Pentagon’s UFO Chief to Testify Before Congress

A Senate subcommittee on Wednesday will hear testimony from the Pentagon’s leading UFO expert, Sean Kirkpatrick, who leads the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO.

Though Kirkpatrick’s submitted testimony is not yet public, he recently co-authored a draft paper with Harvard professor Avi Loeb that is likely to prompt questions from senators. The paper puts forth the theory that recent unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs the Defense Department is studying could be “extraterrestrial technological probes” sent from a “parent craft.” It suggests interstellar objects like the oddly-moving “Oumuamua,” discovered by astronomers in 2017, could be parent crafts that release “autonomous probes equipped with artificial intelligence” that could self-replicate should the right biological material be available.

“Within a close range to a star, extraterrestrial technological probes could use starlight to charge their batteries and liquid water as their fuel. This would explain why they would target the habitable region around stars, where liquid water may exist on the surface of rocky planets with an atmosphere, like the Earth,” the paper states. “Habitable planets would be particularly appealing to trans-medium probes, capable of moving between space, air and water.”

AARO was stood up by the Pentagon in July 2022—through Congress’ passage of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act—to expand the scope and study of UAPs. Specifically, its mission is “to detect, identify and attribute objects of interest,” including “anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects.”

Kirkpatrick, AARO’s director, has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime intelligence professional, having served at multiple intelligence agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, as well as positions at U.S. Strategic Command, US SPACECOM and the National Security Council.