Before anything else, I want to acknowledge our host. I’m grateful to Robert Powell for the invitation to join you this evening. Robert is one of the genuine class acts in the UAP field — not chasing riches or fame, always respectful of others, and relentlessly focused on advancing our scientific understanding of the phenomenon. He brings curiosity and imagination to the issue while remaining rigorously grounded in the scientific method, which is a rarer combination than it should be. His recent book, “UFOs: A Scientist Explains What We Know (And Don’t Know),” is a terrific read and an ideal primer for anyone new to the subject. His leadership of the SCU, and the talent of its members, is one of the reasons I’m optimistic about the future of scientific UAP research.

Tonight I want to spend some time on a question that sounds almost too simple to bother with: what does it mean to know something? It’s the kind of question you expect to get cornered with at a philosophy department reception, ideally while standing near an exit. But I want to convince you that it is one of the most consequential questions this community faces — more important than an individual sighting, sensor reading, or case file.

Here’s why. We are all, in one way or another, in the business of evaluating anomalous evidence. Radar returns that don’t match known aircraft. Pilot testimony that resists conventional explanation. Video that defies easy categorization. And every time one of us weighs that evidence, we are implicitly relying on a standard of proof — a set of rules about what counts, what doesn’t, and how much weight to give it.

The trouble is, there are various competing standards of proof in the world, each subscribed to by a different community. Each is valid for its purpose. But they differ greatly in what they demand — and often in what they conclude. I’ve come to believe that much of the vitriol, finger-pointing, and mutual incomprehension that plague UAP discussions, especially on social media, traces back to people applying different standards of proof without ever being clear or explicit. Perhaps with a little semantic housekeeping tonight, we can lower the temperature — or at least better understand precisely why so many are yelling.

So I want to walk through four of these standards: the scientific standard, the legal standard, the intelligence standard, and what I’ll call the everyday standard — the one the public runs on. I want to look at how each is built, what each is for, and — this is the part that matters most for this room — what happens when they get confused with one another. Because very little of the public confusion, media distortion, and institutional whiplash around anomaly research comes from bad evidence. Far more of it, especially on social media, comes from applying different evidentiary standards without declaring which standard is in use.

One more note before we start, because it’s why this talk belongs at this gathering rather than a philosophy seminar: this is not an abstract problem. It’s an operational one. When a case file passes from a pilot, to an analyst, to a government office, to a journalist, to the public, it moves through various evidentiary regimes — and nobody stamps the file to say which one is currently in charge. The witness spoke honestly. The sensor recorded what it recorded. And somewhere between the cockpit and the cable-news chyron, the standard of proof got swapped out — quietly, invisibly — from “this is an interesting data point” to “this proves something.” Or vice versa.

That silent substitution may be the single largest source of both false belief and false skepticism in this field. So let’s take these regimes one at a time and try to be precise about how they work and where they differ.

Let’s start where you live and work.

I. The Scientific Standard: Empiricism, Replication, and the Architecture of “Proof”

Science, as this audience knows better than me, does not run on gut instinct or authority. It runs on a single, non-negotiable requirement: a claim about the natural world must be formulated so that others can independently test it. If no conceivable observation could prove a claim wrong, that claim is not wrong — it simply isn’t a scientific claim. It’s not eligible for the tournament.

That distinction matters enormously here, because it separates two kinds of claims that constantly get lumped together in public discussion. “There is a class of radar and sensor returns that resist explanation under current models of known aircraft and natural phenomena” — that is a scientific claim. It’s falsifiable. Better sensors, better models, or a mundane explanation could knock it down tomorrow. But “these are the product of non-human intelligence” is, as currently evidenced, far harder to subject to that same discipline — not because it’s false, but because it hasn’t yet been built into a form that makes specific, testable predictions. Part of the work in front of this field is exactly that translation: converting “something anomalous happened” into hypotheses about non-human intelligence precise enough to be falsified. And consider this special difficulty: how do you design falsifiable tests, for the first time in history, of an intelligence — if it exists — that vastly surpasses our own achievements in information systems, propulsion, and other powerful technologies? We don’t control the subject we’re studying, and likely never will. If anything, the reverse is the more plausible scenario — which makes this, I believe, the only field of research where the sample may be studying the investigators.

But we are not helpless. We can acquire raw data and compare it to the known performance envelope of human aircraft of every kind. If a large gap is identified — and independently confirmed — would that suffice to demonstrate we are not the only intelligent, technologically advanced species operating craft on this planet?

Incidentally, I was told years ago that AARO was developing a formal, published standard for identifying a non-human craft. I’ve yet to see it. My suspicion is they’re having trouble devising criteria that wouldn’t already be satisfied by records in the government’s extensive holdings. That would put AARO, the Defense Department, and the Intelligence Community in an awkward position, since any announcement of a detected non-human craft is, by the sheer magnitude of its importance, automatically a matter for the White House rather than a small office subordinate to DoD and IC leadership. I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt we’ll see the promised workable definition for extraterrestrial technology anytime soon.

Consider the famous Tic Tac from the Nimitz case. SCU members calculated G-forces that are overwhelming — not merely fatal to any biological occupant, but wildly beyond the structural limits of anything humans have ever built and flown. Add the nagging fact that nobody has identified anything in any nation’s inventory that could operate at those altitudes and speeds — hypersonic, with no sonic boom and no friction plasma — and it becomes genuinely difficult to construct a plausible scenario in which the Tic Tac is anything other than the product of a more advanced civilization. Though of course, to a scientist, that last sentence is unproven — and I can feel several of you drafting a critical peer review already.

Which brings us to Karl Popper’s great insight, worth stating precisely because it is so often gotten backwards. Science does not prove things true. It cannot. What it does is expose claims to repeated, serious attempts at falsification, and grant provisional confidence to whatever survives. A hypothesis that has weathered a hundred honest attempts to kill it has earned something real — not certainty, but something considerably sturdier than opinion.

Now consider what that means for anomaly research. A single striking video, a single extraordinary radar track, a single credible witness — these are significant. But by the internal logic of science, they are a merely a starting point, not a conclusion. What comes next is the hard part: replication. Independent observers, independent instruments, independent conditions, converging on the same result. That is the mechanism — the only mechanism — by which individual error, individual bias, and yes, individual fraud get filtered out of the record over time. It is slow. It is not glamorous. And the process is supremely indifferent to how compelling any single piece of evidence feels in the moment.

Think about how much of this field’s most famous material consists of exactly one or two instruments documenting one event. That is not a criticism of the witnesses or sensor operators — it’s a description of where the evidentiary chain typically stops. A single infrared track from a single aircraft, however anomalous, occupies the same epistemic position in science as a single anomalous cell-culture result in a pharmacology lab: interesting, worth pursuing, yet entirely insufficient on its own. The scientific question is not “can this be explained?” It is “does this recur, under independent scrutiny, when multiple instruments and multiple observers are pointed at the same class of event?” That is a much higher bar — and it is the bar this field will eventually be measured against, whether or not it feels fair on any given day.

This is also where statistics enter, and where the public — and, sometimes even working professionals can go astray. A p-value under 0.05 does not mean a finding is true. It means that, under a specific model of chance, a result this extreme would be unlikely to arise randomly. That is a modest, technical claim — but it seems to have been stretched far beyond its load rating across an enormous swath of science, contributing directly to the replication crisis in fields from social psychology to nutrition. If that standard gets misused inside science, imagine its fate once it leaves the lab and lands in a cable news segment about anomalous phenomena. Perhaps we should distribute coffee mugs that say, “a p-value is not a truth value” to newsrooms across America.

And the confusion cuts both ways. It is possible to be too credulous about a single dramatic sensor reading. It is equally possible to be too dismissive of a pattern that has genuinely begun to replicate — because “replication” gets used loosely in conversation but precisely in a laboratory, and those two uses are not interchangeable. When you hear that a phenomenon has “been independently reported many times,” ask what a reviewer would likely ask: independent of what, exactly? Independent instruments? Witnesses with no contact with one another? Independent locations and time periods? Or the same underlying signal, retold? The rigor of the scientific standard is not a formality. It is the mechanism by which “this keeps happening” gets converted, over time, from a feeling into a finding.

And before any of this reaches consensus, it must survive peer review — an imperfect filter, as anyone who has encountered Reviewer 2 can attest, but one with no real analogue anywhere else in public life. Peer review does not certify truth. It certifies that the methodology is sound enough, and the reasoning transparent enough, for other qualified people to evaluate the claim on its merits, rather than on the reputation or charisma of whoever is making it. That last part matters more here than almost anywhere else in science, because this field has historically had to fight for exactly that kind of neutral evaluation — claims assessed on the data, rather than dismissed because of who is presenting them, or credited because of who is presenting them. Done fairly, peer review cuts both ways.

Scientific consensus — on climate, on evolution, on vaccine safety, and someday on UAP — is never the product of one study or one lab. It is built over years, sometimes from thousands of independent, cross-validated lines of evidence, often from disciplines that rarely collaborate, converging on the same answer from different directions. That is why “theory” means something entirely different to a scientist than it does on cable news. As I understand theory in your world, it is not a guess. It is a structure that has been shot at relentlessly and remains standing.

I raise all this as both a challenge and a warning. If this field is going to earn the credibility that climate science or evolutionary biology commands, it will not get there through a viral video, a dramatic hearing, or a well-produced documentary. It will get there the way anything gets there in science: falsifiable hypotheses, transparent methodology, results independently replicated and verified — a slow accumulation of evidence across instruments, institutions, and time.

There is, admittedly, a conceivable shortcut: the government releasing, or providing access to, non-human biological or technological materials in its possession that could be independently tested and verified. Interestingly, in addition to the various sources who have long made claims of recovered materials, Dr. Avi Loeb — Chairman of the new government UAP Science Advisory Council — has revealed that a former Lockheed Martin executive confirmed to him the existence of recovered off-world materials. Avi, it seems, is discovering what some of us have lived with for years: a growing roster of seemingly credible witnesses making a genuinely shocking claim. At the Disclosure Foundation we are working this issue hard — offering free legal advice, secure communications, and case-by-case funding — to advance Congressional and public understanding of these remarkable claims.

Setting aside that possibility — and setting aside a daylight UAP landing at, say, midfield during the Super Bowl, which would certainly compress the timeline — there is no substitute for collecting and analyzing data that demonstrates capabilities clearly beyond those of any nation on Earth. The good news is that this is a solvable problem, and the government may already hold such data. But only by sharing it with the scientific community, and letting scientists apply scientific methods to confirm it, can we reach a scientific consensus on UAP. The bad news is that scientific timescales are slow — and they get slower when much of the community remains resistant to examining the evidence, beholden to stigma, and inclined to dismiss the issue before engaging with its history or data. This, despite their own government acknowledging that UAP are real and that thousands of cases in its possession remain unexplained.

Which brings me to a commonplace shortcoming within the scientific community itself. Because so many scientists focus exclusively on replicable data, they often overlook the critical value of studying the history of the UAP issue. The result is a steady stream of misunderstandings and inaccuracies that make their way into the press and deter aspiring researchers. I recall an article a few years ago by a prominent astronomer arguing that the United States is the only nation reporting significant numbers of UAP — how could that be, he asked, unless UAP are just an American fad: a gullible population, raised on Hollywood, mistaking classified aircraft for something exotic? The author knew nothing of the extraordinary history of UAP sightings and government responses in Chile, France, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, China, Japan etc. It was blatant, shocking ignorance. Yet that ignorance sailed past his editors, too. Such ignorance is, regrettably, the norm. The Wall St. Journal and New York Times editors have let slip similarly misleading and inaccurate articles on UAP.

Those who do not study the history are also more easily misled by debunkers. A widely cited official government history of UAP, published in recent years, claimed that most UAP reports are simply people misidentifying classified USAF stealth aircraft. I published a detailed rebuttal in The Debrief cataloguing scores of errors and omissions in the government report, but the core problem they alleged was simply overstated: misidentification of classified aircraft certainly occurs — indeed it is quite commonplace — but it cannot possibly explain the thousands of UAP reports made before stealth aircraft were even on the drawing board. Moreover, the national security community itself — including the people designing and building stealth aircraft — wwere routinely seeing and reporting UAP! Yet, you’d never know that from this skewed government report. A prominent example includes the father of stealth himself, Ben Rich of the Lockheed Skunk Works who had a UAP sighting that profoundly affected his views. Indeed, in 1950 alone, long before stealth was conceived, security personnel at Los Alamos — the home of U.S. nuclear weapons design — logged over 200 UAP sightings by Air Force scientists, security officers, civilians, and local law enforcement. I described this situation in a Debrief article titled “The Paradox of Fermi’s Paradox.” To cite yet another example, former DNI James Clapper mentioned during the filming of “Age of Disclosure” that when he directed Air Force Intelligence in the early 1990s, they ran a UAP tracking program prompted by numerous UAP sightings at DoD test ranges — including Area 51, where stealth aircraft were first tested. None of this appeared in the official UAP history, leaving readers with the false impression that the UAP mystery is mostly a case of citizens seeing and reporting stealth aircraft.

One more current example. I have heard a prominent scientist — one who is genuinely supportive of UAP research — claim that a craft cannot go supersonic speeds without a sonic boom, or hypersonic without a plasma fireball. Yet anyone familiar with the history of UAP knows such reports are not only commonplace; for example they are consistently the norm for certain craft across decades of cases — including the Nimitz incident and large numbers of triangle craft reports stretching back to the 1950s and 60s. So the question becomes: do we ignore the data because it doesn’t fit our current understanding of physics, or do we accept these consistent reports, submitted over decades by military and civilian personnel who observed supersonic speeds without a sonic boom or plasma? Indeed, in infrared many of these craft remained cool even after instantaneously accelerating to speeds that appear to be well in excess of the speed of sound. Hopefully we will soon have sensor data that settles the point — if we don’t already.

In the meantime, scientists who betray a shallow understanding of UAP history damage their credibility with those who have deep expertise, by their willingness to dismiss out of hand UAP reports that challenge our understanding of physics. We shouldn’t dismiss a priori, consistent accounts that suggest a radical breakthrough in propulsion technology. The encouraging news is that much more data should be coming soon as a result President Trump’s order to release UAP records. Meanwhile, independent collection efforts including the Galileo Project and others are springing up around the world. Other notable signs of progress include what we hope will be the digitization of the massive UAP holdings at the UFO National Historical Records Center. There is also a growing body of UAP records at the National Archives as a result of a Congressional mandate for all agencies to submit copies of their UAP records to this great repository. Combine that with advanced AI, and we may soon detect patterns of UAP activity that have gone unnoticed for seventy years. What scientists most want and need — pristine, unclassified data they can work with and publish — is becoming possible at long last thanks largely to the efforts of the President, Congress, and UAP non-profits working with Congress.

Sadly, as the abuse directed at scientists on NASA’s UAP panel demonstrated, entrenched skeptics remain a barrier to progress. Which is all the more reason to applaud your organization and its membership: your intellectual integrity and courage in following the data, despite determined naysayers, make you a tremendous resource for science — on an issue that is also vital for both science and national security.

It will take time to overcome the scientific community’s prejudice against this subject — and I use “prejudice” in its precise sense: these are people pre-judging an issue that in most cases they have never studied. If nothing else, your anti-UAP colleagues might start by evaluating the accounts of fellow scientists who actually have examined the data. Examples include the writings of physicist James E. McDonald; astronomer J. Allen Hynek; astrophysicist Jacques Vallée — and your own Robert Powell.

Now let’s look at a very different machine, one that a great deal of anomalous evidence eventually passes through: the law.

II. The Legal Standard: Adversarial Truth and the Architecture of Doubt

Here is a sentence I want you to hold onto through this entire section: the legal system is not built to find truth. It is built to produce a socially legitimate resolution to a dispute — a verdict, rather than an independently verifiable scientific finding.

That is not a criticism of the law. It is a different design goal. Science is, at least in principle, cooperative: everyone converging on one shared external reality. Law is adversarial by design: two sides each present the strongest possible version of their case, and a judge or jury decides which account is more persuasive or legally sufficient. If that process sounds vaguely familiar, it may be because it resembles a faculty meeting — though with far better rules of procedure. Evidence doesn’t enter a courtroom the way it enters a lab. It arrives filtered through rules of admissibility, relevance, and strategic presentation — rules built for adjudication, not for the discovery of new physical principles.

I want to be careful here, because this field increasingly intersects with legal and quasi-legal proceedings: congressional hearings, inspector general reviews, whistleblower protections, classification disputes. None of those are courtrooms in the strict sense, but nearly all borrow the law’s adversarial architecture — a side presenting a claim, an opposing side testing it, a body deciding what is credible enough to act on. Understanding how that architecture works, and how it differs from a laboratory, explains a great deal about why testimony that sounds airtight in a hearing room can still leave the scientists in this audience unsatisfied. That dissatisfaction is not cynicism. It is a different standard doing its job.

The differences show up starkly in the law’s burdens of proof. Criminal law demands guilt beyond a reasonable doubt — the system’s highest bar, because the law has decided that convicting an innocent person is a graver harm than acquitting a guilty one. Civil law asks only for a preponderance of the evidence: more likely true than not — anything north of fifty percent. Between them sits “clear and convincing evidence.” None of these thresholds maps cleanly onto a probability value or a confidence interval. A claim that satisfies a civil jury might strike a scientist as preliminary and in need of further study. A scientific consensus built over decades might still fail to move a jury instructed to require near-certainty. These are different currencies, and courts have struggled for generations with the exchange rate — with translating probabilistic reasoning into a format twelve laypeople can apply to a single verdict.

Now transpose that onto a congressional hearing weighing testimony about anomalous phenomena. A hearing is not a courtroom, but it borrows the same logic: is this testimony credible enough to warrant action? Further investigation? A change in policy? Those are perfectly legitimate questions for a legislature. But notice that none of them is the question a scientist asks. “Credible enough to act on” and “replicated enough to be established” are different thresholds, built for different purposes. A great deal of public confusion in this space comes from audiences hearing a legislative judgment and mistaking it for a scientific one — or hearing scientific caution and mistaking it for institutional stonewalling.

Expert testimony deserves its own warning, because this is where things often go wrong. In an adversarial system, experts are retained by one side and expected to present the strongest version of that side’s position. That doesn’t require dishonesty — but the selection of which expert gets the microphone, and the framing of what they’re asked, can manufacture the appearance of scientific controversy where none exists, or of certainty where real uncertainty remains. We have watched this happen repeatedly with forensic techniques once treated as courtroom gospel: bite-mark analysis, hair microscopy, certain pattern-matching methods. All were presented to juries in the confident vocabulary of science. All were later shown — once actual scientific scrutiny caught up — to be unreliable or worse. They secured convictions anyway, some overturned years or decades too late. Even the more rigorous Daubert standard used in American federal courts doesn’t require a technique to meet the full bar of scientific consensus; it requires only enough methodology to assist a jury. That is a meaningfully lower bar, and worth keeping firmly in view whenever anomaly-related evidence moves from a sensor log toward a hearing room. A claim can be truthful, sincere, and procedurally sound, and still fall well short of a peer-reviewed finding. Those are two different kinds of confidence, and this field will be well served by never letting the public — or itself — collapse the distinction.

