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.

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1 Senator Gillibrand: Great.
2 Mr. Kirkpatrick: What I would ask, though, is as you
3 all continue to refer to us and refer witnesses to us I
4 would appreciate if you do that. Please try to prioritize
5 the ones that you want to do because we do have a small
6 research staff dealing with that.
7 Senator Gillibrand: Thank you. And then do you have
8 any plans for public engagement that you want to share now
9 that you think it is important that the public knows what
10 the plan is?
11 Mr. Kirkpatrick: So we have a number of public
12 engagement recommendations, according to our strategic plan.
13 All of those have been submitted for approval. They have to
14 be approved by USDINS. We are waiting for approval to go do
15 that.
16 Senator Gillibrand: Okay. I will follow up on that.
17 And then my last question is about the integration of
18 department's UAP operations, research, analysis, and
19 strategic communications. During the recent UAP incidents
20 over North America it did not appear that you were allowed
21 to play that role.
22 Do you agree that the public perception is generally
23 that you and your office did not appear to play a major role
24 in the department's response to the detection of objects
25 over North America? 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

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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.