Documents / Official release

Office of the Secretary of Defense: 022_SASC_Transcript_2023

Department of Defense. Office of the Secretary of Defense. · 2023 · 50 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is a stenographic transcript of an April 19, 2023 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, chaired by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, on the mission and budget of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. AARO released it in full in 2025. Director Sean Kirkpatrick testified that AARO has found no credible evidence of extraterrestrial activity and that most reports resolve into mundane objects. He also presented trend data and two declassified MQ-9 videos, one of which was resolved as a commuter aircraft.

  • p. 3 …Kirkpatrick is the director of the All-Domain 10 Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO. Congress established…
  • p. 7 …6 The recent downing of the Chinese surveillance balloon 7 and three other objects underscores the…
  • p. 11 …we will have greatly 19 advanced the capability of the entire United States 20 government, including…
  • p. 26 …A handful of them 8 have made it all the way out to the other side…
  • p. 27 …19 Is it possible that the Chinese or Russian advanced 20 technologies could be causing some…
  • p. 28 …17 The adversary is not waiting. They are advancing and 18 they are advancing quickly. If…
  • p. 30 …5 And, unfortunately, the existence of advanced UAPs in 6 the U.S. airspace and over…
  • p. 48 …our advanced weapons and 12 manufacturing industry, monitor it using advanced means like 13 the -- 14…
13
Scheduling@TP.One 800.FOR.DEPO
www.TP.One (800.367.3376)
1 When previously unknown objects are successfully identified
2 it is AARO's role to quickly and efficiently hand off such
3 readily explainable objects to the intelligence, law
4 enforcement, or operational safety communities for further
5 analysis and appropriate action.
6 In other words, AARO's mission is to turn UAP into SEP,
7 somebody else's problem. The U.S. government, the DOD, and
8 the IC in particular has tremendous capabilities to deal
9 with those encountered objects.
10 In the wake of the PRC HAB event the interagency is
11 working to better integrate and share information to address
12 identifiable stratospheric objects but that is not AARO's
13 lane.
14 Meanwhile, for the few cases in all domains -- space,
15 air, and sea -- that do demonstrate potentially anomalous
16 characteristics AARO exists to help the DOD, IC, and
17 interagency resolve those anomalous cases.
18 In doing so AARO is approaching these cases with the
19 highest level of objectivity and analytic rigor. This
20 includes physically testing and employing, modeling, and
21 simulation to validate our analyses and underlying theories,
22 then peer reviewing those results within the U.S.
23 government, industry partners, and appropriately cleared
24 academic institutions before reaching any conclusions.
25 I should also state clearly for the record that in our
Page determined to be Unclassified
Reviewed by Chief of Staff, AARO
IAW FY24 NDAA, Section 1841(a)(1)(C)
Date: 2/6/2025
022

Cases discussed

About this file

Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 50 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.