So: two very different machines. One built to approximate truth through independently verified empirical tests; one built to resolve disputes through an adversarial contest. Now let’s turn to a third process, distinct from both science and law.

III. The Intelligence Standard: Judgment Under Uncertainty, on a Deadline

If the goal of science is proof through rigorous, independently verified data, and the goal of the law is the legitimate resolution of disputes consistent with the rights of citizens, the goal of the Intelligence Community is something else entirely: to give policymakers and warfighters the best possible understanding, in time for it to matter.

Traditionally the IC has done this by providing secrets — an adversary’s plans and intentions — or, more often when secrets aren’t available, careful analysis of observable indicators: strategic communications, troop movements, changes in readiness.

The analytic process differs wildly from science or law. For one thing, the question is often about something that hasn’t happened and may never happen. Will President Xi exploit depleted U.S. missile and munition stocks to move on Taiwan? Absent a trusted source at his side — who might, of course, be a double agent — or signals intelligence with direct access to leadership communications, the IC monitors scores of military units, facilities, and personnel for any change in status suggesting aggression. There is no legal or scientific process suited to that question. There is no experiment to run and no case to file; you cannot ask a reclusive dictator to replicate his intentions under controlled conditions. So the IC does the best it can with its own resources and techniques. And notice what that implies: the lack of evidence is almost immaterial. Judgments must be rendered on short notice with whatever evidence exists, however limited or incomplete. “Insufficient data; withholding judgment” is a perfectly respectable answer in science. In intelligence, it can be a catastrophe that gets you fired.

Since the Gulf War and September 11th, this is no longer purely a matter of subject-matter experts summarizing the available data. There is now — thankfully — increased reliance on structured analytic techniques that add rigor to the process and integrate expertise across disciplines: Critical Path Analysis, Bowtie Analysis, Cluster Brainstorming, the Indicators Evaluation Process, Delphi Panels, and dozens more. These tools force analysts to be explicit and transparent — what information was used, how it was weighted, how was the judgment reached — while guarding against classic failures: mirror-imaging, confirmation bias, small-group dynamics, and pressure from policymakers to hear what they already believe. We saw a vivid case of that last failure mode recently, when President Trump was incensed by intelligence indicating that the June B-2 strike he ordered on Iranian underground facilities may not have been as effective as he was publicly claiming. He was irate at the leaked IC reporting — and yet within a year he was back at war, in large part because he had come around to the very assessment he initially resisted. The system, however imperfectly, apparently did its job.

Intelligence analysts also face a challenge scientists largely do not: their subjects are actively trying to deceive them. Our adversaries deliberately confuse and mislead analysts, officials, and the American public — occasionally managing to manipulate our press and Congress in the bargain. Microbes may be dangerous to work with, but at least the E. coli is not running a counterintelligence operation against your lab.

In the foreword to Lue Elizondo’s book “Imminent,” I described some of the Intelligence Community’s major past failures — to explain my determination not to let UAP become the next one: another September 11th, where the failure to share information about suspicious activity became the prelude to a devastating event. I was in the Pentagon on September 11th and remained there all day, trying to facilitate information sharing at the highest levels. The security of U.S. airspace is therefore more than a merely theoretical concern for me. So, I was naturally aghast at the IC’s total failure to disseminate reporting on UAP intrusions into highly sensitive Navy and Air Force operating areas. After months of shaking the bureaucratic tree at OSD with Lue Elizondo — along with Navy pilots who gave senior officials first-hand accounts of their encounters — it became clear that nobody at DoD would touch the issue, given the stigma surrounding it. So, determine to ensure the truth would reach policymakers, I went to the press and Congress with sample UAP videos. The resulting story ran on the front page of the New York Times on December 16th, 2017, followed closely by Politico, and later by an op-ed I wrote for the Washington Post accompanied by a third video. It was the beginning of a breakthrough that has carried us a long way in a relatively short time.

The failures I described in Lue’s book — 9/11, and the erroneous conclusions regarding Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program — drove real reform. Structured analytic techniques are valuable and deserve continued testing and refinement, but they are a great step in the right direction. As consequential as scientific and legal judgments are, nothing is more tragic or wasteful than an unnecessary war.

IV. The Everyday Standard: Heuristics, Bias, and the Social Construction of Belief

Outside laboratories, courtrooms, and secure facilities, belief formation runs on an entirely different operating system — and it is worth being discussing that system because it is not stupidity and it is not a lack of education. It is the product of an evolutionary history that rewarded fast, cheap decisions over slow, careful ones. Our forebears who paused to compute confidence intervals about the rustling in the tall grass are for the most part not our forebears.

Daniel Kahneman’s framework describes it best: System 1 — fast, intuitive, associative — versus System 2 — slow, deliberate, analytical. The overwhelming majority of everyday belief formation happens in System 1, while System 2, as everyone in this room probably knows from personal experience, is usually out for coffee. And that has real consequences for how people process the kind of evidence this room deals in.

A vivid firsthand account from a credible witness will outcompete a statistical summary nearly every time, because it engages narrative and emotional processing that raw numbers simply don’t touch. This is worth sitting with, because it cuts directly against the instinct many scientists have — to answer public fascination with more data, more caveats, more careful qualification. That instinct is correct on the merits but frequently ineffective as persuasion, because persuasion, for most people most of the time, does not run through the channel that data runs through. Testimony from someone in your own trusted network — a friend, a fellow pilot, a respected commanding officer — will often outweigh a peer-reviewed paper by a stranger, however rigorous. And events that are dramatic, recent, or emotionally charged get judged as more common and more probable than the base rates justify. That is the availability heuristic, and it runs in both directions here: it is why a single dramatic sighting can feel like overwhelming evidence of a pattern — and equally why a single debunked case can feel, to a skeptic, like it settles the entire question.

There is something more sobering underneath, and it comes from Dan Kahan’s research at Yale on what he calls identity-protective cognition. Kahan found that higher scientific literacy and stronger analytical ability do not reliably produce more accurate beliefs on politically or culturally charged scientific questions — climate change, gun policy, nuclear waste storage. Instead, greater cognitive sophistication tends to make people more skilled at constructing arguments for whatever position their group already holds. More firepower — aimed at defense rather than discovery.

That should unsettle anyone who assumes the fix for public confusion is simply better communication: clearer graphics, more credentialed people speaking louder. If the underlying mechanism is motivated reasoning rather than ignorance, then handing a motivated reasoner more information just produces a more sophisticated rationalization of the position they already held. I don’t need to spell out how directly that applies to a subject where “believer” and “skeptic” have hardened into tribal identities rather than provisional conclusions. The uncomfortable implication is that the loudest voices on both sides — the most confident believers and the most confident dismissers alike — are often displaying not more evidence, but more identity investment. Spotting that pattern in others is easy. Spotting it in ourselves, inside our own community, is the harder and more important discipline.

Then there is the information environment itself, which has changed faster than any of the three systems we’ve discussed. Legacy journalism, whatever its flaws, had institutional filters — editors, fact-checkers, professional norms — that at least constrained the spread of demonstrably false claims. Digital platforms have lowered the cost of publishing to nearly zero while dismantling most of those filters.

Journalistic “both-sides” coverage, well-intentioned as fairness, routinely manufactures false equivalence — and few subjects illustrate it better than this one. A single segment might feature a rigorous scientist describing years of null results beside a confident advocate describing a striking encounter, framed as though equal airtime implies equal evidentiary weight. That framing is not neutral. It is a substantive claim about the state of the evidence, smuggled in through a formatting choice — and it shapes public perception every bit as much as the content of what is said.

Social platforms go further still: a claim spreads not because it is true, but because it is emotionally resonant, identity-affirming, and shareable. A single ambiguous video can travel farther in forty-eight hours than a decade of careful instrumented data collection — because the video is available to System 1, and the data is not. That is not a failure of the public’s character. It is what happens when an information ecosystem optimized for speed and engagement collides with a subject that requires patience.

Conclusion: The Stakes of Epistemic Mismatch

So here are four systems. Science, approximating objective reality through falsifiable, replicated evidence. Law, producing authoritative resolutions through adversarial contest. Intelligence, weighing incomplete facts against alternative hypotheses — in secret, on deadline. And everyday belief, optimizing for cognitive efficiency and social cohesion through heuristics that most people never examine.

Each is well designed for its users. The damage happens in the seams — when one framework’s confidence is quietly swapped for another’s, and nobody in the room notices the exchange rate has changed.

That is precisely the terrain this community works every day. You are asking the public — and often each other — to evaluate extraordinary evidence, and most missteps in that process trace back to one of the failures described tonight: treating a single striking case the way science treats a replicated finding; treating a hearing-room narrative the way a courtroom treats a verdict; or treating a vivid personal account the way a lab treats a controlled result.

So it is worth pausing to ask where UAP evidence actually stands against each of these four standards today. The scientific standard has clearly not yet been met. But how does the issue look from the other three legitimate vantage points?

Start with intelligence, because it points to a notable inconsistency. AARO’s leaders occupy billets within the U.S. Intelligence Community, answerable primarily to the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees of the House and Senate. Yet, despite that institutional context, they have largely switched systems, applying the more demanding scientific standard rather than the IC’s own analytic frameworks. The result is that we lack a clear picture of what a formal Intelligence Community analysis of UAP would conclude using standard IC methodology. This is one reason my organization, the Disclosure Foundation, is pushing for a National Intelligence Estimate on UAP — a process that would require the IC to apply its own methods to the evidence. Looking at the East and West Coast incidents of recent years, the extraterrestrial hypothesis seems to lack any contrary data, while the conventional alternatives — foreign aircraft or classified U.S. programs — appear difficult to sustain. Requiring the IC to formally engage these questions on its own analytic terms could prove both revealing and clarifying.

As for the legal standard: were the origin of UAP put before a jury, the outcome would owe a great deal to jury selection and the quality of counsel. But I believe the testimony of U.S. Naval aviators and radar operators would affect a jury the way it affected skeptical members of the U.S. Senate — who were deeply impressed and moved to act after meeting with Navy aviators. I have sat through hours of debriefings with pilots and radar operators from the Nimitz and other cases, and the rock-solid integrity of these individuals, combined with their extreme competence as aviators, would in my view likely carry the day in a courtroom, just as it did in the Senate and later the House.

And the public? We know where they stand from polling conducted by the Disclosure Foundation, Gallup, and others. Our recent poll found overwhelming support for releasing more government information — even among skeptics and people who do not believe UAP are real. Among the general population, 84 percent want more government information released, and 69 percent believe UAP are likely or definitely real. The public, in other words, reached its verdict well ahead of the other three systems. Whether it used the right standard to get there is, of course, tonight’s question.

I want to leave you with a distinction rather than a conclusion, because I think it is the more useful thing to carry out of this room. There is a difference between dismissing a claim and declining to certify it. Science, done honestly, does the second far more often than the first. Most anomalous reports, in most fields of inquiry, end not with “this is false” but with “this has not yet met the standard required to call it established.” That is not a verdict of failure. It is simply where the evidence currently stands — and an honest field says so plainly, without inflating it into more than it is or dismissing it into less. That kind of discipline is unglamorous. It rarely trends. It will occasionally frustrate audiences who want a clean answer tonight rather than a careful one in ten years. But it is the only discipline that has ever converted an anomaly into an accepted piece of the natural world — and this field, of all fields, cannot afford to shortcut it.

So here is the charge I would leave with you. When you see a compelling piece of evidence, ask which of the four systems is actually doing the evaluating in that moment — and whether it is the one that should be. When someone hands you legal-grade credibility and asks you to treat it as scientific-grade confidence, say so, plainly, in the room. When a media narrative flattens a decade of null results and one dramatic anecdote into two equal sides of a story, say so, plainly, in public. That vigilance — applied to others’ claims and, more importantly, to our own — is what will eventually let this field earn the kind of confidence that climate science and evolutionary biology now command. It will not happen through a better anecdote or a more dramatic hearing. It will happen the way it has always happened in science: independent replication, transparent methodology, and evidence strong enough to survive people who are actively trying to prove it wrong.

That is a harder road than the one the culture around this topic usually rewards. It is also the only road that ends anywhere real. That is the unique process and value your community brings to the vexing issue of UAP.

I can assure you that all of us at the Disclosure Foundation admire and appreciate the patient work you are undertaking. We look forward to working with you in the months and years ahead and we’re eager to be of assistance when we can.

Thank you so much for having me here this evening. I hope these remarks will lead to greater appreciation of the challenges involved with applying the scientific method to UAP. I would also be delighted if they might help to reduce some of the misunderstandings, vitriol and find-pointing on social media by simply having people identify what methodology they are using.

In the meantime, until science catches up, which may take years, we can respect these other methodologies for what they offer, a best effort until science has the time and opportunity to render a more definitive judgment. Specifically, the Disclosure Foundation would like to see the passage of the Disclosure Act, mandating a review of all UAP records by experts acting on behalf of the President; as well as National Intelligence Estimate regarding UAP. We believe that if done honestly and thoroughly, an NIE could be completed in months, unlike these other alternatives, and it could be of great value to both the government and the public while serving as a spur to scientific inquiry.

Science will never be able to prove the negative, that no UAP are extraterrestrial; but they may be able to prove some are, and there is nothing more important to our species or nothing I am aware of that is more worthy of scientific effort.

Thank you again for the honor of appearing here with you this evening.

At a recent congressional hearing, the public fixated on a leaked video appearing to show a U.S. missile striking an unidentified object off Yemen in 2024. Whatever the object was, one pressing question is why it took a leak — rather than government disclosure — for the public to see it.

I spent more than 30 years inside the U.S. intelligence community, including serving as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence and later as a consultant to the military. During those years, I witnessed a troubling pattern: Incidents of unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP (formerly known as unidentified flying objects), were detected by cutting-edge radar and other systems but routinely dismissed, buried or classified beyond justification. In 2017, I helped bring footage of three UAP encounters to the public. Those clips, recorded on advanced infrared cameras by Navy aviators, forced the Pentagon to admit that UAP are real.

Since then, academia, startups, civil society groups, the U.S. government and foreign governments have attempted to better understand UAP. Lawmakers are holding hearings and classified briefings. But progress remains halting. After the release of the Navy videos, the intelligence community reclassified almost everything concerning UAP, slowing disclosure to a trickle.

Rather than honor its pledge to Congress to support UAP transparency, the Pentagon continues a slow drip. I don’t have a precise number (even that’s probably classified), but among the thousands of publicly acknowledged UAP reports and videos, there are undoubtedly many that are no more sensitive than the three I shared with the public. Other UAP records may go back 80 years and pose no conceivable threat to national security if they were made public.

How can the government assert that nearly everything about UAP should be classified? Once made public, the three Navy UAP videos strengthened national security by drawing attention to unexplained intrusions into U.S. airspace. Instead of working with Congress to enhance our domain awareness, the intelligence community created new UAP classification rules, cloaking such videos going forward.

Unfortunately, secrecy is often wielded not to protect the nation but to mask inconvenient truths. I have seen many documents that were overclassified by zealous security officials. But excessive secrecy erodes public trust, deprives scientists of crucial data and undermines congressional oversight.

It may also be illegal. Federal law requires the government to transfer its UAP records to the National Archives for public release. Yet the collection so far remains piddling. A presidential executive order forbids classifying records to “prevent embarrassment” or “conceal violations of law.” “If there is significant doubt about the need to classify information,” the order continues, “it shall not be classified.”

Meanwhile, the bipartisan UAP Disclosure Act, a landmark bill that once passed the Senate, would establish a new declassification guide for UAP. An amendment to the defense bill, the bipartisan UAP Disclosure Act, if enacted, would establish a comprehensive framework to shepherd disclosure. I hope Congress passes both pieces of legislation.

But legislation is not the only tool. This is why the UAP Disclosure Fund, a nonprofit organization where I am the board chair, is taking action. We are filing a battery of requests under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain UAP records from the government. If necessary, we will litigate these requests in federal court.

These requests include those for records the government acknowledges exist but has not released.

For example, according to a now-public memorandum entitled “Flying Discs” housed in the National Archives, in 1948 the Air Force ordered round-the-clock fighters equipped with “gun camera, and such armament as deemed advisable, in order to secure photographs” of these phenomena. Where are these photographs?

We are also calling for more recent reports that can be released without compromising sensitive technologies and documents that could reveal how UAP data has been analyzed — or suppressed.

We need progress now. In a democracy, public debate makes better policy, but that isn’t happening when it comes to UAP. If some of these objects are foreign surveillance platforms, every moment of undue secrecy weakens our defense. If they represent natural phenomena, understanding them is critical to aviation safety. If they represent other phenomena we do not yet understand, disclosure is the first step toward serious scientific study.

Transparency is not just a virtue — it’s a necessity. Withholding information also fuels conspiracy theories and cynicism, undermining faith in our institutions. When Congress and the public struggle to pry even basic answers from the Pentagon, what message does that send to the American people?

This isn’t about chasing sensational headlines. It’s about an informed citizenry and honest government. With thoughtful transparency and rigorous investigation, we can begin to understand these phenomena — and restore the trust that secrecy has squandered.

Christopher Mellon is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence and chairman of the board of the UAP Disclosure Fund.

I am excited and honored to be named Chairman of the Board of Directors of the UAP Disclosure Fund. It is hard to imagine a foundation with a more exciting or important mission. Thankfully, we have a hard-working team of accomplished individuals bonded by keen curiosity, intellectual rigor, and a firm belief that excessive secrecy is contrary to our democratic traditions and national security interests. It is my hope that, going forward, our work will prove to be of continuing value not only to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, but also to the vitally important House and Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees. We believe we can also be of great assistance in supplementing information on Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) provided to these committees by the Executive Branch. We have a variety of specific suggestions for improving surveillance of U.S. airspace and also for improving DoD and IC information sharing with AARO and Congress.

From our side, the UAPDF Board of Directors concurs that no member of our organization will make any public claims regarding UAP without carefully and explicitly delineating what is based on first-hand knowledge versus opinion or belief. Further, we will identify our sources of information whenever possible. In short, we intend to be as clear and transparent in our practices as we hope and expect the government itself to be with Congress and the American people.

Occasionally, to protect the privacy rights of sensitive sources or to avoid violating laws involving classified information, we will meet behind closed doors with Congressional committees or Executive Branch organizations. On the occasions when this occurs, it will always be to advance the goal of bringing the truth to light for the American public. In terms of my own views regarding the public interest and allegations that the U.S. government possesses off-world technology, I would refer those interested here.

Tactical Reporting, Strategic Silence

Since Congress established AARO in 2022, over 1,200 official new UAP reports have been submitted to AARO. This represents great progress, but the frequency of these “tactical” reports makes it hard to understand the near-total absence of UAP reporting from the massive radar and space surveillance systems operated by the U.S. military and Intelligence Community. The examples below should help Congress and the public better appreciate the disconnect between tactical UAP reporting, primarily from military personnel aboard ships and aircraft, and what appears to be an embargo on UAP reporting to AARO and Congress from America’s massive aerospace monitoring systems.

As I have described elsewhere, a few examples include the Space Fence, NORAD’s Solid-State Phased Array Radars (SSPAR), the Global Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance System (GEODSS), the Space-Based Infrared Monitoring System (SBIRS), the Global Infrasound Monitoring System, and the Navy’s Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS), among others. As the 2024 AARO report acknowledges, “During the reporting period, AARO did not receive any UAP reports collected through national GEOINT, SIGINT, or MASINT platforms.” It is not that we should expect routine UAP detection from all these systems. Still, the total absence of reporting from national systems, while tactical radars and other sensors routinely detect and report UAP, raises serious questions about support for AARO and compliance with Congressional UAP reporting requirements.

What is the basis for thinking UAP-related information from these systems is not being shared with AARO or Congress?

1. Attempted Air Force Intercepts of UAP

Given the current lack of transparency, we don’t know how often this occurs, but the Air Force does, with some frequency, detect UAP and launch fighter aircraft to intercept them. I know this from interviewing retired NORAD watch officers and pilots, in addition to reviewing FOIA documents in the collections of civilian UAP research organizations. Indeed, the size, power, and range of U.S. aerospace monitoring systems guarantee that these systems will detect anomalies from time to time. Regrettably, neither AARO nor Congress is notified of these air intercept incidents, despite their great potential significance. I understand that AARO has learned about some of these incidents, but long after the fact, making it difficult to locate the pilots and impossible to recover fighter sensor data.

For example, on October 25, 2018, two F-15s based in Portland Oregon were scrambled in an attempt to intercept a fast, high-flying unidentified object that had penetrated U.S. airspace from the Pacific. I checked with AARO and confirmed that the Air Force failed to submit a report about this incident. Another case involving an even more anomalous object came to light in November 2023 when someone in the Air Force made a “protected disclosure” to their local Representative, former Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL). This intriguing case involved an Air Force fighter intercept of one of 4 objects detected hovering in a diamond-shaped formation off the coast of Florida. The UAP reportedly interfered with the fighter’s onboard sensor systems, a pattern observed on numerous other occasions, including the famous Nimitz incident. The object also had a bizarre, bulky configuration, reminding the pilot of a lunar lander. Both cases came to light by chance; the first was due to an alert reporter who learned from FAA sources of the incident over Oregon, and the latter was due to a rare “protected disclosure.”

These and other inadvertently disclosed cases help confirm that the Air Force detects and attempts to intercept UAP despite its historic denials regarding UAP detection. In that regard, I was shocked to learn that in the first unclassified report on UAP incidents submitted to Congress in June 2021, the Air Force failed to provide a single instance of a UAP encounter from 2004 through at least 2019.

In speaking with government officials, I’ve learned the Air Force still does not share attempted UAP intercepts with AARO or Congress even when an anomalous object is clearly involved, as was the case with the objects described in the protected disclosure to the office of then-Representative Gaetz in 2023. Although AARO sometimes learns of these incidents after the fact, it is typically too late to obtain aircraft sensor data or easily locate and interview the pilots. Hence, due to shoddy communications and lack of compliance with Congressional notification requirements, neither Congress nor AARO know whether these intrusions are rare or commonplace. Congress, therefore, cannot assess NORAD detection and intercept capabilities or evaluate the adequacy of U.S. air defenses. Are such incidents rare or commonplace? Is there a pattern pointing to a common source of these intrusions? Do any of these cases indicate aerospace capabilities that exceed those of the U.S. military?

Hopefully, once the oversight committees become aware of this issue, they will agree that withholding this important data is an inappropriate and unacceptable violation of current requirements for timely notification of all UAP incidents to AARO. Further, in light of the Chinese balloon incident, and the growing number of UAS/UAP intrusions over U.S. military bases at home and abroad, Congress should request a detailed report on attempted fighter intercepts of UAP. This can help Congress place the Chinese spy balloon, as well as intrusions over Langley AFB in late 2023 and similar incidents, into a more meaningful context. AARO and Congress both deserve to have the full benefit of any UAP data gleaned by NORAD radar sensor systems and interceptors.

Summary & Recommendation:

Critical NORAD intercept data that could provide important insights regarding the effectiveness of U.S. air defenses is not reaching AARO or Congress. Therefore, I suggest Congress request a report from NORAD or NORTHCOM on attempted fighter intercepts dating back to 2004 to align with other UAP data already requested and provided to Congress. Additionally, Congress should require NORAD to promptly inform AARO of all attempted intercepts going forward. These simple steps will help to ensure that critical UAP and air defense data is not lost. This can be done without costing taxpayers a penny. The impact could be substantial if this requirement opens a new window on violations of U.S. airspace and the ability of U.S. air defenses to engage these unidentified objects.

2. National Air and Space Monitoring Systems

AARO’s Fiscal Year 2024 Consolidated Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena identifies 49 cases of UAP that appeared to be operating in space. However, the AARO report is quick to point out that all of these reports came from pilots or ground observers looking up into the night sky. Once again, something seems amiss regarding the mismatch between national and tactical military surveillance. Why is it that none of America’s unparalleled space surveillance systems captured and reported what these pilots observed? Did these systems actually fail to capture any data, or is this another case, like the NORAD intercepts, in which the information is simply not being shared with AARO or Congress? Alternatively, if the pilots and ground observers were simply mistaken, cross referencing with these systems could help confirm that as well.

For example, why did the Ground-Based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance System (GEODSS) not notify AARO of any of the lights reported by commercial airline pilots high above the Pacific last year? As AARO notes in its own report, these lights appeared to be objects operating above the so-called Kármán line, officially marking the boundary between Earth and space, 100 kilometers above the Earth. GEODSS’ telescopes are pointed at the sky all night long, recording lights (mostly satellites) moving against the background of the stars. It is not clear why so many pilots are reporting bright, maneuvering lights at extremely high altitudes, yet none of the GEODSS systems monitoring the same night skies reported any UAP.

It is not as though UAP detection by GEODSS is unprecedented. Many years ago, I asked a colleague visiting the Maui GEODSS site to inquire if the system had recorded anything ‘unusual’ in the night skies lately. Sure enough, just a month or so earlier, the system recorded what appeared to be 4–5 bright objects traveling parallel to the horizon. They appeared to be too slow and level to be meteors but too fast, high, hot, and bright for conventional aircraft. Site personnel had no idea what the objects were and, in those days, had no incentive to acknowledge or report the data. That incident occurred in the 1990s, when the GEODSS system was far less capable than it is today. However, that random experience makes it difficult to believe that, in all the years since, none of the U.S. GEODSS sites have detected anomalies. Again, this seems more likely to be a failure of reporting.

GEODSS is hardly the only space surveillance system failing to report anomalies. As noted above, AARO states in its latest report that it “did not receive any UAP reports collected through national GEOINT, SIGINT, or MASINT platforms.” The lack of UAP reporting from NORAD and all of these national systems stands in stark contrast to the hundreds of UAP being reported annually by military personnel manning military ships and aircraft. I do not believe there have been any UAP reports from the Navy’s global submarine monitoring system either, despite multiple historical instances of UAP observed entering or departing the ocean and occasional reports from personnel serving aboard U.S. Navy submarines.

Although I have alluded to it above, this incredible disconnect between Navy and Air Force UAP reporting is so significant it warrants a bit of additional elaboration. Again, in the first public UAP report delivered to Congress, 144 military UAP incidents were identified from 2004 through 2021. The Navy submitted all but a handful of these UAP incidents, despite the Air Force’s responsibility for U.S. air defense, Air Force control of virtually all air defense systems, and Air Force command of NORAD and its massive sensor network. The Air Force also has far more aircraft than the Navy, and its F-22 and F-35 aircraft have far more capable sensor systems than U.S. Navy F-18s. Air Force AWACS aircraft surpass their Navy counterparts in number and capability. There have been many cases where Air Force F-22 fighters, using the same training ranges as Navy F-18 fighters, failed to report the UAP detected by the Navy aircraft despite superior sensor systems. In sum, there seems to be a major bottleneck in Air Force UAP reporting. Given the Air Force’s dominant control of strategic air defense systems, this is a significant problem.

NORAD admits it tracks thousands of “uncorrelated targets” each year; are we expected to accept that none are potentially UAP? Why do radars aboard Navy ships operating off the East and West coasts sometimes detect and report UAP (as in the case of the 2004 Nimitz incident), while the far more extensive and powerful NORAD radars covering these same areas fail to report any UAP to AARO or Congress? I hope I am wrong, but it is my understanding that AARO has not received a single UAP report from NORAD’s massive sensor network, the GEODSS system, the Space Fence, or any of the military’s other strategic air and space surveillance systems. In light of what we know from declassified documents and retired military personnel, as well as the size, range, power, and vast areas continuously monitored by national systems such as the Solid State Phased Array Radar Network (SSPAR), the prospect that these systems never detect anomalies is utterly implausible.

These reporting failures must therefore be the result of one or more of the following:

● These systems are not functioning properly.

● They are detecting UAP, but, as with the Chinese balloon, outdated filters are preventing these systems from displaying UAP data because the objects do not match known threat profiles.

● Air Force personnel are unwilling to acknowledge and report what they observe due to prevailing stigmas and fear of the impact on promotions.

● The data is being placed into a highly classified compartment that is not shared with AARO or Congress.

I would hope this situation will not be considered acceptable to the new Administration, Congress, or AARO. I encourage the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to take a hard look at the performance and value of these expensive systems. Perhaps they will have ideas for improving system performance and/or saving taxpayer funds.

Recommendations:

I suggest Congress request a report from the DoD or IC Inspector Generals regarding the performance and effectiveness of U.S. national aerospace monitoring systems in light of their repeated failure to report UAP and UAS incursions into restricted military airspace. Additionally, AARO should be directed to prepare and maintain a list or spreadsheet, made available to the oversight committees, identifying all major aerospace surveillance systems and the number of UAP reports they have contributed. This list should include the date when each program manager acknowledged their obligation to report all UAP data to AARO. This will help Congress and AARO assess the value of different collection systems for tracking UAP and ensure that all program managers are aware of their responsibility to report UAP to AARO. I would not be surprised if GEODSS site managers, for example, have not even been notified of their obligation to report UAP to AARO.

3) UAP and Signals Intelligence

I was thrilled–and surprised–when AARO publicly acknowledged the detection of signals emitted by UAP. Specifically, AARO’s reporting indicates that signals emitted from UAP have been detected in the 1–3 GHz and 8–12 GHz frequency ranges. This is fascinating and warrants an assessment for Congress prepared by the National Security Agency (NSA). Were these radar emissions, communication signals, or something else? Were the signals encrypted? If so, was the encryption a known commercial or military protocol? The NSA is the Western world’s leader in signals analysis, and its assessment should be sought and made available to Congress. The answers to these questions might help answer pressing questions about the sources, capabilities, and functions of these objects.

Recommendations:

If the NSA has not already evaluated these signals, they should begin doing so as soon as possible. Given the potential importance of the insights the NSA may glean, Congress should insist on a thorough assessment and prompt notification of the results.

4). A Meaningful History of UAP and the U.S. Government

In 2023, Congress directed AARO to investigate claims that the U.S. government has recovered advanced non-human technology. It also requested a ‘History of the U.S. Government and UAP.’ Unfortunately, neither effort produced satisfactory results.

Former AARO Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick denies that any of the recent whistleblowers’ claims regarding recovered off-world technology have merit. However, it remains unclear what efforts he made to assess these claims. Was anything done beyond placing calls to CIA and USAF liaisons? For their part, many whistleblowers assert that the witness names they provided were not contacted and that those interviewing them appeared complacent and uninterested in investigating their claims.

Additionally, as I have explained in detail elsewhere, AARO responded to Congress’s request for a historical report on the U.S. government’s involvement with UAP by providing a summary of mostly controversial or discredited past government reports on UAP. The resulting document provided to Congress was misleading and rife with errors and omissions, and there appeared to be little effort to undertake any original historical research.

Recommendations:

I therefore propose Congress request a truly unprecedented, credible, and historic UAP document—one that has the potential to authoritatively resolve claims regarding recovered alien technology. Specifically, Congress should request an oral history regarding UAP and the U.S. government.

The interviews should include current and former USAF Chiefs of Staff, Commanders of NORAD, Directors of the CIA and its Office of Science and Technology, Security Directors for Area 51 and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, as well as current and former Secretaries of the Air Force, among others. Former Presidents could be included. The military employs professional historians with security clearances who could conduct the interviews in secure environments. Alternatively, the DoD or IC Inspector General (IG) could oversee and conduct the interviews.

An oral history report of this kind would have unprecedented historical value. If an alien technology program exists, it seems inevitable that some of these former senior officials would be willing to discuss what they know in a lawful and secure setting. This approach could help set the record straight on a variety of important UAP claims without requiring Congress to undertake its own independent UAP investigation, which is highly unlikely at this time.

Additionally, an oral history would spare whistleblowers the risks involved in coming forward while preventing AARO from being caught in a potential conflict of interest between its obligations to Congress and its responsibilities to the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence. In sum, this approach is simple, inexpensive, viable, and would almost certainly have unique and lasting historical value, unlike AARO’s recent report on the History of UAP and the U.S. government.

Conclusion

It is disappointing, but not surprising, to find strong indications of noncompliance with the congressional mandate requiring all UAP information to be promptly shared with AARO. However, such growing pains are commonplace when efforts are made by Congress, or for that matter the White House itself, to reorganize elements of the Executive Branch.

Congress can assist itself, AARO, and, hopefully, the public and scientific communities by requesting the data identified above. Notably, none of these recommendations require an appropriation or additional funding. Yet, the data requested would provide Congress with a far better understanding of the effectiveness of U.S. air defenses while helping to ensure that UAP information is shared with AARO in a timely manner, as required by law.

These urgent and important national security issues require Congress to remain vigilant and insist on compliance. I believe that with this information in hand, Congress will be in a far better position to exercise its vital constitutional duty to “…raise and support Armies, …provide and maintain a Navy, …and to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.”

At the same time, a new Administration brings with it an opportunity for significant changes from within the Executive Branch. The President’s new team could implement most of the recommendations identified above without waiting for Congress.

Doing so would be a strong step toward addressing one of the most potent and far-reaching claims of all time involving government cover-ups and conspiracy.

At the same time, it would shed much needed light on U.S. air defense capabilities in an era of explosively increasing potential threats from new technologies ranging from drones to hypersonic vehicles to UAP.

Dedication: The author would like to dedicate this article to U.S. Senators Mike Rounds, Charles Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Marco Rubio, and members of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability for bravely placing national security above the inappropriate stigma that has historically prevented Congress from investigating the UAP issue.

[Information discussed in this article was cleared for open publication by the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR) on January 31, 2025.]

There is a recurring pattern regarding UAP reporting that appeared again recently when a new proposed logo for the Director of National Intelligence’s Aviation sub-group (NIM-A) appeared on the web. Because it had a flying saucer on it, UAP commentators naively made much of it, trying to read non-existent tea leaves. Predictably, the speculation proved for naught when it was revealed this was nothing more than a draft prepared by a low-level government employee. Nobody at a senior level had even seen, much less approved, the logo. In fact, the few people at DoD and the IC involved with the UAP issue were as surprised as anyone when this appeared on social media.

I see this pattern recur over and over, in which some minor issue emerges and is greatly misconstrued. Take, for example, the recent response to a FOIA request from the Navy indicating that a requested UAP video is classified and therefore cannot be released. This was in fact nothing new; that policy had been in place since around 2019 at least, but the public was not aware and this did not come through in the press reporting, so immediately all manner of misinformed speculation emerged about what this “new” development means when in fact there is nothing new and it was not a change of policy.

In another case not too long ago, DIA released documents related to the AAWSAP program and UAP, then re-jiggered the categorization of the documents to something other than UAP after the press started raising questions and reporting on the hapless DIA handling of the issue. Again, low-level employees doing merely their jobs took actions that came to the attention of the press, forcing mid-level management to engage, but this again had absolutely nothing to do with any high-level UAP policies or actions. Just a bit of sloppy bureaucracy.

The natural tendency in each case was for UAP observers to think these occurrences were indications of the views of people at the top or part of some coherent plan involving management of the UAP issue. In fact, each of these cases demonstrate the opposite: There is little if any coherent management of the UAP issue at high levels! It is only a slight exaggeration to say nobody at high levels of the DoD or the IC has time to even consider the UAP issue. Anyone who doubts that is out of touch with the reality of life for senior DoD and IC officials who are urgently fighting fires regarding Ukraine and Taiwan; crashing on responses to requests from Capitol Hill; racing to prepare for White House meetings and major press conferences and a thousand other things more urgent than the UAP issue. The only reason anyone at DoD or the IC pays any attention to the UAP issue at all is because Congress is compelling these massive organizations to begin to engage. Always bear in mind that, on a day to day basis, the UAP issue is totally irrelevant for senior U.S. government officials. As the Secretary of the Air Force recently said, conveying the views of many at DoD, “I’ve got real threats to worry about.” In short, the idea that senior officials have time to fuss over trivia like a draft DNI logo is absurd. Those reporting on the UAP issue should know better than to think otherwise.

This naïveté relates to the most common misconception outsiders have of how DoD and the USG work. There is no central rational mind at work orchestrating the UAP topic or most other issues; the sprawling national security apparatus contains millions of people in scores of barely connected organizations. This is only a rational actor model in rare and unusual circumstances; think instead of a massive feudal monarchy with independent fiefdoms and centers of power, each making independent decisions, vying with one another for access, influence, and resources. The SecDef’s span of control over some 40 agencies and the services and commands is overwhelming and only the most salient issues are reconciled at the top. That does not include logos or how to handle individual FOIA requests or display DIA documents.

For those who may be interested, one of the best expositions of how the massive national security apparatus works in practice is provided by Essence of Decision, Harvard Professor Graham Allison’s dissection of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As he demonstrates, wildly conflicting advice and institutional prerogatives came into play, presenting the young President with highly dysfunctional and nearly disastrous and inconsistent advice (this has improved however as a result of the Goldwater-Nichols Act reforms overhauling the JCS). That friction and disarray is far more the norm than the exception.

Indeed, the Pentagon is often referred to as “the five-sided nuthouse” by people who work in the trenches there, confronted daily with the realities of the often inconsistent and incoherent bureaucracy.

