US government has secured and is experimenting on alien technology, most likely are the result of a range of cultural, political and technological factors,» AARO said. «The aggregate findings of all US Government investigations to date have not found even one case of UAP representing off-world technology.»
«Were you relying on these agencies, for example, the CIA, to come up with their own determinations?»
Beyond the visible conflict of interest in AARO’s methodology, there appears to be a bigger problem with AARO’s efforts. While AARO knows that UAP appearances are largely non-extraterrestrial, mainly ground-based and marine-based, the office doesn’t exactly know what it’s doing yet amid conflicting jurisdictions and complex policy navigation. More pointedly, it created a report about something which is has not yet even defined.
«The vast majority of the reporting tends to be in the atmosphere because that’s where we’re operating. We’ve received one report in the maritime domain. And we’ve received no reports in space. However, we do have working groups in space and in the maritime. And what we’re trying to do is define what is a UAP incident, and how that will be reported,» Phillips told reporters.
Public outcry around the report likens a Pentagon self-investigation to charging the fox to guard the henhouse. Asked by reporters why Americans should accept the Pentagon’s non-independent and unverifiable inquiry into itself, DOD Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder did not address the inherent conflict of interest in the investigation.
«The AARO office used a very rigorous, analytical, scientific approach to investigate all past U.S. government efforts, all claims by interviewees. They were granted access at the highest levels to all information. None of the agencies that they spoke with prevented them from getting any of the information that they needed to do,» Ryder said.
Phillips echoed the strategy, lauding a number of agencies for their inter-DOD collaboration. He said AARO closed about 122 cases closed last month, with 68% assessed to be «aero garbage, balloons, trash that’s up there in the atmosphere.» And confirmed that AARO was involved in identifying the Chinese spy balloon that flew over U.S. airspace last year.
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«We’ve had about 1,200 cases that we’ve looked at. We approximately receive anywhere between 90 and a 100-110 a month from the operating forces,» Phillips said, adding that AARO has worked with Joint Staff. «I would say that we — we probably, on average, around 100 cases a month we are clearing.»
Internal Pentagon collaborators
Clearing that many cases that quickly means AARO wasn’t necessarily operating independently during the time period covered in the report. Its initial operational capacity wasn’t met until last October.
«AARO’s been around for about 18 months. And we just achieved initial operating capability, I would say, in October of last year is when we actually were able to bring the staff on and start to develop some of the sensors and the capabilities, the flyaway kits, so we could respond quickly when there’s a UAP incident,» Phillips said.
ABC News’ Luis Martinez asked Phillips to explain how AARO was able to provide a comprehensive report in such a short time span, asking about the staff size required for the task.
«The DoD has no overarching UAP policy and, as a result, it lacks assurance that national security and flight safety threats to the United States from UAP have been identified and mitigated.»
«Or were you relying on these agencies, for example, the CIA, to come up with their own determinations, then you would review their work?» Martinez asked Phillips.
«All of the above,» answered Philips. «As the acting director, I work for the Deputy Director of Defense [Kathleen Hicks.] There’s actually been — there’s — trying to get information, we’ve actually had to solicit her personal assistance to open a door.»
Though he did not provide an exact staff number for AARO, nor how many non-AARO staff had a hand in writing their own investigative findings, Phillips went on to further describe how AARO ultimately compiled the report.
«This review was primarily, it was the — our operational directorate that was actually making the contacts, arranging for the interviews, they were involved. But then I had our analytical team who was actually looking at the statements, putting the stories together, the act of writing, by Dr. Kirkpatrick. Just probably a good 100 days of tech editing and legal review. I’ve never had so many help from so many experts on the DOD staff that help us get it right,» he said.
Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder speaks during a press briefing at the Pentagon on February 10, 2023 in Arlington, Virginia. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The roar of science: Pentagon watchdog skewers UAP policy for being a risky mess
Calls for further legislative action by congress are bolstered by a January investigation from the DOD Inspector General, which found the Pentagon’s work on UAP investigation and reporting so «uncoordinated» that it could have overlooked national security threats — an assessment most military branch leaders agreed with in the report.
«We determined that the DoD has no overarching UAP policy and, as a result, it lacks assurance that national security and flight safety threats to the United States from UAP have been identified and mitigated,» the OIG report said. «The FY 2022 NDAA assigns AARO, under the OUSD(I&S), responsibility for synchronizing and standardizing the collection, analysis, and identification of UAP incidents. However, the DoD has not yet issued comprehensive UAP guidance. In the absence of DoD-level guidance, the DoD Components have developed varying informal processes to detect and report UAP incidents.»
The OIG report also calls out the DOD for saying AARO was operational as early as July 2022 (as claimed in the edited transcript of the Friday briefing, despite Phillips’ answer to the contrary).
«The Under Secretary noted that the findings that inform the recommendation appear to be based on observations that largely predate the establishment of AARO on July 20, 2022. The Under Secretary also commented that the report describes AARO as having been ‘operational’ at the time of its establishment when in fact the office was not at initial operational capability. The Under Secretary stated that AARO will achieve full operational capability using the resources provided in the Future Year Defense Plan beginning in FY 2024,» the report said.
Christopher Mellon is the former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Intelligence and former minority staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee. He has called the report a «huge potential conflict of interest.»
