A new Pentagon office set up to track reports of unidentified flying objects has received “several hundreds” of new reports, but has not seen evidence so far of alien life, the agency’s leadership told reporters Friday.
“We have not seen anything that would lead us to believe any of the objects we have seen are of alien origin,” said Ronald Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence.
“I have not seen anything … to suggest there has been an alien visitation or alien crash,” Moultrie added. Neither Moultrie nor Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the newly reorganized All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), would say how many of the roughly 400 cases under investigation have been identified. They said that information would be contained in a report to be released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The latest public accounting dates back to 2021 when a Pentagon official said one out of 144 cases had been resolved. Asked if any of the cases investigated to date indicated any threat to national security, Kirkpatrick said “yes,” but Moultrie jumped in to add that any unauthorized object in or near restricted area — a military base, training area, etc. — would be assumed hostile until it was identified.
The Pentagon’s investigation covers incidents reported since 1996, but language in the new defense spending bill would extend that 75 years into the past.
The name has been changed from Unidentified Aerial Phenomena to All Domain Anomaly to account for the fact that some of the investigations deal with unexplained sightings underwater, on the surface and in space, although most of the reports still deal with aerial phenomena.
The AARO was set up in July and is responsible for not only tracking unidentified objects in the sky, but also underwater or in space — or potentially an object that has the ability to move from one domain to the next.
The office was established following more than a year of attention on unidentified flying objects that military pilots have observed but have sometimes been reluctant to report due to fear of stigma.
In June 2021 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reported that between 2004 and 2021, there were 144 such encounters, 80 of which were captured on multiple sensors.
Since then, “we’ve had lots more reporting,” said anomaly office director Sean Kirkpatrick.
David Martin contributed to this report.