So, the next time some item appears in the press regarding UAP and the USG, try to resist the temptation to read too much into it. Most likely it will be nothing more than another random item the press or social media has identified that reflects a very local decision by someone at a low level of the leviathan. You then won’t be disappointed or surprised when it turns out to be just another random, trivial bureaucratic artifact.

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SPACE:

Perhaps the most important issue to consider for Tuesday’s hearing is the question of UAP in space. DoD and the DNI have acknowledged UAP in the atmosphere and even the ocean, but what about space? The USAF is trying to avoid the issue altogether by employing the highly pedantic argument that because ‘UAP’ references ‘aerial phenomena,’ they have no obligation to include space-based trackings in their UAP reporting. (I agree the term ‘UAP’ is linguistically problematic and should perhaps be changed eventually, but this doesn't excuse the Air Force’s behavior). If members can confirm UAP in space, they’ll make history and help to eliminate an entire category of potential explanations having to do with atmospheric phenomena, Chinese lanterns, civilian drones, etc.

The witnesses may say something to the effect of: “Well, we track tens of thousands of objects in space every day, mostly unidentified space debris and clutter.” Sure, but what about unidentified objects that maneuver and appear to be under intelligent control or are otherwise agential? Objects that vertically ascend or descend from orbit or cislunar space? If members can establish that this is not just an atmospheric and oceanic issue, but also manifests in the space domain as well, they will move the ball closer to the goal line by narrowing the range of possible explanations.

We understand that in the Nimitz case and others, UAP were detected descending from above 80,000 ft. Did the massive space surveillance radar at nearby Beale AFB not detect these objects along with the USS Princeton? If not, why not? More broadly, what about the innumerable number of cases reportedly involving objects seen shooting straight up and out of sight at incredible, potentially hypersonic speeds? It is hard to believe that with all this activity in the upper atmosphere, nothing has been observed in space that is equally mysterious in terms of origins and capabilities. With that in mind, here are some questions I hope come up on Tuesday:

Questions:

• Does the Defense Department have any information at any level of classification regarding unidentified objects entering and/or leaving the Earth’s atmosphere that appear to be intelligently controlled? How many such reports are there?

• Likewise, does the Defense Department have any information at any level of classification regarding the presence of unidentified objects in orbit or anywhere in space that appear to be intelligently controlled or designed? If so, how many reports are there?

• Can we safely assume that the next UAP report to Congress will include all pertinent UAP cases regardless of location?

• Have any spatial, temporal, or phenomenological UAP patterns been identified?

TRANSPARENCY:

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Another meaty issue involves government transparency regarding UAP. In that regard, even as DNI Haines was publicly acknowledging this winter that our government is guilty of over-classification, the new UAP Task Force created a classification guide that seems to make anything and everything UAP-related classified! (For a fuller discussion see this Hill article.)

One of Tuesday's witnesses, Mr. Bray, the Deputy Director for Naval Intelligence, should be able to comment authoritatively as officials under his purview created the UAP classification guide.

Questions:

• The DoD briefing guide described in last year’s unclassified UAP report states: “Except for its existence, and the mission/purpose, virtually everything else about the UAPTF is classified, per the signed Security Classification Guide.” Does this mean that, going forward, UAP videos such as those provided to the New York Times would be classified? A formal OSI investigation confirmed that neither of the videos supplied to the NYT caused any damage to national security, so how can we justify classifying similar videos in the future?

• There are many reports of DoD personnel being asked to sign non-disclosure agreements in the wake of UAP sightings. Should Congress enact legislation to ensure that such NDAs are not restricting the provision of pertinent UAP information to the AOIMSG or Congress?

ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES:

There remains a large gap between the intent of Congress and the actions of the Pentagon on organizational issues. This merits some serious discussion. The Administration seems to envisage the AOIMSG as a small office that compiles reports, conducts briefings, and seemingly little else. To better understand the strengths or weaknesses of the Pentagon plan, I recommend asking about the pattern of “drones'' targeting Navy warships as a test case:

As we have recently seen in Ukraine and in the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, drones can be devastatingly effective. This is concerning as we’ve had a sustained pattern of drones swarming and ferreting U.S. warships (e.g. the USS Russell, USS Kearsarge, etc.) as well as the THAAD missile site in Guam and a nuclear reactor in California. Yet, there appears to be little effort being made to identify the origin of these “drones,” notwithstanding the clear vulnerability of U.S. Navy warships. If confirmed through questioning, the lack of a meaningful plan to determine the origin of these vehicles would demonstrate the larger problem of a lack of accountability and ownership and high-level advocacy when it comes to the UAP issue. I think members will find it mostly business as usual in the Pentagon and no major initiatives to determine the origin or capabilities of these “drones.”

Questions:

• Who owns the urgent mission of getting to the bottom of these ‘drone’ swarms plaguing our ships and bases and what are they doing about it?

• Is the AOIMSG able to effectively lead interagency efforts of this kind?

• The DNI’s preliminary assessment of the UAP issue states in bold letters: “EXPLAINING UAP WILL REQUIRE ANALYTIC, COLLECTION AND RESOURCE INVESTMENT.” Has the Administration identified the investments required to explain UAP? What are the most helpful things Congress can do to facilitate improved collection and analysis?

FOOT-DRAGGING BY THE USAF:

This is a significant and complex problem. For an extensive discussion and earlier draft questions, see this article I wrote in February. That being said, here are some questions worth asking:

Questions:

• Which USAF commands or component organizations (e.g. SSPARS, Space Fence, NORAD, the Global Infrasound Network, etc.) were contacted by the USAF and consulted in advance of its submission of UAP DATA to the UAP Task Force? Have any of the organizations contacted failed to respond? Are they denying knowledge of UAP incidents from 2004 through 2021?

• The Preliminary Assessment report states that “the USAF began a six-month pilot program in November 2020 to collect in the most likely areas to encounter UAP and is evaluating how to normalize future collection, reporting, and analysis across the entire Air Force.” Has this process concluded? If so, what was the conclusion? If not, what steps is the Air Force taking to ensure that this process remains accountable and transparent to Congress?

• Some of the Air Force’s oversight committees have been advised that last year the Air Force warned its personnel not to approach the UAP Task Force without prior approval. There are also reports that individuals participating in a classified DoD chat room devoted to UAP issues were subsequently interviewed by USAF OSI officers who warned them against further participation. Are these reports accurate? If so, why has the USAF been interfering with these important information-sharing efforts?

• Is there a problem with the F-22 sensor system? If not, how is it possible that Navy F-18-family fighters with inferior sensors were routinely detecting UAP off the East Coast of the U.S. for years while USAF F-22s operating in the same training areas did not? If it was simply a matter of Air Force pilots’ fear of retribution, what does that tell us about Air Force culture, and what are you going to do going forward to encourage rather than punish openness and vigilance?

• Furthermore, we know from documents released by the Canadian government that there have been a number of UAP encounters involving Canadian NORAD components. Again, those reports do not seem to have been incorporated in the report to Congress last June. How many reports from NORAD were included in the 144 cases shared with Congress?

• Data obtained through FOIA requests submitted by Canadian citizens reveals numerous incidents in which NORAD was notified of Canadian military UAP reports. Were these incidents shared with the UAP Task Force and if not, why not?

• There is extensive documentation from FOIA sources and retired USAF officers regarding UAP incidents at or near USAF ICBM and SAC nuclear weapons facilities. Does the USAF possess any information indicating that unidentified aerial objects have ever interfered with U.S. nuclear command and control capabilities?

• How many reports did the USAF contribute out of the total of 144 UAP incidents identified last year in the DNI’s Preliminary Assessment of the UAP phenomenon? The unclassified report suggests more USAF information is pending. What is causing the USAF's delay in providing pertinent UAP information?

• There are reports that USAF personnel obtained the AEGIS radar data from the USS Princeton shortly after a series of UAP contacts in November 2004. Reportedly, the missing USS Princeton radar data was in the possession of USAF personnel at Langley Air Force Base. What knowledge does the USAF have regarding the location or disposition of the USS Princeton radar data from its UAP encounters in 2004? Does the Air Force know the whereabouts of the missing USS Princeton deck logs from November 2004?

• The DNI identified 144 UAP incidents from 2004 until 2021 in the Preliminary Assessment provided to Congress; most of these reports came from the Navy. During this same period, commercial pilots reported hundreds of incidents involving UAP and civilian UAP organizations received tens of thousands of UAP reports. Yet, all these cases are only a small fraction of the likely total since an estimated 90% or more of all civilian and military UAP sightings go unreported. In light of these numbers, and the vast extent of the Air Force’s air and space surveillance capabilities, the number of USAF incidents from 2004 to 2021 should be extensive. When can Congress expect a proper accounting?

• Claims abound concerning the USAF’s possession of materials that might definitively answer the question of whether a non-human civilization has found Earth. That would likely be the most tightly held secret in our government. What is your response to such claims? Perhaps that information is deemed so sensitive you are yourselves unaware or enjoined from sharing it with the Congressional Oversight Committees, so here is a broader question: Are you confident that we have sufficient processes in place to ensure that, at a minimum, any sitting President, Secretary of Defense or DNI would be aware of such information or made promptly aware if such information came to light? What about Congress?

• In 2015, the Air Force released a document indicating an average of 1,800 unidentified “tracks of interest” per year. Yet, the UAP report submitted to Congress last June only identified 144 UAP incidents from 2004 through 2021. Are we supposed to believe that the USAF subsequently found explanations for all 9,000 UAP during this five-year period, and each and every one of the thousands that have occurred since 2015?

I am writing as an admirer and supporter who deeply shares your concerns about the UAP issue.

In 2017, I was shocked to learn that U.S. Navy pilots had been encountering UAP in restricted U.S. airspace on a regular basis and nobody was reporting it much less doing anything about it. Senior DoD and intelligence officials, Congress, and the American public were all totally unaware.

I therefore worked with Lue Elizondo of the USDI staff to try to get this extraordinary information to Secretary Mattis. We knew that almost anyone below that level would likely shunt the issue aside and quash if we revealed it to them.

After a number of months, we realized we were not going to be able to inform Secretary Mattis. After some deliberation, we decided this was simply too important to ignore. Lue resigned from OSD in protest and shortly thereafter I delivered two authentic but unclassified DoD UAP videos to the New York Times. Another video I provided later accompanied an op-ed I wrote on UAP for the Washington Post. Since that time, Lue and I have done a History Channel TV docuseries, 60 Minutes, and innumerable interviews to help raise awareness.

I was therefore thrilled when I heard you had offered an amendment to establish a permanent DoD focal point for the UAP issue. My excitement grew further when I read the Gillibrand amendment. As a former SASC, SSCI, and OSD staffer, and one of the two people most responsible for alerting Congress, I hope that you will consider the following observations:

• There is no contradiction between your bill’s language and Senator Gillibrand’s amendment. The Gillibrand amendment leaves it to the Administration to decide where this new capability will reside.

• Regardless of the new office location, many Gillibrand amendment provisions are critical if we are to make headway understanding this phenomenon. The Gillibrand amendment:

• Authorizes already appropriated space defense and intelligence funds to be used for UAP-related activities. Hence, while OSD continues ineffectually shuffling paper as they have been for years, action-oriented organizations with funding, contracting authority, and technical expertise can begin working. Is the OSD staff going to identify the most telling UAP signatures for DoD and IC systems to search for? Clearly not, that expertise resides in organizations like NRO and the SSDP. This authority gives DoD and its components much-needed flexibility so they don’t have to wait another year to get moving.

• Requires the development and implementation of a plan for collection and analysis. The current approach is equivalent to saying, “Let’s monitor Chinese weapons development by ensuring any random detection of Chinese missiles or aircraft is duly reported." This is obviously a passive, ineffectual approach. At a minimum, Congress should require any successor to the UAP Task Force to develop the science and collection and analysis plans called for by the Gillibrand amendment. That simply needs to be done.

• The Gillibrand amendment would maintain the requirement for unclassified UAP reporting, a huge plus for transparency and accountability. It would be shameful to retreat from the recent progress that has been made in providing sunlight and transparency for the taxpayer. Visibility ensures accountability.

• The Gillibrand amendment builds bridges to the scientific community. This is a win-win for science and DoD.

• It directs the UAP Task Force or its successor to examine closely related technical issues such as non-combustion propulsion and the physical effects that can result from close proximity exposure to UAP. These efforts can contribute substantially to our understanding of the phenomenon.

Conclusion:

As a former OSD staffer myself, I'm shocked that the DepSecDef would assign the UAP function to an oversight staff with no UAP funding, line authority, contracting, command or technical capabilities. Indeed, the inability of USDI to engage effectively on the UAP issue is why so little has changed or been accomplished since 2004.

However, this is a great opportunity for you to lead, to incorporate the best of the Gillibrand amendment, and gather the Senate behind you with legislation that can ensure genuine progress and possibly an enormous breakthrough in the months and years ahead.

Many thanks for your leadership and your consideration of my views. Please do not hesitate to contact me at any time.

Sincerely and respectfully,

Christopher K. Mellon

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Although accurate and timely Congressional notification of UAP activity is essential, it is also grossly inadequate if we want to determine UAP origin, capability or intent. Yet, aside from the Gillibrand Amendment, current legislative language seems almost exclusively focused on the issue of Congressional reporting. Imagine if our assessment of Chinese and Russian hypersonic programs was limited to reporting chance encounters with these platforms? I think we can all agree that would hardly suffice. The Gillibrand Amendment’s mandate for a collection and analysis plan is therefore essential if we are going to make serious headway in FY 2022. The amendment also properly requires a science plan to evaluate observed propulsion capabilities that may in some cases surpass anything presently available to the U.S. armed forces. This is also necessary to help us better understand the phenomenon. Scientific investigation will also be necessary should we later need to adopt this technology ourselves. Building bridges to the civilian scientific community, as the amendment proposes to do with an Advisory Panel, is another way to foster collaboration and leverage available scientific talent and expertise.

Another critical feature of the Gillibrand Amendment is the language explicitly approving the use of funds authorized and appropriated for space defense and/or intelligence purposes for UAP collection and analysis. Unfortunately, even though there is a pressing requirement to determine who is violating U.S. military airspace, some organizations charged with aerospace defense and intelligence missions are presently afraid to act for fear that a member of a Congress or a committee alleges misuse of funds if the words “UAP” do not explicitly appear in the Congressional language providing their funding. This provision would therefore eliminate a serious impediment for those eager to engage as well as an excuse for those resisting change.

Crucially, the amendment also recognizes the need to engage “line organizations” (organizations that actually execute programs) as opposed to trying to dump all responsibility to oversight and policy organizations. The amendment also attacks the traditional USG stovepipe problem as never before; not only helping get DoD and the IC on the same page, but also recognizing the need to collaborate with organizations like the FAA and NASA that have overlapping responsibilities. Thinking outside the narrow box of traditional jurisdictions is valuable and all too rare. Reading the Gillibrand Amendment, one might even infer that the author expects all U.S. government organizations to act as though they are playing on the same team! The amendment has other notable benefits as well, including clarifying the definition of UAP to ensure underwater and trans-medium craft are within the UAP mission purview.

Speaking of coordination, if there are conflicts between the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) and Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI) language they are not apparent to me. The National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) should be in the loop regardless of their position in the final UAP structure, so the SSCI language on that topic is not a problem. Rumor has it that both committees now also support both classified and unclassified annual UAP reports. A hearty congratulations to the members and staff of both committees for doing more than paying lip service to the antique idea of transparency in government and an informed electorate.

Notably, although the Gillibrand Amendment insists on the development of a collection and analysis program as well as a science plan, it nevertheless provides the SECDEF and DNI the opportunity to determine the final UAP organizational construct. However, if the Administration does not make good use of that opportunity, Congress should not hesitate to take additional steps going forward. I had the privilege of working on the Goldwater-Nichols Act many years ago, as well as the Cohen-Nunn bill that established the U.S. Special Operations Command. I recall the process fondly because members of both sides worked through months of hearings and mark-ups and even a weekend offsite in a totally bipartisan manner. It was also inspiring to see the members investing so much time and effort notwithstanding an almost total lack of press or constituent interest. What I found most surprising as a naïve young staffer was the nearly unanimous and implacable opposition of every element of DoD to any change to the status quo regardless of the merits. It was all about defending turf. One member of the Joint Chiefs even went so far as to question the patriotism of the members of the Armed Services Committee for proposing reforms. Thankfully, members of Congress had the fortitude to insist on badly needed change and DoD and the nation are far better and safer for it.

It is public knowledge that I worked patiently for months with Lue Elizondo, the OSD official responsible for the UAP issue in 2017, to try to get this issue taken seriously within the department. It was only when that failed that Mr. Elizondo and I chose to stick our necks out by taking the UAP videos and the UAP issue to the press and to Congress. I hope the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees will again assert themselves, recognizing that although DoD and the IC are replete with smart and patriotic people, it is generally difficult if not impossible for that rigid and colossal structure to reorganize itself from within.

Indeed, Congress had to carefully monitor the implementation of the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the SOCOM bill and even enact additional directive legislation the following year to ensure effective implementation. That is precisely where we are at today with regard to the UAP issue. Absent continued firm direction from Congress progress on this challenging issue will be slow or non-existent. With the bipartisan collaboration we’re witnessing today in the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, there is increasing room for optimism that we will finally unwind the UAP enigma.

At the outset it is important to applaud this initiative on the part of Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona. After all, aerospace vehicles of unknown origin and capability are violating restricted U.S. military airspace on a recurring basis. While the reporting may be subject to collection biases, these vehicles seem to be especially interested in the activities of U.S. Navy ships and carrier strike groups, U.S. nuclear facilities, and DoD test ranges. Some could be next-generation Chinese or Russian drones capable of eluding U.S. air defenses. Notably, an unsophisticated guerrilla force in Yemen recently used relatively primitive drones to incapacitate 50% of Saudi Arabia’s oil refining capabilities in 2019, so this is not a trivial matter. That successful attack was achieved despite the fact that the Saudis have spent billions deploying some of the world’s most sophisticated air defense systems. Clearly, the threat of small, unmanned aircraft with concentrated intelligence and firepower capabilities needs to be taken seriously. Congratulations to Rep. Gallego for recognizing the national security significance of the UAP issue.

The language in the FY 2022 House Armed Services Committee bill indicates that the primary goal of the proposed new UAP office is to: “Synchronize and standardize the collection, reporting, and analysis of incidents regarding unidentified aerial phenomena across the Department of Defense." This is an important goal because there are still many shortcomings in UAP reporting procedures despite the efforts of the UAP Task Force. Among other things, there needs to be a full accounting of what systems were contacted by the services to collect data for the recent Congressional UAP report. Did the USAF contact the Space Fence organization or the Upgraded Early Warning Radar System (UEWR) or X-Band radar operators or the Global Infrasound Detection System etc.? If so, what responses were received? What pertinent systems or data were withheld due to classification (a serious and growing problem)?

