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Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)

The Pentagon is concealing “quite a number” of crashed alien spaceships and even dead extraterrestrial entities, former US Air Force intelligence officer and whistleblower David Grusch told NewsNation on 05 June 2023. The crash retrieval program - so secret even the Pentagon’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) task force has been refused access - has for decades been involved in “retrieving non-human-origin technical vehicles,” Grusch explained. He added that some are distinguishable from human-made craft by their morphology and the types of materials, with “unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures.”

“Naturally when you recover something that’s either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots,” he told the news outlet. While Grusch served as the liaison to the UAP Task Force for the National Reconnaissance Office from 2019 to 2021 and subsequently ran UAP analysis for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, he admitted to NewsNation that he had never actually seen any of the spacecraft or their otherworldly operators.

Instead, he claimed, “plenty of current and former senior intelligence officers that came to me, many which I knew almost my whole career,” had “confided in me” regarding their involvement in the program. “They told me, based on their oral testimony, and they provided me documents and other proof that there was a program the UAP task force” - even individuals with Top Secret/SCI security clearances like himself - were “not let into.”

This was enough to make him a believer, he said. “We’re definitely not alone. Absolutely the data points empirically [sic], we’re not alone.” Grusch told The Debrief he filed a whistleblower complaint with Congress, claiming he had suffered illegal retaliation for sharing what he knew about the UFO crash retrieval program with lawmakers and the Intelligence Committee Inspector General. However, he said, he couldn’t share that information with the public because of national security.

In a statement responding to the disclosure, the Pentagon claimed its own All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) had not discovered “any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.” However, the program Grusch described operates at a higher level of secrecy than AARO.

He blamed a “sophisticated disinformation campaign targeting the US populace which is extremely unethical and immoral” for the fact that Americans remained largely in the dark about the alleged visitors from outer space.

Unidentified flying object (commonly abbreviated as UFO or U.F.O.) is the popular term for any apparent aerial phenomenon whose cause cannot be easily or immediately identified by the observer. The United States Air Force, which coined the term in 1952, initially defined UFOs as those objects that remain unidentified after scrutiny by expert investigators, though today the term UFO is colloquially used to refer to any unidentifiable sighting regardless of whether it has been investigated.

UFO reports increased precipitously after the first widely publicized U.S. sighting, reported by private pilot Kenneth Arnold in June 24 1947, that gave rise to the popular terms "flying saucer" and "flying disc." The term UFO is popularly taken as a synonym for alien spacecraft and generally most discussions of UFOs revolve around this presumption. UFO enthusiasts and devotees have created organizations, religious cults have adopted extraterrestrial themes, and in general the UFO concept has evolved into a prominent mythos in modern culture.

Some investigators now prefer to use the broader term unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP), to avoid the confusion and speculative associations that have become attached to UFO. Another widely known acronym for UFO in Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian is OVNI (Objeto Volador No Identificado, with variant regional spellings).

From 1947 to 1969, the U.S. Air Force investigated reported UFO objects and sightings under Project Blue Book. This project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was terminated on December 17, 1969, based on an evaluation of a report prepared by the University of Colorado entitled "Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects," a review of the University of Colorado's report by the National Academy of Sciences, previous UFO studies, and U.S. Air Force experience investigating UFO reports during the 1940s through the 1960s. With the termination of Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force regulation establishing and controlling the program for investigating and analyzing UFOs was rescinded. Documentation regarding the former Blue Book investigation was permanently transferred to the Modern Military Branch of the National Archives and Records Service. The Project Blue Book files consist of 61 feet of case files, 20 reels of motion pictures, 23 items of sound recording, and 8,360 photograph images.

In July 1995, the General Accounting Office compiled a report to the Honorable Steven H. Schiff, House of Representatives, which illustrated the results of an extensive search for government records related to the alleged July 1947 crash near Roswell. Their search efforts included the examination of a wide range of classified and unclassified documents dating from July 1947 through the 1950s. The GAO's search encompassed records maintained by numerous organizations in New Mexico and elsewhere through the Department of Defense, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council.

In July 2022, the Defense Department set up the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office to, among other things, identify unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, that might pose a threat to national security and the operations of the military and federal agencies. UAP are anything in space, in the air, on land, in the sea or under the sea that can't be identified and might pose a threat to U.S. military installations or operations.

Sean M. Kirkpatrick, director of AARO, testified 20 April 2023 at the Senate Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. "We cannot answer decades of questions about UAP all at once, but we must begin somewhere. While I assure you that AARO will follow scientific evidence wherever it leads, I ask for your patience as DOD first prioritizes the safety and security of our military personnel and installations in all domains," Kirkpatrick said.

"I want to underscore today that only a very small percentage of UAP reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as 'anomalous.' The majority of unidentified objects reported to AARO demonstrate mundane characteristics of balloons, unmanned aerial systems, clutter, natural phenomena or other readily explainable sources," he said. "Humans are subject to deception and illusions, sensors to unexpected responses and malfunctions and, in some cases, intentional interference," he said.

Kirkpatrick shared a video depicting an unidentified object with an apparent atmospheric wake or cavitation trailing it as it moves. An MQ-9 forward-looking infrared video sensor captured this footage in South Asia as it was recording another MQ-9. AARO assesses that the object likely is a commercial aircraft and that the trailing cavitation is a sensor artifact resultant of video compression. The apparent back-and-forth motion is an artifact of the longer focal length and the sensor attempting to zoom in on the fast-moving UAP, rather than the MQ-9.

In a clip was taken by an MQ-9 in the Middle East, AARO assessed the object in the clip is not exhibiting anomalous behavior, though the object remained unidentified. This video was a representative example of many of the cases AARO receives where there is limited data surrounding the observation. These cases were retained in AARO's active archive pending the discovery of additional information that may lead to case resolution.

"I should also state clearly for the record that in our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics," Kirkpatrick said.

On 08 March 2024 the department publicly released the first volume of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office's Historical Record Report, which reviews the record of U.S. government pertaining to unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP. In completing this report, AARO reviewed classified and unclassified archives dating back to 1945, conducted dozens of interviews and partnered with officials across the DoD and the interagency. To date, AARO has found no verifiable evidence for claims that the U.S. government or private companies have access to, or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology. AARO has found no evidence that any U.S. government investigation, academic-sponsored research or official review panel has confirmed that any siting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology.