By Tim Binnall
The Department of Defense provided an update on their new office tasked with investigating unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) and said that, although the group has collected a bevy of reports to date, there is no indication that the phenomenon, as seen by military pilots, is alien in nature. The fresh insights from the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was formed back in July out of a previous effort launched in November of 2021, came by way of a press conference this past Friday. At the gathering, office director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick explained that they have " established mechanisms to ensure that we could begin to receive current reports," and that they now have "significantly more" cases to look at.
When pressed to say how many reports have been collected, Kirkpatrick seemed reticent to provide a precise number, though noted that it was "several hundreds" more than the Pentagon cited in their 2021 UAP report. Of course, the matter most on everyone's mind is the origin of these unusual objects and the possibility that they could be coming from out of this world. To that end, when asked if, among the sea of cases they have collected, there is any indication that "any one of these anomalies is a space alien," the officials overseeing AARO were rather definitive in their response with Ronald Moultrie, under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, saying "at this time, the answer's no, we have nothing."
Perhaps realizing that, for many people, the proverbial extraterrestrial hypothesis lies at the heart of the UAP mystery and that countless individuals suspect that the government is covering up an alien presence, he went on to stress that the office is committed to "openness and objectivity" as well as transparency. Moultrie also offered the assurance that "if we find something like that, we will look at it and analyze it and take the appropriate actions," though he did not indicate what those next steps would entail. For his part, Kirkpatrick echoed that sentiment, saying "as a physicist, I have to adhere to the scientific method, and I will follow that data and science wherever it goes."
With ETs having seemingly been ruled out for now, Moultrie later mused that "there's not a single answer for all of this, right, there's gonna be lots of different answers," and that among the possibilities were adversarial technology as well as prosaic explanations such as balloons or benign drones that had flown astray. That said, Kirkpatrick did concede that, in some instances, "there are things that appear to demonstrate interesting flight dynamics" which would seem to fall outside the bounds of those aforementioned groups and "we are fully investigating and researching" those particular cases. Though he also noted that the unusual behavior of these UAPs could be an observational error rather than a display of their abilities.
Of interest to longtime UFO researchers was a query regarding whether or not the US government is in possession of downed alien craft from long ago. On this matter, Moultrie explained that "we are going back and trying to understand all the compartmented programs that this department has had" and that, in the process of that review, "I have not seen anything in those holdings to date that would suggest that there has been an alien visitation, an alien crash, or anything like that." He went to clarify that 'holdings' meant all manner of documentation from "memos that somebody may have written" to "things that people scratch on pieces of paper."
While those hoping for an answer to the UFO riddle may find the Pentagon's update to be rather dispiriting, seasoned students of the phenomenon can at least take solace in the fact that the DoD appears to be conducting a genuine investigation and keeping people informed about it, which is a breath of fresh air after decades wherein the topic was verboten. By the end of the year, AARO is expected to release a public report similar to the classified one issued to Congress back in October which will likely shed additional light on their work that has really only just begun. So, as always with the UFO phenomenon, patience remains a prerequisite in pursuing the mystery.