Although vital, it is not enough to merely “standardize collection and analysis” if we want to determine the origin and capability of these craft or the intent of those controlling them. Standardized reporting would ensure that incidents are recorded regardless of the source, but that data will merely be the result of random incidents unless we work to develop an effective collection program. Passive reliance on UAP data collected from random encounters is not a plan commensurate with the potential risks to U.S. national security. Had we sought to track other breakthrough weapons or technology developments in that manner, we might still be wondering if the Russians or Chinese had developed ICBMs.

To make serious headway we need to do much more, including:

1). Identify telltale signatures associated with UAPs. This requires sophisticated technical analysis of existing data (e.g., radar, IR, optical, infrasonic etc.). Assessments of the propulsion technologies potentially used by these vehicles could also help to determine what distinctive UAP signatures to look for.

2). With that information, and a baseline review of the effectiveness of existing sensor systems vis-á-vis UAPs, we can determine which U.S. collection capabilities are best suited to detect and track UAPs.

3). Once that is determined, we can devise a collection strategy that efficiently leverages America’s vast array of technical sensor systems. Recognizing the many important intelligence requirements these collection systems are already supporting, it will have to be an efficient collection plan with minimal impact on other missions.

4). We should also apply AI and machine learning analysis to UAP data in the hope of gaining new insights and iteratively improving our collection activities.

5). Additionally, we should also use AI and machine learning technology to filter the large and growing volume of civilian UAP data. New UAP photos and videos are being submitted to private UAP organizations on a daily basis worldwide. Although civilian UAP reporting today has limited value if any for DoD, some of it is genuinely baffling and potentially useful if the authenticity can be established. A minimal investment would support an AI capability that winnowed the wheat from the chaff, thereby leveraging information collected by smartphone cameras around the world.

6). DoD and the Intelligence Community should also welcome and encourage mainstream scientific interest in the UAP issue. The Galileo Project, a purely civilian effort to study UAPs led by the former Chairman of the Harvard astronomy department, is evidence of this recent transformation. The many scientists belonging to the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies offer further proof of serious scientific interest in the UAP issue. In light of such interest, either Congress or the Executive Branch could establish a panel of cleared civilian engineers and scientists willing to advise and assist USG collection and analysis efforts. The panel could be formed under NASA auspices or those of DoD or the IC. Either way, there is ample precedent for such collaboration.

From even this brief assessment of next steps it should be clear that however well-intended, a small OSD UAP office lacking resources or authority is not the answer. Neither the UAP Task Force nor a small OSD office has the skill set and heft to effectively manage such a technically and bureaucratically complex undertaking. Indeed, a new OSD UAP office could have a pernicious effect if it led members of Congress to neglect the UAP issue afterward because they thought a small OSD office was sufficient to fix the UAP problem.

As a former OSD intelligence staffer, I can vouch for the fact that the mere establishment of a small OSD UAP office is unlikely to accomplish much. Only the most senior OSD staff have much leverage with the services and agencies and then only when they are clearly acting at the behest of the Secretary. The situation is difficult enough vis-á-vis the military services, but an OSD staffer’s influence with the intelligence agencies is even more tenuous since these organizations report to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) as well as the Secretary of Defense. Indeed, it is often difficult for even the Secretary of Defense to implement change across the department, especially where intelligence issues are concerned.

How would a small OSD office develop, implement and manage a multi-service and multi-agency collection program? Or initiate a contract to develop new algorithms for strategic radar systems to enable them to identify UAPs? Who would perform the UAP data analysis and identify the collection priorities? If the current UAP Task Force established by the Secretary of Defense is insufficient, what reason is there to believe a small OSD office would do any better? If it only had one or two personnel, like the original UAP Task Force, it would have a nearly full plate simply attending coordination meetings, reviewing the latest incident reports and briefing members of Congress and senior Executive Branch officials.

While it is true the UAP Task Force needs to be replaced by a more permanent solution, I suggest Congress allow the Secretary of Defense and DNI a chance to identify the best location for this function as they already have these issues under review at the direction of the Deputy Secretary of Defense. In the meantime, Congress should continue to insist on answers to key questions and place the responsibility where it belongs -- the only place where the authority currently exists to address these issues given the number of powerful organizations that need to be compelled to cooperate -- which, for now, is at the level of the Secretary of Defense and the DNI.

Sometimes the most effective thing Congress can do is simply to ask those in charge the right questions and use the power of the purse as needed to ensure that appropriate answers are provided. Congress should be asking: What data is required to assess the potential UAP threat and what is the plan for collecting and analyzing that data? What signatures and sensors are most useful for detecting and tracking UAPs? What would it cost to apply a different set of algorithms to our massive Solid State Phased Phased-Array (SSPAR) radars to ensure they have the ability to track emerging drone and UAP threats? Posing such questions helps to ensure accountability. It also helps to ensure that the principals in Congress, DoD and the IC remain engaged on the issue.

A generic problem associated with the House Armed Services Committee proposal to establish an OSD UAP office concerns the impact over time of Congressional organizational mandates. Every time Congress mandates another position on the OSD staff it further limits the ability of the Secretary of Defense to reorganize his staff in response to changing circumstances in the years ahead. Once Congress mandates establishment of an office it takes subsequent legislation to eliminate or modify the organization, always a lengthy and tedious process. It certainly could prove necessary to mandate an organizational change regarding the UAP issue, but it seems premature to do so before the Deputy Secretary of Defense has even had time to review the recommendations of the internal review she instituted in June.

Ideally, the UAP function should be managed by an organization that already works effectively with the Secretary of Defense and DNI and has demonstrated proficiency managing complex collection and analysis tasks. Single service organizations like the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) are unable to provide the advocacy needed to institute a new function across the entire intelligence community. They are also unlikely to have the agility needed to expeditiously manage innovative contracts and research. Furthermore, the USAF has a lot of historical baggage and is therefore not trusted by the public on the UAP issue. It also doesn’t help that the USAF is still not acting like a team player responsive to civilian direction from OSD. In that regard, it was incredible to see that in the recent unclassified report to Congress on UAPs that the USAF alone was explicitly singled out for not sharing information. NASIC also reports on these matters through a USAF chain of command, unlike DIA or the Space Security and Defense Program (SSDP) that report directly to both the DoD and IC leadership. DIA and the SSDP also have the skill set, resources, and heft to make things happen within the highly competitive and complex system that manages U.S. intelligence collection and analysis.

In seeking answers to the national security implications of the UAP phenomenon, I suggest Congress, DoD and the DNI pay special attention to the capabilities of America’s most powerful and sophisticated strategic radar systems. Strangely, it seems these powerful instruments have not detected or reported what much smaller tactical radars have been observing off the East and West coasts of the United States. This has occurred it seems despite the fact that the massive early warning radar at Beale AFB was pointed almost directly at the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group during the famous “Nimitz incident” in 2004 in which strange aircraft were tracked for days by the USS Princeton and observed at close range by multiple USN aviators. Similarly, the East Coast counterpart to the Beale radar located on Cape Cod seems not to have detected or reported any of the scores and scores of UAP incidents that have occurred off the East coast of the U.S. since 2015. Is this really true? If so, why? These questions should be thoroughly examined.

If this deficiency can be remedied by merely modifying radar processing algorithms (the radar’s “filters” or “gates”) then it may be possible to quickly and inexpensively achieve a massive increase in UAP and drone detection and tracking. However, even if this proves to be a relatively inexpensive prospect, since no new hardware would be required, and even though it can be accomplished without in any way degrading the current vital strategic warning mission of these systems, bureaucratic resistance seems assured. Again, this is not something an OSD staffer can overcome alone. Maintaining visibility for policymakers and the public will be crucial to overcoming the inevitable inertia and resistance to change that the immense DoD bureaucracy is renowned for.

The good news for America is that major progress in solving the vexing UAP mystery can be achieved without large new expenditures or the disruption of other vital activities. Congress should demand answers and results and hold the Secretary of Defense and DNI accountable, but it should also grant the leaders of these sprawling organizations the flexibility to manage implementation. The timing is especially propitious now because the Deputy Secretary of Defense has asked the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USDI) to prepare recommendations on how best to manage the UAP issue.

In conclusion, if Congress remains actively engaged, we should soon find that the UAP mission has a new and more permanent home in an organization with the skills and access needed to at long last determine the national security implications of these strange vehicles.

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Thankfully, Rep. Gallego and his colleagues in the House and Senate are in a good position to achieve further progress by continuing to demand answers to critical questions. Congress should require further action as needed but in fairness the Administration has been responsive to date and seems to recognize the need for change. They are already working to develop proposed reforms and if Congress makes clear what needs to be accomplished they are likely to respond appropriately.

If the Administration doesn’t answer the mail then it will be time for Congress to move from identifying the goals to stipulating how to achieve them. Meanwhile, it is exceptionally commendable that Congress and the Administration are engaging on this issue, putting national security ahead of any residual fears stemming from an outdated stigma. It is also encouraging to see that there are still some issues that both parties can work together on in the interest of national security. Kudos to Rep. Gallego and his colleagues as well as their Senate counterparts, in particular Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio and their staff.

Unfortunately, Congress only learned of the issue in December 2017, after a couple of determined former USG officials were able to release compelling DoD UAP videos to the New York Times and then introduce some intrepid Navy combat pilots to the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees. Those briefings led to a Senate Intelligence Committee request for an official assessment of the UAP issue by the Intelligence Community.

The resulting assessment was punctually delivered to Congress by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on June 25th, 2021. It confirmed what Lue Elizondo and I had been shouting from the rooftops for several years: Namely that there really are a variety of mysterious, highly advanced unidentified aircraft operating in restricted military airspace. Although the unclassified report didn’t expressly say so, those privy to the classified version of the report confirms that some of these vehicles demonstrate capabilities beyond our understanding. As Senator Mitt Romney stated after reviewing the classified information: “I don’t believe they are coming from foreign adversaries, if they were, why, that, would suggest they have a technology which is in a whole different sphere from than anything that we understand.”

To date, DoD and the IC have both been relying on a small group known as the UAP Task Force (UAPTF) for gathering and assessing UAP information. The Task Force seems to spend most of its time soliciting and cataloging UAP reports and briefing interested policymakers. There is no sophisticated technical analysis unless on occasion another organization offers it. It seems doubtful the Task Force has the skills needed to prepare a systematic UAP collection plan or the heft necessary to persuade senior officials to allocate collection times for busy satellites and other heavily tasked “national technical means.” Following its UAP report, the Task Force might have been able to develop a plan for a more capable and enduring UAP investigative organization, but that task was assigned to the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (USDI) by the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Specifically, USDI has been directed to establish UAP collection and analysis procedures and the organizational and funding requirements needed for an enduring organization to succeed the UAPTF.

Admittedly, applying the term “Task Force” to the recent UAP effort has always been generous if not fanciful. At the outset, the Task Force merely consisted of a Senior Executive Service (SES) official working part-time with an assistant. They had no funding, even for travel. As time passed, the SES was replaced by a lower-ranking GS-15, reportedly for administrative reasons, but the appearance to some was a further downgrading of the UAP effort. Thanks to the Navy, the Task Force did in time acquire some additional personnel, but it has never been more than a handful of people lacking the time or resources needed to do much beyond catalog UAP incidents, answer Congressional inquiries, and provide briefings.

We won’t know for some time how fully the services and agencies complied with the UAPTF’s requests for information. Undoubtedly, some information was not shared due to bureaucratic oversights or lethargy or inadequate security clearances held by UAPTF members or the nearly ubiquitous resistance security personnel have to sharing information they control. It would be very helpful for the Task Force or its successor to have a complete list of the organizations that contributed and a POC for each. Congress should consider using directive language to ensure that, going forward, the Task Force or its successor will have a list of relevant programs and organizations and a POC for each. Similarly, for reasons that are not clear, the USAF is denying airmen the right to contact the Task Force directly to report sightings. Banning this practice is also worth considering, especially given that we know from surveys that the vast majority of UAP incidents have gone unreported due to the stigma surrounding the issue. USAF pilots who fear retribution from their chain of command should be able to speak with the Task Force if they want to. The Air Force’s long history of squelching and distorting UAP information is such that any efforts on its part to impede the flow of information on the UAP subject should not be tolerated. Similarly, there are reports that Air Force OSI agents are trying to squelch UAP conversations on highly classified communications networks among cleared personnel. Firing or demoting those responsible would be more effective than issuing a memo banning the practice.

In that regard, surveys demonstrate that fewer than 1 in 10 civilians report their sightings. The ratio in the military may be even worse; so the number of actual military incidents since 2004 is certainly far higher than the 144 reported, quite likely in excess of 1000 incidents. NORAD alone typically has hundreds of unidentified tracks every year, and few if any of those were included in the UAP report, so the actual number of cases has to be much higher than 144. Lue Elizondo and I have had the same experience interviewing military personnel – rarely did the witnesses report their encounters due to fear of the potential impact on their reputations and careers.

In light of the stigma surrounding the issue, and USAF intransigence in particular, one of the first items on the agenda for both the Task Force and the oversight committees should be to determine how thorough and comprehensive the Task Force was in collecting UAP data from the DoD and IC services and agencies. Even if there are only a handful of missing cases, those cases could be game-changing depending on what activity was detected and how thoroughly the events were documented. For example, it would not take many examples of objects entering Earth’s orbit from space, then descending and maneuvering in our atmosphere, to persuade policymakers this phenomenon is something we need to pay much closer attention to.

How thorough were the services in gathering data for the Task Force? Did anyone touch base with the Global Infrasonic Detection System, which can detect meteors and rockets, to see if or how often they track UAP? What about AWACs units or the Space Fence or the mobile X-band radar etc.? Certainly, the USAF was consulted by the Task Force, but what effort did the USAF make to contact the myriad organizations within their domain that might have pertinent information? A careful accounting of the organizations and systems that had useful data will also help identify which systems are most useful for obtaining UAP information.

In addition to ensuring a full accounting, it is also important to understand what procedures the services and agencies used to identify pertinent UAP information held by their myriad various components. Different organizations will have taken different approaches and assessing the results can help the Task Force, or its successor, identify the most efficient and effective procedures for UAP reporting.

Another important housekeeping task is to determine the degree to which UAP information was withheld due to classification. The message from the Congressional staff and Task Force should be, “If our clearances are inadequate, so be it, but at a minimum the Chairman and Ranking member of each oversight committee needs to know how many sources and UAP reports were withheld due to classification.” Similarly, the Task Force Director should at least be made aware if some UAP information was withheld due to classification. Otherwise, when briefing officials at the highest levels he will not be able to advise them that other relevant information exists or where to find it.

In sum, to date, about all we can say for certain is that one or more groups interested in U.S. military capabilities are using advanced technology (in some cases so advanced we don’t understand it) to operate with impunity in restricted U.S. airspace. Our government seems to have no idea who is doing this or why, which is hardly surprising given the fact that to date no effort has been made by our government to find answers to these questions. Also, as the Task Force noted, given the range of behaviors, capabilities, sizes, and shapes observed, there is most likely more than one actor involved. In sum, the stakes are high, the picture is muddled, and there is a lot of work to do.

Strangely, the stunning news that U.S. airspace is not secure is not provoking the public or our government the way Sputnik did 60 years ago. In 1957, when Americans suddenly discovered the Soviet Union had achieved the ability to put satellites in orbit, there was a loud public outcry, even though there was little if anything those early satellites could do to harm us. By contrast, the speeds, ranges, durations, and altitudes we are observing UAP achieve today is far more concerning. There do not seem to be any limits to where these things can go, what they can observe, or what ordnance they might deliver. Although we have not encountered hostility, the questions remain: “Why such persistent interest in U.S. military capabilities? Who is operating these craft and what is their intent? Are they collecting information to facilitate a plan or are they merely satisfying a benign curiosity?” We urgently need answers.

Yet, in Congress, the only committee that has been minding the store, willing to put national security ahead of politics and a dangerously outdated stigma, is the Senate Intelligence Committee led by Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL). Thankfully they and their staffs are well-positioned to make a huge difference if they choose to do so.

In my view, the present situation is reminiscent of both Pearl Harbor and September 11th. At Pearl Harbor, radar data showing large numbers of inbound aircraft was not reported up the chain of command, much as the innumerable East Coast sightings did not reach senior officials even after they began occurring on a near-daily basis in 2015.

It was also determined, after the fact, that if CIA and FBI had shared information effectively, the massive tragedy of September 11th might have been averted. Today, however, it is not just two organizations failing to report or share information. Each of the services and most of the intelligence agencies have had pertinent information that was not shared or reported or even easy to find. NORAD itself was not informed of the innumerable Navy sightings occurring off the East Coast of the U.S. beginning in 2015.

It seems hard to believe, but in the 21st century, having spent billions upon billions of dollars on computer and communications technologies to facilitate information sharing, the Deputy Secretary of Defense has to form a special team to conduct months of research simply to find out what information has been collected about UAP. Even so, it seems likely that the answers obtained were neither comprehensive nor complete.

Blessedly, unlike September 11th or Pearl Harbor, no calamity has struck, but the magnitude of the failure is nevertheless breathtaking. Roughly a trillion dollars have been spent in recent decades to develop the world’s most elaborate and extensive intelligence system, yet it utterly failed to detect or report recurring incidents of unidentified aircraft violating military airspace, for months and years, even when they were operating relatively short distances from strategic military facilities and the nation’s capital. It is rare that a failure of this magnitude comes to light without some corresponding tragedy. We should take full advantage of the present situation to see if we cannot at long last develop a system can overcome recurring problems with subjective biases, rigid mindsets, and lack of information-sharing. The ongoing DoD Inspector General investigation is a good place to start, but what can Congress do in this budget cycle to begin patching the chinks in our armor that have recently been identified?

Thankfully, America does not need to spend great sums to make serious headway, or perhaps even to solve the mystery of the origin of these strange vehicles. A simple example may help demonstrate why the primary missing ingredient is not funding but leadership. Take the Nimitz Incident:

When the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group (CSG) had its famous encounter with the “Tic Tac” in 2004, it was operating about 30 miles off the coast of San Diego. Peering almost directly at the CSG was a U.S. Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) radar at Beale Air Force Base (AFB). In principle, it is much like the incredible SPY-1 phased-array radar aboard the USS Princeton that was able to track the Tic Tac while other fleet radars failed to detect it. However, the Beale radar and its counterparts on the BMEWS network are far larger and more powerful. Indeed, by some accounts, the most powerful electromagnetic signals emitted from our planet are the radar signals emitted by the Beale radar and its BMEWS siblings.

