JOE KILIANY
On November 15th, 2023, the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government hosted a panel to discuss the U.S. government’s approach to analyzing unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).
Billed as “The Search for Clarity,” the event featured Sean Kirkpatrick, Director of the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), a group assigned to investigate all matters of UAPs; and Shane Harris, senior national security reporter at The Washington Post and author of The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State (2010). David Priess, a Hayden Center Senior Fellow, the Director of Intelligence for Bedrock Learning Inc., and a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst, moderated the discussion.
Dr. Priess began by asking how the investigation of UAP compares to other aspects of national security. Dr. Kirkpatrick responded by describing his experiences working on a range of national security issues at the intersection of science, technology, intelligence, and operations. He explained that establishing AARO required an understanding of each of those fields due to the topic’s overall complexity.
Dr. Priess followed, “How do you address the unknown?” Dr. Kirkpatrick responded, “This is looking at the unknown out in the world and trying to make sense of it, and that is the exciting part of this particular assignment.”
Mr. Harris then noted that the long-running interest of the press in UAP changed dramatically in 2017 when The New York Times broke a story that the Pentagon had a classified effort examining the subject. Mr. Harris said this story directly led to far more serious coverage of the issue by reputable national security reporters.
Dr. Priess continued by asking a series of questions about the make-up and mission of AARO. Dr. Kirkpatrick described the staff of his office as diverse in that it includes scientists, engineers, intelligence officers, pilots, and computer scientists. In addition, the office has liaisons with the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ensure effective integration across all communities affected by UAP. In terms of the office’s mission, Dr. Kirkpatrick said that not only is AARO responsible for investigating unidentified aerial phenomenon, but “anything in space or under the sea or anything that might be perceived as moving between these two” that is not initially understood by the person or sensor detecting it. “It does not mean that the phenomena are not understandable,” Dr. Kirkpatrick clarified. “It just means that initially, they don’t know what it looks like, what it is, or what it’s doing.”
Dr. Priess commented that while trying to understand UAP sounds somewhat different from other areas of intelligence, it’s very similar in that the goal is to reduce uncertainty. However, he added that fully resolving incidents involving UAP, as AARO is tasked with doing, must be incredibly complicated. Dr. Kirkpatrick agreed, stating that this was why the office quickly established an analytical framework. He noted that before AARO, no set method for analyzing UAP existed. The approach they created consists of two teams: a science and technical team and
an intelligence analysis team. Both look at reports received by the office and analyze them using their own methodologies, allowing for a holistic exploration of the event.
“Most of these things turn out to be very prosaic things that we can identify,” Dr. Kirkpatrick said. He noted that there are many “false alarms” when it comes to UAP because much of the information AARO gets is from sensors on military apparatuses that were not designed for intelligence or scientific purposes; the devices know an object is unidentified, which leads to it being reported as a UAP even when it quickly becomes clear what the object is. Dr. Kirkpatrick said that of the approximately 800 cases reported to AARO, only 2 to 4 percent necessitate an in-depth investigation.
Mr. Harris then compared AARO’s work to a journalist’s approach to a story. It starts with an inherently interesting event, which leads to the task of learning as much as possible about it. He also noted that advances in technology, like drones and the ubiquity of cameras, have made reporting on UAP somewhat more complicated. In addition, he commented that press coverage of the issue has become somewhat bifurcated, with one aspect looking at official approaches, such as the activities of AARO and congressional testimony. At the same time, the other involves talking to people who claim to have information about UAP.
“How do we verify the story of whistleblowers who have come forward with information they believe the government has about these crafts and what they are? That’s a really, really big challenge as a reporter,” Mr. Harris said. This prompted Dr. Priess to ask how AARO addresses whistleblowers from within the government who claim to have information about UAP-related events.
Dr. Kirkpatrick began by saying anyone who comes to AARO making such a claim has full whistleblower protections, and AARO has full authority across all relevant agencies to investigate their report. Primarily, the initial goal is acquiring information that can be investigated so that the office can learn enough to support the person’s story.
Dr. Kirkpatrick said that all of the information learned in these investigations is compiled into a two-part report, with the first volume scheduled for release in December 2023. Mr. Harris noted that although AARO has more immediate access to information due to security clearances and subpoena power, the press takes a very similar approach to whistleblowers and faces similar constraints. He noted that in the last six months, he has interviewed half a dozen people who claim to have knowledge of a reverse engineering program based on crashed material, but he has yet to report on it. “We are in the business of gathering and verifying information, and there has to be a rigor to that process; otherwise, the process is not credible,” Mr. Harris said.
When asked by Dr. Priess what he would most like to hear from Dr. Kirkpatrick to help him determine the veracity of reports he is investigating, Mr. Harris said he is most fascinated by the unresolved, unattributed objects AARO is analyzing and whether Dr. Kirkpatrick had any thoughts about what they might be. Dr. Kirkpatrick explained that in many cases, AARO will never get more data on events. Consequently, AARO will never be able to say, with any certainty, that they can resolve those cases. Dr. Kirkpatrick also stated that AARO has released videos of some such events so the public can see them. “If you’re asking me, is there something that is really, truly anomalous that we don’t know what it is yet and I don’t know what to do with it yet, [the answer is] no,” Dr. Kirkpatrick said.
Dr. Kirkpatrick went on to mention that AARO is meticulously analyzing some truly anomalous incidents to create an example of how the intelligence and scientific communities can work together to investigate unknown phenomena. Dr. Priess built off of this by asking what AARO does when they determine that the simplest answers do not apply and an object remains unknown, perhaps because something moves in a way that does not make sense based on what is currently known about technology. Dr. Priess noted that this sometimes prompts people to point to extraterrestrial technology because it may seem like the likeliest explanation. Dr. Kirkpatrick said there are a range of hypotheses for any event going from extraterrestrial technology to foreign intelligence services, with all of the known technological devices in between. Each of those hypotheses have “signatures associated with them,” Dr. Kirkpatrick said. He added that this is where the academic community comes into play when it comes to extraterrestrial technology. He explained that AARO has been trying to get scholars to write peer-reviewed papers on what such technology might look like. This would then provide a scientific grounding for the office to base a hypothesis.
“I can tell you for certain we have absolutely no evidence that anything matches the extraterrestrial hypothesis. We have no evidence of any of that,” Dr. Kirkpatrick said. He then went on to list state-of-the-art technology that is far more advanced than most people believe.
Dr. Priess commented that this answer is more unsettling than aliens because it makes it sound like some UAPs are national security threats requiring greater understanding. Dr. Kirkpatrick agreed, saying, “The best thing that could have happened in this job would have been to find the aliens. Because the alternative is exactly what you just said, and it is not a good thing.”
The panel then took questions from the audience on a range of issues, including AARO’s authority and access, its ability to verify and refute claims made by uncooperative whistleblowers, the make-up of AARO’s scientific experts, foreign observations of UAP, and the distinction between extraterrestrial intelligence and human intelligence.
Joe Killiany is an instructor in the English Department and a student in the Master of Public Policy program in the Schar School of Government at George Mason University.
A full video of the event is available on the Hayden Center’s YouTube page at: https://youtu.be/hlihF-GL2Ck?si=4NGtRnbc0yKt-ENf.
