Documents / Official release

Office of the Secretary of Defense: 02_Physical_Constraints_Paper

Department of Defense. Office of the Secretary of Defense. · 2023 · 6 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is a draft paper dated March 1, 2023, by Abraham (Avi) Loeb of Harvard's Galileo Project and Sean M. Kirkpatrick of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). AARO released it in full in February 2025. The paper derives physics-based limits on how highly maneuverable UAP could be interpreted. It argues that supersonic objects would produce fireballs, ionization and radar signatures. It concludes that when these signatures are missing, the distance and velocity estimates from single-site sensors may be inaccurate.

6
Frueh, C., Paul, S. M., & Fiedler, H. 2017, in Advanced
Maui Optical and Space Surveillance (AMOS)
Technologies Conference, ed. S. Ryan, 51
Guillochon, J., & Loeb, A. 2015a, ApJL, 811, L20,
doi: 10.1088/2041-8205/811/2/L20
—. 2015b, ApJ, 806, 124,
doi: 10.1088/0004-637X/806/1/124
Hoang, T., Lazarian, A., Burkhart, B., & Loeb, A. 2017,
ApJ, 837, 5, doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/aa5da6
Hoang, T., & Loeb, A. 2020, ApJL, 899, L23,
doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/abab0c
Hoang, T., Loeb, A., Lazarian, A., & Cho, J. 2018, ApJ,
860, 42, doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/aac3db
Hsu, D. C., Ford, E. B., & Terrien, R. 2020, MNRAS, 498,
2249, doi: 10.1093/mnras/staa2391
Lingam, M., & Loeb, A. 2018, Research Notes of the
American Astronomical Society, 2, 154,
doi: 10.3847/2515-5172/aadcf4
—. 2020, ApJ, 894, 36, doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab7dc7
Loeb, A. 2018, arXiv e-prints, arXiv:1804.03698.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.03698
Loeb, A. 2021, Galileo Project, Harvard.
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/
Loeb, A. 2022a, Astrobiology, 22, 1392,
doi: 10.1089/ast.2021.0193
—. 2022b, arXiv e-prints, arXiv:2210.01972,
doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2210.01972
Loeb, A. 2023, Interstellar Objects from Broken Spheres.
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/∼loeb/Dyson arXiv.pdf
Loeb, A., & Guillochon, J. 2016, Annals of Mathematical
Sciences and Applications, 1, 183,
doi: 10.4310/AMSA.2016.v1.n1.a5
Loeb, A., & Laukien, F. H. 2023, Journal of Astronomical
Instrumentation, 2340003,
doi: 10.1142/S2251171723400032
Loff, S. 2014, NASA’s search for asteroids to help protect
Earth and understand our history, NASA.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/
nasas-search-for-asteroids-to-help-protect-earth-and-understand-our-h
Madau, P., & Dickinson, M. 2014, ARA&A, 52, 415,
doi: 10.1146/annurev-astro-081811-125615
Seager, S., Turner, E. L., Schafer, J., & Ford, E. B. 2005,
Astrobiology, 5, 372, doi: 10.1089/ast.2005.5.372
Siraj, A., & Loeb, A. 2022a, ApJL, 941, L28,
doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/aca8a0
—. 2022b, Astrobiology, 22, 1459,
doi: 10.1089/ast.2021.0189
—. 2022c, ApJ, 939, 53, doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac8eac
Siraj, A., Loeb, A., & Gallaudet, T. 2022, arXiv e-prints,
arXiv:2208.00092, doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2208.00092
Surzhikov, S. T. 2018, Journal of Physics: Conference
Series, 1009, 012022,
doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/1009/1/012022
Talbert, T. 2020, New data confirm 2020 so to be 1960s
Upper Centaur Rocket Booster, NASA.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/
new-data-confirm-2020-so-to-be-the-upper-centaur-rocket-booster-fro
Tillinghast-Raby, A., Loeb, A., & Siraj, A. 2022, arXiv
e-prints, arXiv:2212.00839,
doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2212.00839
Tsiolkovsky, K. 2000, in Encyclopedia of Astronomy and
Astrophysics, ed. P. Murdin, 4067,
doi: 10.1888/0333750888/4067
Winn, J. N. 2023, The Little Book of Exoplanets
Zink, J. K., & Hansen, B. M. S. 2019, MNRAS, 487, 246,
doi: 10.1093/mnras/stz124602Page determined to be Unclassified
Review by Chief of Staff, AARO
IAW FY24 NDAA, Section 1841 (a)(1)(C)
Date: 2/5/2025

Cases discussed

About this file

Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 6 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.