At the time of the Nimitz encounter, and to this day, BMEWS radars are optimized to detect incoming ICBM or cruise missiles or strategic bombers and ignore almost everything else. This is done purposely to minimize clutter and facilitate detection and analysis of these targets, namely to avoid false alarms. Consequently, since the Tic Tac did not fit the profile of a known strategic target, its maneuvers were almost certainly recorded but probably did not trigger an alert or gain the attention of Beale AFB radar personnel. It was not an ICBM or cruise missile or satellite after all, and that is about all that concerns the BMEWs radars. This self-inflicted UAP blindness may also explain why the massive BMEWS radar system at Cape Cod was not detecting and reporting the UAPs routinely operating off the East Coast of the U.S. beginning in 2015. If BMEWS was reporting unidentified aircraft in that region there should have been far more than 143 total UAP incidents detected from 2004 to 2020. Notably, to date, all of the leaked incidents have been from encounters involving ships and aircraft, none reported have been associated with strategic radars or collection systems like BMEWS.

The good news is that without building any new facilities or spending large sums of money, it should be possible for the contractor operating the data systems at the BMEWS sites to simply divert a copy of the same data stream to a different computer processor where different filters can be applied. Or, perhaps on a slightly delayed basis, the data stream sent for storage could be searched in near real-time using specific algorithms suitable for identifying UAP. There should be no reason this cannot be done without risk to the integrity or security of the BMEWs system. If either of these relatively simple and straightforward approaches were implemented by competitive bid at the five main BMEWS sites, the U.S. would quickly gain massive UAP coverage from relatively low altitudes to orbital space above the Atlantic, Pacific and the Arctic. Of course, it is also possible these radars have been tracking such objects and the USAF has not been sharing the data. If so, there is an even better and quicker solution that involves holding someone accountable to convey an unequivocal message about the need for information sharing and the need to heed the DoD leadership.

If my assumptions regarding BMEWS are correct, massive coverage can be achieved, to include some of the most active areas for UAP reporting, relatively quickly and inexpensively. Drones are a rising threat, so, again, applying different search and display criteria to a different stream of the same raw data might help to close a serious gap in defensive coverage for the U.S. Recall that guerrillas operating from Yemen were able to penetrate Saudi airspace, some of the most densely protected in the world, with drones that cut Saudi hydrocarbon refining capacity by 50%. Notably, some of the leaked photos and videos from 2019 incidents involving strange “drones” hovering over the USS Russell and the USS Oklahoma involved incidents off the coast of California that again Beale likely could have seen with different filters. If so, we might have already been able to determine where the small aircraft following these warships were coming from.

There may already be options for additional tasking on the current BMEWS data handling contract. If not, then this might be accomplished by establishing the requirements and putting a contract out for bid. To DoD outsiders this might sound like a relatively straightforward task, but those familiar with the paperwork madness of DoD contracting recognize this is far more difficult than preparing and offering a contract in the private sector. So, being DoD, some variant of this approach is not going to happen overnight if ever, but with an effective advocate this should be doable absent some compelling technical issue I am missing. Establishing the cost and who will pay for it could take months given the complexity and glacial pace of DoD contracting. It might prove to be little more than a rounding error for the Air Force, but requirements have to be established, a competitive bidding process seems likely, and all the milestones and reviews these processes entail.

The onerous contracting process cannot even begin until a decision is made to proceed. Someone has to see the need and validate the requirement and have estimates of the cost and the necessary funding. The UAPTF, as presently constructed, does not appear to have the technical savvy or the resources to even validate much less manage or pay for work of this kind. Therein lies another opportunity for Congress to help advance national security: Ensure that the UAP mission is given to an organization with serious technical acumen and contracting capabilities and authorities and a senior advocate who can represent the mission in internal DoD and IC deliberations. There are a range of candidate organizations that could execute the mission well, some already reporting both to DoD and the IC and not under the control of the USAF where their progress is not likely to see the light of day. In that regard, it was extremely telling that in the very carefully worded unclassified report to Congress there was a very deliberate jab at the USAF which seems far more than any other service to have disdain for direction coming from the Office of the Secretary of Defense. I’ve heard that the memo from the Deputy Secretary of Defense establishing the UAPTF and mandating cooperation with it was largely ignored by the USAF which appears to still possess pertinent information on this topic it has not shared. As the unclassified report delivered to Congress candidly states: "The UAPTF is currently working to acquire additional reporting, including from the U.S. Air Force (USAF)…”

Examples of responsive organizations that might be suitable include the Space Force, the nimble Space Security and Defense Program (which reports to high levels of both DoD and the IC and has outstanding technical and contract execution capabilities), or the Defense Intelligence Agency, which likewise is dual-hatted and is led by a 3-star flag officer. NORAD would seem to make sense but again its willingness to share information with other organizations is questionable. Still, they have money and contracting authority and the heft needed to make changes to the status quo if they were willing to aggressively pursue the issue. Regardless, the first and most important step for Congress to take is to either identify a permanent home for the mission or require DoD and the IC to do so and to explain their resulting rationale with the oversight committees.

Framing the name and mission of the new organization also warrants some fresh thinking. The issue is not purely one of airborne objects; it also involves unidentified underwater vehicles and unidentified vehicles in orbit or beyond. I therefore suggest framing the issue broadly to give the troops a place to send all manner of strange and unexpected phenomena that don’t readily fit in an existing job jar. Perhaps something like “The Office of Strategic Anomaly Resolution” that could become an analytic starting point for other anomalies. Requesting an NIE on the UAP issue would also help keep the issue in focus and clarify what questions need to be answered and how serious the potential threat may be.

Regardless of the name or mission statement, however, some budgetary assistance and flexibility will be crucial. Toward that end, the oversight committees should expressly state spending for UAP collection and analysis is a legitimate use of resources appropriated by Congress for intelligence and space defense missions. The goal would be to relieve any fears among DoD or IC program managers about using funds appropriated for space defense or intelligence for purposes on related tasks involving UAP detection or analysis. This is urgently needed because there are already opportunities with existing contracts and programs to support UAP and Space Defense or other requirements, but there is hesitation due to fears that in today’s “Gotcha” mindset, a Congressional oversight committee might claim any R&D funding used primarily for detection of unknowns might be viewed as inconsistent with the purposes for which the funds had been appropriated. Simple authorization and/or appropriation language could remove such fears and thereby accelerate UAP research activities.

An example of an unmet need is a program for exotic propulsion R&D. Although NASA conducts some advanced propulsion research, there is presently no effort to identify or emulate the observed propulsion of UAP vehicles despite what we are seeing in our skies. We need to be like the Japanese in the 1850s, who, upon seeing Commodore Perry’s black fleet in Tokyo harbor immediately set out to understand this new technology. They succeeded so brilliantly that by 1905 the Imperial Japanese Navy was able to destroy the Russian fleet in the Battle of the Tsushima Straits. On a related note, a federal lab structure for space is something that should be considered to help coordinate and optimize all the shards of space R&D spread out across the federal government. Since we have proof that some radically new source of small but intensely powerful propulsion is feasible we certainly ought to be seeking to understand and emulate it.

A smaller opportunity worth funding is an AI capability to reliably assess the authenticity of civilian UAP photos and videos. In a smartphone-equipped world, scores of UAP videos and photos are being taken weekly across the planet, but they have no value for science or national security because their authenticity is presently too difficult to establish. This is unfortunate because with a small investment billions of smartphones worldwide could suddenly become UAP collectors. A quick look at the online Mutual UFO Network database demonstrates that in the U.S. alone, potentially useful videos and photos are being submitted on a daily basis. This is one of a number of smaller but potentially very significant opportunities that the successor to the UAPTF needs some modest funding and flexibility to pursue.

As always, the competition for resources and authority in the Executive branch is fierce. Transferring the UAP mission to an existing, high-level organization with deep technical expertise and flexible contracting authority will save time and money and serve the cause better than trying to create a new, special UAP organization. Saddling someone at the 4-star level is also necessary to defend the new outfit against the bureaucratic antibodies that will inevitably seek to reject it.

Unfortunately, the continuing stigma around the UAP issue is still hindering greater involvement by many talented people. This leads me to a final recommendation. Although the USG and its many aerospace contractors already have ample numbers of cleared scientists, establishing a national panel of independent civilian scientists to study the UAP issue would still be very valuable. It would first and foremost help to independently establish the credibility of the issue for an understandably skeptical public and a skeptical scientific community. A small group of scientists with the right skills, physicists and engineers and perhaps a couple of social scientists, could also make substantial contributions in terms of questions to ask, leads to pursue, and identifying contributions the academic community might be able to make. Perhaps even assessing the potential impacts on society if the evidence leads to revolutionary conclusions. For their work to be meaningful the panel needs access to all but possibly the most sensitive classified data. There are precedents for this, for example, establishing a panel of environmental scientists cleared to evaluate IC systems to determine if they might be able to make unique contributions to our understanding of climate change. Given the fact that almost all credible UAP technical data is in the hands of the USG, the justification for providing some scientific access to classified UAP information is actually much stronger in this instance. Dr. Avi Loeb of Harvard has told me that he supports this recommendation. The involvement of renowned mainstream scientists could be useful both for understanding what is occurring and helping the press, public and academia grasp the significance. Once again, the costs are small and the potential benefits are great.

I hope the examples above help to illustrate the fact that if Congress remains engaged we can make major progress in understanding this phenomenon and possibly even replicating some of the amazing capabilities we are observing -- without major new expenditures. Ignorance is never an ally and the sooner we determine the true nature of this phenomenon the better. Who knows, it might even lead to major scientific advances that could benefit America and perhaps all of mankind.

What did the much-anticipated report conclude? Here are the key findings:

• No evidence that UAPs are secret U.S. aircraft. Surely our government can account for its own aircraft programs when each is worth billions. We also have systemic processes to keep track of classified programs and even DoD “waived” special access programs. Any revolutionary new aircraft programs would cost a fortune and, by law, have to be briefed to a minimum of 8 members of Congress.

• The report carefully states that “some” UAPs may be Russian or Chinese, although it plainly acknowledges there is no evidence of that. Notice the report says only “some.” Given that military sightings of these bizarre craft have been occurring since the 1940’s, it seems inconceivable the U.S., Russia, or China can account for the phenomenon in its entirety.

• Advanced technology is the one topic in the report that feels like Project Blue Book or the Condon Report, where the raw data directly contradicts the report’s findings. Do we take the testimony of the Navy personnel involved in the Nimitz case and others seriously or not? The glaring disconnect on this issue emerges during almost every press interview of those privy to the classified briefings or classified report. As Mitt Romney said on CNN:

“They have a technology which is in a whole different sphere than anything we understand and frankly, China and Russia just aren’t there and neither are we…”

So, what was the media reaction? Their emphasis was: Not aliens! Did anyone really think the Administration was going to deliver the most profound and disruptive discovery of all time in an unclassified report to Congress prepared by a GS-15?

In my view, the UAP report’s findings strengthen the case for the alien hypothesis by undermining the main alternatives and providing examples of capabilities we cannot emulate or even understand – precisely what one would expect if any of these reports involve genuine alien technology. A fair headline might have been: “UAP Report Strengthens Alien Hypothesis.” Instead, the press reporting seemed to lean in the opposite direction as though there was surprise that the government did not conclude ET is visiting.

It has also been painful watching American TV and cable news shows grapple with the UAP issue. Time and again, we’ve seen distinguished scientists stating the obvious: That the videos I provided the NYT are not proof of alien life. Who claimed that the videos alone were proof of alien life? Certainly not those of us involved in providing them to the NYT and Washington Post. They might someday prove to be examples of alien technology, but certainly on their own they are not proof of ET. Yet many TV journalists and commentators get hung up over these videos as if they are the crux of the UAP issue. They aren’t. Media discussions of the videos then often degenerate into vague references to human and mechanical fallibility on the one hand, and equally vague, usually second-hand anecdotes of incredible UFO sightings on the other. Such exchanges are neither interesting nor illuminating.

I suggest we begin by recognizing that the immediate challenge is existential, not academic. It is first and foremost a matter of national security. There is nothing anyone is going to see through a telescope that helps to resolve the issue and the best tools we have available to find answers are, right now, mostly in the hands of the national security community.

Aliens or not, we urgently need to know is who is operating these mysterious and highly advanced vehicles in restricted airspace above American test ranges, carrier strike groups, military bases, and nuclear weapons facilities. We need to determine not only why, but how they are doing it, because some of the capabilities we are observing suggest revolutionary scientific insights and engineering capabilities that place America at a potentially huge strategic disadvantage. However, because the unclassified report carefully averted forthright discussion of the technology gap, the press seemed to have missed this crucial point. This is perhaps mostly because unlike members of Congress and the IC they do not have access to the classified data. However, the truth is revealed every time a legislator or former intelligence official privy to the classified data comments on the issue. The authors of the report shaded the wording on this issue but there is no mistaking the result if you speak to knowledgeable DoD officials or listen carefully to those who have reviewed the data.

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Incidentally, the press and public should know that these incidents are occurring far more often than the report suggests. Remember, the report does not include hundreds of thousands of civilian incidents or those by foreign nations; it does not list the thousands of reports that occurred between WW2 and 2004 (e.g., over 700 unsolved Blue Book cases); and of course, it cannot account for the incidents that were never reported due to the stigma surrounding the topic. Polling data suggests there are roughly ten UAP sightings for each sighting reported.

Other sightings were not included because of excessive classification, bureaucratic resistance (e.g., the USAF), or lack of resources. For example, no effort was made to search our huge ballistic missile radar databases for objects that did not match the profile of known targets and therefore were recorded by a computer but not displayed to personnel at NORAD warning centers. There is also a subjective component that caused hundreds or thousands of UAP cases to be excluded. For example, even though NORAD successfully identifies more than 99% of the millions of flights over North America visible to radar, there are still hundreds of unresolved NORAD UAP cases each year. Since only 144 cases were identified by the UAP TF since 2004, it is evident that few if any of these NORAD unknowns were included. Hundreds of documented commercial airline pilot sightings were also not included. Still, despite all this filtering, 144 military UAP incidents were reported and only one case solved since 2004. Incidentally, eighty of the 144 cases were confirmed by at least two sensors (e.g., radar and visual reporting).

To move beyond speculation and generalization toward a meaningful dialogue, I suggest greater consideration of specific cases. Doing so forces us to confront the reality of the phenomenon, which often seems unappreciated by those offering opinions on the issue. So, let’s briefly review a single well-documented case: the Nimitz incident of November 14, 2004.

[Note: those already familiar with the details of the Nimitz case may want to skip this section. Those seeking a more detailed technical analysis should consult the 278-page report prepared by the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies.]

The Nimitz Case:

In November 2004, the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group was conducting exercises 40 miles off the coast of San Diego. It was accompanied by the USS Princeton, an Aegis class guided missile cruiser sporting the world’s most capable naval radar. Shortly after deploying, the Princeton’s radar operators began observing numerous aircraft lacking transponders that were on occasion performing astounding feats; for example, vertically descending from 80,000 ft to 20,000 ft in a fraction of a second only to stop and hover. These objects continued to operate in significant numbers, occasionally hovering or flying at speeds many times faster than the speed of sound. Concerned that these might be technical glitches the crew tested and rebooted the Princeton’s radar system. Everything seemed to be in perfect working order.

Days later, on November 14, one of these strange objects was observed moving up the coast of Mexico toward San Diego. At the time two F-18 fighters already aloft were within range and were directed to intercept the unknown aircraft. When they did, they observed a wingless white object nearly 50ft long close to the surface bouncing back and forth like a ping pong ball striking invisible walls. Below it the ocean roiled as though there was something just beneath the surface. When Squadron Commander Dave Fravor, a veteran combat pilot, descended to get a better look, the vehicle turned towards him, then began ascending in a spiral, maintaining its distance from the fighter. Under conditions of near-perfect visibility, Cmdr. Fravor and his colleagues saw a smooth featureless white object with no air intake, exhaust, tail or wings yet from the outset the aviators immediately felt outmatched. When Cmdr. Fravor tried to close on the strange craft it shot away like a bullet from a gun, a baffling feat for many reasons, including the energy required and what should have been g-forces far in excess of anything any known aircraft can withstand. The astonishing acceleration observed by Cmdr. Fravor was also observed aboard the Princeton due to the capabilities of its advanced phased array radar system.

Then, even more incredibly, the Princeton radioed Cmdr. Fravor to inform him that the Tic Tac shaped object had flown directly to the location the fighter squadron had chosen as a rendezvous (CAP) point for their training exercises. The white UAP was either reading the fleets encrypted communications or it had observed them at that location earlier in the day.

Low on fuel, both F-18s returned to the Nimitz, but a third F-18 was launched to investigate. At a range of 20 miles Chad Underwood, the Weapons Systems Officer (WSO) in the F-18, was able to see the object on his radar and with his infrared targeting pod (a highly sophisticated sensor designed to lock onto evasive targets and guide weapons to destroy them). Strangely, Underwood could not get a lock on the target even though it was not moving. It seemed as though the vehicle was interfering with his targeting system. This is highly unusual for a system that is designed to maintain track under evasive maneuvers and resist all manner of interference.

Fortunately, Underwood recorded his efforts to get a lock on the strange craft and that is what is now known as the famous “FLIR” video. There were no other unidentified aircraft in the vicinity according to those in the Princeton’s Combat Information Center, so it does not seem a case of mistaken identity. Once again, the Tic Tac demonstrated its astonishing ability to instantaneously accelerate to hypersonic speeds. It was so fast some of the Princeton radar operators were surprised that even their superb radar system, designed to track ballistic missiles, was able to follow the vehicle’s extreme movements.

I’ve interviewed Fravor and Dietrich and one of their WSO’s regarding the Tic Tac and their description is identical in terms of size, color, erratic and unconventional movements, lack of visible control surfaces or means of propulsion and unprecedented speed and maneuverability. I’ve also interviewed in person and spoken with various crew members who served in the Princeton’s CIC. All the testimony I received is clear and consistent. Testimony provided by Underwood is also a perfect match for what Fravor and Dietrich and the WSO had observed earlier that day:

"The thing that stood out to me the most was how erratic it was behaving,” Underwood continued. “And what I mean by ‘erratic’ is that its changes in altitude, airspeed, and aspect were just unlike things that I’ve ever encountered before flying against other air targets. It was just behaving in ways that aren’t physically normal…That’s what caught my eye. Because aircraft, whether they’re manned or unmanned, still have to obey the laws of physics,” Underwood said. “They have to have some source of lift, some source of propulsion. The Tic Tac was not doing that. It was going from like 50,000 feet to, you know, a hundred feet in like seconds, which is not possible… the video shows a source of heat, but the normal signatures of an exhaust plume were not there. There was no sign of propulsion. You could not see the thing that the ATFLIR pod should pick up 100 percent of the time.”

Now we can talk specifics bearing in mind that it isn’t us and as far as we can tell it isn’t the Russians or Chinese either. Furthermore, similar incidents have been occurring since the 1940’s when it is inconceivable another country could have possessed such capabilities. So, rather than talking in vague generic terms about equipment failures or optical illusions, let’s talk about specific incidents like the Nimitz case and theories that might explain them and ways to test those theories. That is a discussion worth having. We urgently need to make a serious effort to discover how these vehicles work: Where they are from, and why they are here.