«Imagine a small office at the DoD trying to investigate the Iran-Contra affair. Congress did a great job with that inquiry, something that would have likely been a whitewash if the Executive had tried to investigate itself. Further, many witnesses did not trust AARO and would not meet with them,» Mellon said in a tweet.
«The public needs to understand it is imperative to continue aggressively investigating UAP, for both national security and scientific purposes, regardless of the accuracy of this report,» he added.
«As a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot who works with other advanced UAP witnesses, I am very discouraged and disappointed by the Pentagon’s report. Once again, the Pentagon demonstrates it is more interested in discounting witnesses and whistleblowers than it is with actually identifying anomalous objects and phenomena in our airspace,» tweeted former US Nay pilot Ryan Graves, the co-founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace.
In a Friday interview with NBC News Now’s Gadi Schwartz, Graves said the report’s language «is really detrimental to people who want to come forward: witnesses, potential whistleblowers … commercial and military pilots.”
Through the weekend, critics of the AARO report swarmed X (once known as Twitter) with similarly pointed take-downs that shredded the DOD’s methodology at length. Particularly, the report’s sourcing caught eyes online, as readers scoffed at its lack of transparency.
«If I submitted a summary judgment brief to a court (a dismissal motion based on evidence) ‘sourced’ like the AARO Report, my case would be immediately dismissed. No court would accept references to my ‘case files,’ as if that was evidence,» said one reader, an attorney from South Carolina. «Where’s AARO’s cited evidence? MIA.»
«The DOD report states only conclusions … and provides no data and no definitions of what they were trying to do in the first place,» said Stanford professor, Garry Nolan said.
News Nation journalist Ross Couthart, who last year broke the story of UAP whistleblower David Grusch, pointed out that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was among a number of lawmakers who attested to seeing firsthand evidence of UAP encounters and programs.
«There is video for f**k’s sake. There is video of this object, this craft hovering, taken by an American Air Force pilot,» Couthart said in a weekend interview.
Daniel Shehan, defense attorney for the New York Times in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, sharply criticized AARO’s report in an open letter on March 8. Shehan called the report a «cheap retread of the now utterly threadbare lies.»
«I personally know that Dr. Kirkpatrick and his associates at AARO are consciously lying when they falsely assert that they have been provided no substantial evidence of the existence of a secret U.S. government UFO crash retrieval program because I personally provided to Dr. Kirkpatrick himself, under oath, the fact that … I was granted access to the still-classified files of Project Blue Book related to the over 700 cases of UFO sightings that could not be rationalized as any natural phenomenon that had been simply mistakenly mis-identified as a UFO,» Shehan wrote.
«I was shown, by official representatives of our U.S. government, several official photographs of an active UFO retrieval operation,» he said, adding that he provided «ample supportive information directly to Dr. Kirkpatrick to enable him and his associates at AARO to identify and locate those files that had been specially delivered to the then brand-new Madison Building basement for my review.»
«If Dr. Kirkpatrick and his staff had made even the slightest good-faith effort to identify and recover that cache of specific official U.S. government Blue Book files specially delivered to Washington for my inspection, they would have had the proof they now deny having found.»
Disclosure advocate Lue Elizondo, former director of the AATIP, called the report «intentionally dishonest, inaccurate and dangerously misleading.» Elizondo called on Congress to take legislative action for greater transparency and pledged to continue working with lawmakers to help their efforts to achieve disclosure.
«I hold Pentagon leadership and former AARO leadership accountable for this obvious attempt to diminish and embarrass whistleblowers, to undermine the truth and ignore the evidence. Their goal is clearly to minimize Congressional and public scrutiny, and to cover up the truth,» Elizondo said in a Friday statement — one which was applauded online by a former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
«Many of us who have worked the UAP topic for the government are aware of the ample classified evidence that has been provided to AARO and contradicts this report. This report only makes it more abundantly clear to Congress that they must take more legislative action to demand transparency on the UAP topic on behalf of the American people,» Elizondo said.
U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) participates in a meeting of the House Oversight and Reform Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on January 31, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The ball is in Congress’ court
On Capitol Hill, interest reportedly remains high among congress members. Last month, Graves said after staff meetings with sponsors of the UAP Disclosure Act that «it does not seem like they have lost interest, and remain committed to UAP transparency.»
News Nation’s Joe Khalil also reported Tuesday that GOP-led House Oversight Committee members have confirmed an effort to form a UAP Select Committee is underway among some congress members.
According to February memo from Laurence Brewer, chief records officer for the U.S. Government, and Chris Naylor, NARA’s executive for research services, all federal agencies will have until the end of the fiscal year in July to «review, identify, and organize each UAP record in its custody for disclosure to the public and transmission to the National Archives.»
The move is required by the new records management provisions in the recently enacted 2024 defense policy bill, which establishes a new UAP public repository in the National Archives. Agencies are expected to receive further instructions soon on handling specific records.
The second volume of AARO’s report is slated to include any findings resulting from interviews and research completed from Nov. 1, 2023 to April 15, 2024 and will «provide analysis of information acquired by AARO after the date of the publication of Volume I.»
In the meantime, all eyes are again on congress — and the skies.
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