In my next article, I will discuss options our government should consider to help answer the vital security questions raised by these continuing violations of U.S. airspace. Meanwhile, I’ve appended below some questions to help promote a more meaningful discussion of the report and the UAP phenomenon.

Questions About the Nimitz Case:

• Is there any reason to doubt the competence of the naval aviators and radar operators and technicians who were involved in the Nimitz incident? Is there any reason to doubt they saw what they claimed to have seen in conditions of near-perfect visibility?

• What hypothesis can best explain what we now know of the Nimitz incident -- especially in light of the Senate report confirming there is no reason to think the Tic Tac is American, Russian or Chinese. In addition, although the report only considers incidents since 2004, we know thousands of similar incidents have occurred since WWII, further undermining the American, Russian or Chinese hypotheses.

• In sum, if there is a better hypothesis than alien technology, for the Nimitz case what is it?

• Is there any reason to doubt that the Princeton’s Aegis radar was functioning properly? If it wasn’t working properly then how did it successfully guide multiple F-18’s to their intercepts of the Tic Tac?

• USS Princeton radar operators and technicians claim that the tracks they were observing for days prior to the intercept were so unusual they tested and rebooted the Aegis system and found it in perfect working order before the Tic Tac engagement of November 14th. Is there any reason to doubt this testimony or believe the SPY 1 radar was malfunctioning?

• There were a number of incidents in which the USS Princeton observed Tic Tacs traveling at hypersonic speeds. In some cases, they did so in vertical drops descending from altitudes as high as 80,000 feet. The Tic Tac also demonstrated the ability to hover in place before and after astounding bursts of acceleration. Can any known vehicle accomplish such feats?

• Are there any hypersonic propulsion systems we know of that do not generate massive exhaust and heat signatures?

• Does the U.S. or any other nation possess vehicles that can break the sound barrier without creating a sonic boom?

• Do we know of any vehicles capable of hypersonic speeds that are white, thick and rounded, and lack wings, air inlets, and exhaust or control surfaces?

• The Tic Tac maneuvered in ways unlike any known aircraft according to the aviators who observed it. For example, it moved laterally, side to side, like a ball bouncing off invisible walls. It demonstrated the ability to descend in a straight vertical line at hypersonic speeds. Are any known vehicles capable of such performance?

• Cmdr. Fravor observed the Tic Tac accelerate away from him so quickly that it almost seemed to instantly disappear. Shortly afterward, the USS Princeton reported the UAP hovering at the “CAP point” 60 miles away, again verifying hypersonic speeds as well as hovering capabilities. Have we observed similar capabilities among any Russian or Chinese aircraft?

• Some “debunkers” have suggested that perhaps Lt. Underwood was not looking at the Tic Tac but a jet lacking a transponder flying in restricted military airspace. However, the Princeton’s crew affirm that they monitored Lt. Underwood’s approach and interaction with the Tic Tac and saw it accelerate from him at hypersonic speeds. If there were a conventional aircraft nearby why didn’t the USS Princeton seen it on its SPY 1 radar?

• Underwood was unable to get a radar lock on the hovering Tic Tac. He tried switching to different frequencies and modes to no avail. This inability to get a lock on a stationary target should not happen with any aircraft unless it is employing electronic warfare technologies. How could a stray balloon, a conventional aircraft or flock of geese explain the facts of the Nimitz case?

Extraterrestrial technology was not discussed in the report because the issue is too politically sensitive, not because it is irrelevant. There was no proof presented of alien involvement, even at the classified level, but the dilemma remains unsolved and the primary alternatives to the alien hypothesis are clearly diminished by the report. When will the press and our government begin taking the alien hypothesis seriously? Indeed, in light of the facts presently available, how do we avert the conclusion that alien technology is the leading, perhaps only viable explanation? What theory can the skeptics or our government suggest that better fits the facts? That is a discussion worth having.

The Administration and Congress concur that these objects are not classified U.S. aircraft.

In the Nimitz incident and other cases, some of these vehicles have been observed doing things that we cannot replicate and do not understand.

Official records from the U.S. and other countries indicate that this is a global phenomenon that has been occurring since at least WW2 and perhaps far longer.

We have no reason to believe that many of these objects are from Russia or China, and in fact it seems improbable. Especially when we consider how long this phenomenon has been observed.

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Consequently, the “not invented here” hypothesis is the only theory currently consistent with the known facts.

From any vantage point, we are more likely to encounter probes than signals from ET because probes are far safer, more efficient, and more effective for purposes of space exploration.

The radical capabilities and mysterious appearance of some of the vehicles being observed are consistent with what we'd expect of probes or craft from a space-faring civilization. As Arthur Clarke famously observed, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

There is no scientific barrier to interstellar travel even if superluminal travel is impossible. My grandfather was born before the Wright brothers got off the ground. Now there are already a number of nations with robots on Mars and a consortium led by Yuri Millner is designing the first probe to visit another star system. It would take only a tiny fraction of the age of the Milky Way for a space-faring civilization, travelling at one-fifth the speed of light, to explore the entire galaxy.

Our government should establish a cleared panel of UAP, intelligence and scientific experts to study this issue. Mainstream scientists currently lack any detailed understanding either of the phenomenon or its long history, nor do they understand the range of sensor capabilities available to the U.S. or have the knowledge needed to understand where to look within our vast national security apparatus for answers. This has been shockingly evident in recent months with astronomers expressing their ignorance of the UAP topic by asking embarrassing questions such as “If UFOs are real how come commercial pilots never see them?” and “How come only Americans report UFOs?”

To be effective, the panel therefore needs to include people familiar with the long but obscure international and U.S. Government history of the issue as well as the classified data and capabilities our government possesses that can be used to obtain more information. Large expenditures are not required; progress will largely be a function of leadership, intellectual integrity, data access and organization.

Someone at a high level urgently needs to be assigned responsibility to find out where these objects are coming from, how they work and why they are here. Engineering and scientific efforts to replicate observed capabilities also require a high priority.

We can no longer deny that someone has mastered technology beyond our understanding and is using it to monitor U.S. military forces and probably much else. In some cases, such as the famous encounters of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, non-human origin is presently the theory that best fits all the facts. Until a better explanation emerges it is time to squarely confront the data and accord this revolutionary discovery the attention it deserves. Regardless of the source, we need a serious national effort to understand and emulate the capabilities we are observing.

Regardless of the origin of these craft, the stakes could not be higher. Ignorance is not a national security strategy, and we have never before been a nation deterred by fear of the unknown. The benefits that might result could include massive technological breakthroughs and revolutionary advances and insights that might otherwise take eons to acquire. The only responsible course of action is to proceed expeditiously with open minds, perhaps jointly with other nations to make faster progress and mitigate growing international tensions and rivalries.

How can we turn aside knowing what we now know? There is really no choice other than to press forward in pursuit of the truth with the hope and expectation that new frontiers of knowledge will be discovered for our nation and hopefully for the benefit of all mankind.

1. Why did awareness of the UAP phenomenon have to come from private citizens outside the government devoting several years of their lives to bringing this issue to the attention of the American people and their government? What does this stunning intelligence failure tell us about the U.S. Intelligence Community? How is it possible that these intrusions could continue for years without notice by any senior government officials or even NORAD? What other strategic issues are the intelligence community failing to report due to potential controversy or stigma?

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2. Reportedly, the classified report contains only about 120 incidents. How is that reconciled with the fact that NORAD alone has hundreds of flight tracks per annum it cannot identify?

3. Recently, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe revealed they had been briefed on mysterious UAP incidents. Are these incidents accounted for in the report? What about the incident involving a UAP emerging from the ocean mentioned in public by former Navy CNO Admiral Gary Roughead?

4. We’ve already lost years we might have been using to understand the phenomenon. What are the risks and potential consequences of our continuing inability to identify the capability and intent of those operating these vehicles?

5. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) asked for a comprehensive review of all U.S. intelligence by functional categories (SIGINT, HUMINT, MASINT, etc.) Which collection disciplines provided useful data and how will the committees determine whether organizations like the CIA were truly forthcoming if they reported no pertinent HUMINT?

6. Thus far, all the leaked data has involved tactical data from ships and planes. Why should we assume that should remain our focus when we have vastly more powerful radars such as the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System that cover vast regions? Is it really plausible that planes and ships are having recurring incidents but these large systems covering vast areas have not identified anything over long periods of time?

7. We know that many radar warning systems automatically and deliberately suppress the presentation of data that does not meet known vehicle profiles (e.g. cruise missiles, bombers, ICBMs) in order to reduce screen clutter. How do we know then that systems like BMEWS do not have numerous unreported UAP collection events in their databases? How hard would it be for the contractors managing these systems to search these databases to determine whether significant events may have been collected but not displayed?

8. We know indisputably from documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that there have been numerous UAP intrusions at U.S. ICBM and strategic bomber bases and nuclear production facilities (e.g. Hanford and Oak Ridge etc.). How many such incidents does the classified report reveal? If it doesn't reveal any, how credible is that conclusion?

9. AATIP research reportedly identified a pattern of UAP activity near nuclear weapons facilities. It would not be difficult as well to check civilian databases held by the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and the National UFO Reporting Center to determine whether there is an unusual amount of UAP activity near major military bases. Has the task force updated AATIPs work and, if so, did they find a pattern of unusual UAP activity in near nuclear facilities as well?

10. NORAD personnel and FOIA records indicate numerous extraordinary events involving UAPs over North America. Many of these incidents led to fighters being scrambled to try to intercept these objects. How many such events were in the report? If few or none, how credible is the data supplied? My interview with Col. Jim Cobb (USAF-Ret) on the investigative TV Show “Unidentified” describes one of many such encounters

11. Have any allies been approached and asked to share or exchange data? Our best allies, countries like Britain and Canada that we already have trusted relationships and extensive intelligence sharing with (FVEY), are among those it seems we might be able to have a profitable exchange.

12. Which services and commands reported incidents? I know from numerous pilot interviews that at least some East Coast carrier groups continued to have incidents after deploying to the Middle East. Did CENTCOM or INDOPACOM contribute? What about the USAF? AWACs aircraft personnel have shared stories as have USAF fighter pilots, control tower operators, security officers, and others, including individuals like former astronaut Gordon Cooper. If the USAF had little to report is that because USAF culture deters UAP reporting? It would be interesting to poll USAF pilots and compare the results with the information supplied by the USAF.

13. How many if any incidents were there of on-orbit UAPs or UAPs rising to or descending from orbit?

14. Which sensor systems proved most useful and what does that tell us about ways we can improve UAP collection going forward?

15. At least one retired officer from the USAF Office of Special Investigations (OSI), Richard Doty, claims that the USAF is secretly investigating UAPs and indeed is working on reverse-engineering recovered vehicles. Has the UAP TF reviewed OSI’s files? Has Congress or the UAP TF talked to Mr. Doty? If not, why not?

16. A number of former USAF officers involved in UAP incidents report they were debriefed by OSI and required to sign NDAs. An example occurred near Stephensville TX in 2008. FAA radar and 30 civilian witnesses reported a huge UAP but when two USAF F-16 pilots who attempted to intercept the object were later interviewed they told cleared AATIP investigators they could not discuss the issue because they signed USAF NDAs. A thorough review of OSI’s UAP files and all USAF UAP NDA’s should be the top priority for Congress and the UAP TF.

17. Richard Doty, formerly of USAF OSI, claims OSI spied on civilian UAP researchers, even breaking and entering homes and feeding them disinformation. One of the prominent targets, Paul Bennewitz, a resident of Arizona, became unstable and eventually committed suicide. Are these activities not plainly unlawful? Why has the DoD Civilian Oversight Official or Congress not investigated?

Read the original article on The American Legion.

On Dec. 16, 2017, The New York Times ran a front-page story revealing the existence of a congressionally mandated program to study unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The article was accompanied by two recently declassified DoD videos obtained by F-18 fighter pilots. On both occasions, the UFOs were seen in broad daylight by numerous Navy personnel, the reports were independently corroborated by sophisticated military sensor systems, and the unidentified aircraft demonstrated revolutionary aeronautical capabilities. For example, some of the craft were observed descending from altitudes above 80,000 feet, then hovering as low as 50 feet above the ocean before accelerating to hypersonic speeds from a dead stop.

As more information emerged, including the release of another official DoD UFO video, a handful of senators and representatives on the national security oversight committees sought briefings. At this point, the Navy and DoD could no longer conceal the truth.

Joseph Gradisher, spokesman for the deputy chief of naval operations, admitted that the vehicles in the declassified Navy videos are neither a hoax nor secret U.S. test aircraft: “The Navy designates the objects contained in these videos as unidentified aerial phenomena,” or UAP. In other words, they might be Russian, Chinese or even alien spacecraft. Whatever they are, they are real, they aren’t ours, and they continue to violate U.S. airspace with impunity.

With that short statement, the Navy upended the conclusions of every prior U.S. government examination of the UFO phenomenon, from Project Sign in 1948 to Project Blue Book, which was terminated in 1969. Written when the Cold War was in full swing, these reports were designed to debunk UFO sightings and discredit civilian UFO researchers in order to reassure, rather than inform, the public. It is hardly surprising, then, that despite hundreds of cases defying explanation the Air Force concluded there was “no evidence of developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge” and that no case “reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security.”

The only scientist assigned full time to Project Blue Book, astronomer Allen Hynek, expressed his contempt for these findings, calling the project’s statistical methods “nothing less than a travesty” and the attitude and approach within Blue Book “illogical and unscientific.” It is now obvious that the stigma the Air Force sought to create worked only too well, causing most U.S. military and intelligence personnel to conceal rather than report UFO/UAPs – a process of self-blinding that resulted in decades of lost data.

The evidence provided by DoD videos and radar is vital for intelligence analysis, yet there is nothing more compelling than meeting the Navy pilots and hearing their stories firsthand. In my conversations with Cmdr. David Fravor, his excitement was palpable and contagious, as were the fears of his anonymous female wingman when she described the surreal manner in which the UAP seemed to defy the laws of physics, tumbling through nonsensical angles to maintain a dominant position vis-à-vis Fravor’s F-18.

Internet talking heads like to cast doubt on these accounts, proposing spurious theories of ghost aircraft lacking transponders lurking in restricted DoD airspace. Clearly they have not interviewed the pilots and radar operators who encountered these objects at close range. Had they done so, they would find no ambiguity, doubt or confusion. Fravor’s wingman told me, and Fravor agreed, “We didn’t stand a chance against it.” I cannot imagine Navy F-18 pilots saying that about any Russian or Chinese fighter. These sobering words from badass Navy combat pilots should be taken to heart by DoD officials and Congress.

Indeed, the radical and technologically superior nature of these craft is a common theme for Navy pilots on both coasts. In the famous “Gimbal” video posted by The New York Times, one of the pilots is heard to exclaim, “There’s a whole fleet of them out there!” He was referring to a V-shaped formation of smaller craft approaching the fighters as they observed a larger “mothership” in the video. At close range, these bizarre craft appear to be black cubes, the corners of which are touching the inside of transparent spheres a mere six feet in diameter. There are no discernable air inlets, exhaust, wings, or means of lift or propulsion, yet they have been tracked at supersonic speeds and seem able to remain aloft indefinitely. They could hardly be more strange and alien in appearance or behavior. Yet an obdurate DoD bureaucracy is making almost no effort to determine the origin of these craft or their means of propulsion.

If we knew for certain that the Russian or Chinese militaries had leapfrogged the United States technologically, there would be an uproar, much as there was when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first man-made satellite. Fearful of falling behind, the public grew restive and Congress promptly responded by increasing spending for NASA and bolstering science-education programs. These initiatives paid handsome dividends 11 years later when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, arriving courtesy not only of a new space vehicle but thousands of patented new technologies that strengthened U.S. industry and leadership in science and technology.

Although it seems a major new technology gap has been identified, there is no discernible effort underway to verify the gap, much less close it. True, the Navy states that it is “updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities,” but little else has changed. No major investigations have been launched. There is no indication the DoD or intelligence community leadership is engaged. And there is still no process for collecting and integrating pertinent information about UFO/UAPs from the myriad agencies and departments that possess it (NASA, the National Reconnaissance Office, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the armed forces and others).

This paralysis is occurring at a time when the scientific community increasingly recognizes the possibility of humanity encountering probes from spacefaring civilizations. In fact, last year the House Committee on Space, Science and Technology directed NASA to begin looking for “technosignatures,” by which it means alien space probes. This is happening because many exobiologists now recognize probes are more efficient and effective than radio waves for purposes of space exploration or contact. As unlikely as it may seem, there is no denying the possibility that some UFO/UAPs encountered by our military are probes launched by distant civilizations.

While military personnel such as Fravor and Lt. Ryan Graves – an F-18 pilot who said UFOs followed his Navy strike group for months – are awed by the technology they observed, they are undeterred, eager to give chase both literally and figuratively. Reflecting on his encounter, Fravor told me, “I want to fly that thing!” He naturally expects his country to figure out where these things come from, why they are here and how they work. Fravor and his colleagues at least still have the right stuff, even if the hierarchy above them is lethargic and risk-averse.

If nothing else, the U.S. government could at least examine the data already collected by our highly capable spy systems during periods of significant UFO/UAP activity. For example, since we know multiple UAPs were operating in close proximity to the Nimitz Strike Group during the week of Nov. 14, 2004, analysts could review archived data collected by the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS), the global infrasound network of the International Monitoring System and various space-based electronic sensors. Limiting such reviews to narrow periods of time and location would keep the workload modest and manageable. Reviews of this kind for incidents occurring off the East Coast since 2015 should also be conducted. Direction from Congress or a senior administration official is all it would take to initiate the process.

Though Navy pilots have sounded the alarm – their testimony has appeared in print, online and on national television – there is still no sign that our massive DoD and intelligence bureaucracies, or our Congress, are seeking answers to the UFO/UAP mystery on behalf of military personnel who are potentially at risk from midair collisions if nothing else (one near miss by a Navy fighter has already been reported).

At the strategic level, isn’t it odd that illegal immigration is an emergency requiring DoD to forgo billions in spending yet no funds are available to investigate hypersonic platforms capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction across U.S. borders? Is there any way to overcome this dilemma?

Perhaps. With little effort or expense, the Trump administration could request a National Intelligence Estimate on “anomalous aerospace threats” or something with a similarly appropriate and sober title. Alternatively, Congress could simply direct the defense secretary or director of national intelligence to prepare a threat assessment. These are modest, inexpensive proposals for assessing the serious concerns expressed by military personnel.

Another way to accommodate the political sensitivities of officials repelled by the UFO stigma would be to form an independent panel under the auspices of the National Science Foundation (NSF). There is no shortage of cleared scientists in industry and academia who could serve on such a body. The administration could undertake this initiative on its own, or Congress could pass a measure to establish and fund it.

Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are tragic examples of intelligence failures that could have been avoided. Our continuing inability to identify the radical aerospace vehicles violating our airspace is an ongoing intelligence failure, one that arguably requires written notification to the House and Senate intelligence committees pursuant to Section 502 of the National Security Act of 1947.

While Congress has not received a formal notification regarding this failure, and perhaps never will, it is certainly aware that DoD is unable to identify these aircraft or prevent them from violating U.S. airspace. The question now is whether our leaders will remain passive out of concern for outdated stigmas or act on behalf of our servicemembers and our nation.

If we fail to thoroughly investigate, in the wake of reliable pilot reporting and the Navy’s admission, it can only be because policymakers are prioritizing political expediency over national security – a state of affairs reminiscent of the declining Roman Empire, when the needs and concerns of troops in the field were given short shrift by maneuvering politicians in Rome. Hopefully, support for our troops is one thing that still unites us.

In May 2019, a spokesman for the US Navy stated: "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…"  While this historic admission is concerning, the US Navy’s public recognition of the problem is an excellent first step towards mobilizing the military and the Intelligence Community to find answers regarding the identify of these vehicles and determine whether they pose a threat to the United States.

Because this phenomenon has only recently been acknowledged, little if any effort has been made to use “national technical means” for purposes of identifying or tracking these objects.  This is unfortunate since there are massive stores of intelligence data already collected by US intelligence systems that can be accessed and correlated with events such as the interaction of the USS Nimitz Carrier Battle Group with multiple UAPs in November 2004; or the ongoing events in restricted military airspace off the East Coast of the United States.  

Regrettably, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Program (AATIP) was unable to obtain the cooperation required to access the systems and databases identified below due to bureaucratic intransigence.  Therefore, to the best of my knowledge, these systems and databases represent potentially critical, unexamined sources of official information regarding the UAP phenomenon.  Among other things, these vast repositories of data could yield crucial information on UAPs including: speed, acceleration, maneuverability, size, atmospheric effects, shape and possibly even their bases of origin. 

Hopefully, the US officials charged with investigating the UAP phenomenon will receive the support needed to access and analyze data from these and other sources. Since billions have already been spent collecting the information, it seems wasteful and inappropriate not to allocate whatever modest sums may be required to help to resolve vital questions regarding the origin and capabilities of the unidentified vehicles that continue to violate US airspace with impunity.

A. Collection Systems

1. The Global Infrasound Acoustic Monitoring Network This system is comprised of 60 stations operating in 35 countries that monitor low-frequency pressure waves in the atmosphere. Although built for the purpose of detecting nuclear explosions in support of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, it reportedly also has the ability to detect and track bolides and other objects transiting the atmosphere. For example, US researchers have recently established that this system can monitor missile launches. There have long been rumors suggesting that environmental scientists participating in CIA’s experimental MEDEA program (an effort to determine if US intelligence systems could further the scientific understanding of climate change) detected anomalous objects entering earth’s atmosphere then maneuvering at high speeds.  While this may be mere rumor, contact with the appropriate officials at LLNL who operate this system may help DoD determine whether this unique capability can contribute to the US government’s understanding of the UAP phenomenon.

2. The U.S. Space Surveillance Network consists of at least 29 distinct world-wide space surveillance systems, including the world’s most powerful radars, among them site C-6 at Eglin Air Force base, which can reportedly detect a basketball- sized object 22,000 miles away. Other components of this integrated system include the DARPA Space Surveillance Telescope (SST), capable of rapidly scanning large regions of space and monitoring distant and fast-moving objects such as asteroids. The SST holds the world record for distinct observations in a single year, logging 6.97 million observations in 2015. Other notable systems on the network, some of which are known to have acquired UAP data, include the ground-based optical GEODSS space surveillance system (which detects “uncorrelated targets”); the space-based Geosynchronous Space-Based Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP); and the Navy’s stunning sea-based X-band radar system. The Combined Space Operations Center (formerly the Joint Space Operations Center) at Vandenburg AFB, and the Space Control Center at Cheyenne Mountain, are both repositories of data from the US Space Surveillance Network that have the potential to provide fresh insights into the UAP phenomenon.

3. The Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) is a network of satellites in low-earth, highly-elliptical and geosynchronous orbits that together provide extensive coverage of infrared (heat) sources, particularly in the Northern hemisphere.  Originally designed many decades ago to detect missile launches from the former Soviet Union and China, this highly sophisticated system continues to evolve and improve. Not only are the satellites improving in terms of reliability and resolution, but new algorithms and other techniques are improving the sophistication and ground-based exploitation of SBIR’s data.  The USAF currently operates an “Overhead Persistent Infrared Battlespace Awareness Center” at Buckley AFB as well as a new “Data Utilization Lab.” Although UAPs generally seem to lack exhaust plumes or strong heat signatures, there are numerous reports in the open source literature claiming that the SBIRs system has recorded unidentified objects that entered earth's atmosphere but, unlike meteors, then maneuvered or changed direction.  Regardless of the veracity of such reports, algorithmic searches of vast SBIR’s databases could provide new insights into the UAP phenomenon.  To cite a simple example, no effort has been made to date even to see if there are correlations between launches at Chinese or Russian military facilities, or from Russian or Chinese ships, and the subsequent appearance of UAPs over US shores.

4. Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA radars) In addition to the Navy’s Aegis radar systems, all military platforms outfitted with AESA radars are potentially valuable sources of information because they too, much like the Aegis system, are able to track low radar-cross section UAPS over large areas.  The Navy’s new policy guidance concerning UAP encounters will cause more pilots of AESA equipped aircraft to pursue these vehicles in an effort to acquire and submit useful information. Retroactive analysis of AESA data is also feasible, although we don’t know how long this information is stored or how well it is indexed.  Regardless, kudos to the U.S. Navy for issuing new guidance that will generate more reports to include more AESA radar tracking information.

5. Aegis We know from the Nimitz incident that the Navy’s Aegis radar systems are capable of tracking low radar cross-section UAPs that operate at extreme altitudes and velocities. Clearly, the power and precision of the Aegis system, now widely deployed in the fleet, makes it a potentially valuable source of information. For example, a review of the data from Aegis-equipped ships deployed off the East Coast during periods of frequent contact with UAPs could add important pieces to the analytical puzzle that needs to be assembled. Deploying Aegis-equipped ships to "hot spots" off the East could prove highly valuable. However, some former USS Princeton crew members have openly stated that the Aegis radar data collected during the incidents in November 2004 was soon removed from the ship by individuals who arrived aboard the Princeton by helicopter shortly after the "Tic Tac" encounters occurred. That critical radar data still appears to be missing.  Moreover, the deck logs of the USS Princeton for November 2004 are also strangely and inexplicably missing from the National Archives, raising the extraordinary possibility that some secretive USG component is working to conceal UAP incidents and information.  The DoD and/or Intelligence oversight committees on Capitol Hill should seek an explanation for these strange occurrences, something easy for them to do. If there is an effort to suppress or conceal UAP data, then we have a situation in which, at a minimum, two USG entities are working at cross-purposes. Whether this is really occurring, and if so on whose authority, are issues that will need to be promptly resolved if DoD is to make serious progress in understanding the UAP phenomenon.

6. The FAA’s long-range radar systems are tied into NORAD through the Joint Surveillance System. NORAD is privy to all of the data from the FAA sites and maintains that data for at least 10 years if not longer. This information was available from the 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron at Hill AFB in Utah until 2014. At that time the radar data storage and analysis activity was transferred to Langley AFB and the data was no longer available to the public.  However that should pose no problem for USG officials.

B. Databases

1. NORAD maintains a database called the “Unknown Track Reporting Database” and/or “Unknown Track Reporting System” that is clearly pertinent to assessing the UAP phenomenon.  To better understand the reporting process and the data it produces it is worth quoting from a NORAD reply to questions posed by the House Government Reform Committee in the wake of the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001: “Unknowns that cannot be identified are classified as “NORAD Remaining Unknown.” Unknown track reports are forwarded to the NORAD-USNORTHCOM Center for Aerospace Analysis, and new information that is discovered during these reviews is forwarded to CMOC and the Center for Aerospace Analysis.” Note: There is reason to believe that names of the organizations above may have changed due to reorganization, but the functions are still performed. According to additional Congressional testimony provided by NORAD, Unknown Track data is collated at a regional or sector level and also at a consolidated (i.e. NORAD HQ) level.  The NORAD reporting contains detailed information on the behavior of “Unknown Tracks” and “NORAD Remaining Unknowns” including: date and time; detection sites involved; and whether combat aircraft were scrambled to engage detected targets.   We know from the data provided by NORAD to Congress that even after a very thorough vetting of each unknown track there were still 1,966 unknown tracks from January of 1992 through October 2003. Notably, most NORAD air defense radars are not of the quality of Aegis or AESA system radars and are therefore unlikely to detect low radar cross-section vehicles such as the now famous “Tic Tac” vehicles encountered by the Nimitz battle group.  In the Nimitz case the Navy’s conventional airborne E2-C Hawkeye air defense radar struggled to detect the Tic Tacs even at relatively close range and only managed sporadic radar contact. To be fair, it is also important to note that there are millions of flights tracked by NORAD every year, so the percentage of unknown tracks is very small, on the order of one-half of one percent. Reports prepared by NORAD’s Center for Aerospace Analysis are not routinely published or distributed within the US government but reportedly are available upon request.

2. Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) who staff the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) airspace management sites (airports, alert centers, etc.) operate under a series of FAA Orders. These orders establish doctrine and the "Area Airspace Management System (AAMS)". On occasion, air traffic controllers at FAA sites coordinate with the USAF and NORAD when combat jets are scrambled to visually identify unknown objects causing NORAD alerts and “Unknown Tracks.” The FAA designates these object-generated radar hits as “Tracks of Interest”. The Aeronautical Data Team is responsible for the collection, validation and quality control of aeronautical information disseminated in support of National Airspace System (NAS) operations.  Information provided includes a physical description; geographical position; and operational characteristics and status of all components of the NAS.

3. OPREP-3 Reports are an additional source of information distinct from NORAD aerospace defense reporting. This system is used by all branches of the military to report “urgent” and “ongoing” events to higher echelons.  In the case of the USAF, OPREP-3 reports are sent to the Air Force Service Watch Cell (AFSWC) and the National Military Command Center (MNCC) among others. Two categories of OPREP-3 reports seem most likely to be pertinent to the UAP phenomenon, category 9B “Unauthorized Air Vehicle / Military Installation Airspace Violation/Intrusion” and 9F, “Vital Intelligence Sightings/ Intelligence Reports.” There have been numerous instances over the years of UAP intrusions over military facilities, some which I can personally attest to or am aware of with one degree of separation.  For example, in March of 1984, a close friend who was training to become a naval aviator called me excitedly from Pensacola NAS to relate an event involving a UAP flying circles around a USN aircraft in broad daylight over the base.  Numerous incidents involving UAPs and military facilities have been reported by retired military personnel and validated via the FOIA process. These reports include verified UAP overflights of nuclear weapons and nuclear storage facilities.  Consequently, a review of these cases might help shed important new light on the question of reported UAP interest in the US strategic triad and nuclear chain of command (Note: I have not listed undersea monitoring capabilities due to classification issues although they are obviously highly pertinent to this question).

Other Potential Opportunities Allies:  The UAP phenomenon off the East Coast of the US in recent years is unprecedented in terms of the number and appearance of the vehicles involved as well as their persistence in a specific geographic region.  It suggests not only a new level of brazenness or contempt for US defense and intelligence capabilities, but also the possibility that operations have advanced to a new stage towards some as yet unknown objective. This brazenness, combined with the fact that these vehicles are being encountered in the CENTCOM AOR, adds further reason to query allied nations, especially those with similarly capable radar and sensor systems to determine the global scope and scale of this activity. Moreover, if we were able to determine, either unilaterally or through consultation, whether Russia or China are experiencing this uncanny phenomenon as well, it would go a long way toward winnowing the already narrow range of possibilities regarding their origin.  DIA should be able to assist with this issue. ELINT/COMINT: To the best of my knowledge there has been little if any fruitful collection in these domains against the UAP objects themselves, a fact which is not surprising.  Whoever is designing and operating these craft has wildly surpassed the US in aerospace technology and their communications technologies are likely to be equally radical, unfamiliar and more highly evolved.  I use the term “evolved” deliberately, because if Darwinian principles are as universal as gravity, and the intelligence designing these craft is the product of a far longer and more rigorous evolutionary history, then by necessity they would most likely have had to place a premium on concealment in order to survive.  Much as Dr. Hal Putoff’s patented “quantum” communications signals cannot be detected by conventional EM systems, whatever technology they are using is likely to be impervious to our detection and intercept capabilities. This is also one likely reason that to date the SETI project has not borne fruit. A chilling corollary to this logic is that at this point in this universe’s evolution, civilizations that broadcast in the clear do not last long.  Hence perhaps the long silence for SETI. The one minor exception regarding UAP ELINT collection that might be exploited are those instances when the objects emit signals intended to interfere with or manipulate US electronic gear.  For example, the Super Hornet that took the now famous FLIR video of the Tic Tac object in 2004 reportedly was jammed when it attempted to get a “lock” on the target. US aircraft therefore may be able to provoke emissions from these vehicles, although the value of collecting such transmissions is unclear. Setting aside COMINT/ELINT against the UAPs themselves, the SIGINT system should be tasked for any information that would shed light on UAP production or detection by potential US adversaries. HUMINT: There are conflicting accounts of the degree to which pertinent information is available but clearly worth pursuing.

Conclusion Aggressive tactical collection to obtain better optical, MASINT and other intelligence is necessary, but older data that can provide a time-series perspective may help answer vital questions such as:

• Are different kinds or types of vehicles associated with different locations, time-frames or types of targets?  If so, are we possibly dealing with multiple, potentially even competing actors?

• Is there a pattern that suggests an ongoing effort to monitor the US strategic triad or nuclear command and control?

• Is there a pattern that suggests an effort to monitor US weapons development and deployment?

• Is there a correlation between advances in US technology and the presence of UAPs?

The UAP issue is already uniquely challenging.  It lacks recognition or understanding; it lacks acceptance; there is a serious stigma to overcome; and even more difficult is the deceptively serious challenge of helping government officials and the public process such incongruous, disorienting, disruptive and potentially disturbing information.  Finally, if these are vehicles created by another species there is the wholly unprecedented challenge of seeking to study an intelligence greater than our own that apparently does not wish to communicate or be understood. To even stand a chance of success in this scenario it seems trite to suggest that we need to draw on all pertinent information available and apply the best and brightest analytical minds available.

Read the original article on The Hill.

In what could be a precursor to further stunning developments, the U.S. Navy has publicly acknowledged that the advanced aircraft depicted in several recently declassified gun-camera videos are UFOs, or what the Navy prefers to call “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon” (UAPs). “The Navy designates the objects contained in these videos as unidentified aerial phenomena,” acknowledged Joseph Gradisher, spokesman for the deputy chief of naval operations, referring to the bizarre vehicles that have brazenly operated in restricted U.S. military airspace.

Strangely, this shocking announcement seems to have scarcely been noticed by Congress or the Trump administration. Is the information too jarring and radical to process? Are U.S. government officials in denial? One can only wonder, given the glaring disconnect between the Navy’s announcement and the limited government actions to protect U.S. military personnel and the nation as a whole.

The vehicles observed and recorded by U.S. Navy fighter pilots seem impervious to altitude or the elements; they are able to maneuver above 80,000 feet; they can hover and then instantly accelerate to supersonic and even hypersonic speeds; they have very low radar cross-sections and use a means of propulsion and control that does not appear to involve combustion, exhaust, rotors, wings or flaps.

Since the Navy asserts these are not U.S. aircraft, we are confronted by the daunting prospect that a potential adversary of the United States has achieved the ability to render our most sophisticated aircraft and air defense systems obsolete. Much like the Japanese reacting to the appearance of Admiral Perry’s steam-powered fleet in Tokyo Bay in the 1850s, it would seem a matter of utmost urgency to determine who is operating these craft, how they work and the intentions of those commanding them.

I’ve interviewed numerous active-duty and retired military personnel who have encountered these mysterious vehicles. Without exception they express grave concern for their colleagues and near disbelief that our government is not reacting more vigorously.

This situation is not altogether unprecedented. Some 60 years ago Americans were shocked when the Soviet Union orbited Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. Sputnik garnered sustained front-page coverage, however, and Congress promptly acted on Americans’ concerns by approving increased space and defense expenditures and enhanced education programs for math and science. The concerns roused by Sputnik spurred America to enter “the space race.” The nation rallied to the cause and the commitment paid off when astronaut Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon a mere 12 years later.

Consider by contrast our government’s tepid response to the latest news about UAPs. Some congressional oversight committees have asked for and received briefings, but none has held a hearing, either open or closed; none has appropriated funds for collection or analysis; none has even asked for a report or a threat assessment. Nor have Congress members expressed concern over apparently being kept in the dark on this issue for years by the executive branch, a situation that changed only after a small private organization — To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, which I advise on national security affairs — made Department of Defense gun-camera footage available to the press and to Congress.

Why are we not analyzing the vast quantities of data already collected by America’s vast sensor networks, already bought and paid for, to see what light that data might shed on the issue? Government paralysis is something we’ve grown accustomed to on domestic matters but, when it affects national security as well, we truly are a nation at risk.

Indeed, examination of major US intelligence failures — from Pearl Harbor to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Iraqi WMD — shows that, in each case, we had information that, properly analyzed and acted upon, could have prevented disaster. We’re at a similar place today, with ample warning lights flashing but no effective effort to pool relevant data from the myriad services and agencies that possess it.

The National Reconnaissance Office, Defense Intelligence Agency, CIA, Air Force and Navy, FBI and National Security Agency — there is no place in the U.S. government where all UAP information comes together. In that regard, the present situation is akin to counterterrorism before the establishment of the National Counterterrorism Center. Thankfully, new military spending is not required; we simply need to implement an effective strategy for collection and analysis using existing resources.

President Eisenhower, renowned for his military accomplishments as well as his valuable warning about the military-industrial complex, gave a speech in 1958 in my hometown of Ligonier, Pa., commemorating the 200th anniversary of Fort Ligonier. Referring to the Americans who settled the frontier, he said: “They were not turned back by terror of the unknown; they did not succumb to the tensions and privations encountered beyond the fringes of civilization. They moved ahead as companions in adventure, well-knowing that danger is often the inseparable partner of progress and honor.”

Thankfully, most of us no longer suffer the intense hardships and privations our forebears endured. However, we must still confront the unknown. Policymakers should pay close attention to the experiences of U.S. military personnel, investigate thoroughly, and respond effectively. If they fail to do so, our country may again pay a tragic price.