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PA-AARO RoundTableTranscript 11-15-24 (FOIA 25-F-3931)

Office of the Secretary of Defense · 2024-11-15 · 40 pages · text from the file's own layer

This Office of the Secretary of Defense FOIA release (25-F-3931) holds Public Affairs emails from November 14 and 15, 2024, plus the transcript of a media roundtable with AARO Director Jon Kosloski on the FY24 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP. Kosloski said AARO had received over 1,600 reports and found no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology. He said the Langley incidents were UAV activity. The release also includes a Hill article covering the report.

DR. KOSLOSKI: Yes.
Q: I'm sorry if I've missed it before, but what is AARO or your definition for breakthrough
technology?
DR. KOSLOSKI: So lots of people, lots of organizations have different definitions. And the
definition, the working definition that we've been using informally inside of our office, and we
are working on more formal definitions for the different domains for space, the air domain and
the undersea domain. But the general definition is beyond state of the art today and beyond
where we think that we could get in the next couple years.
So we keep an eye on the capabilities of ourselves, our partners and everyone else at the
academic and the very technical level. And then if it's beyond that, then we would say that's a
breakthrough technology.
STAFF: Phil.
Q: Just a quick follow-up on your answer to Konstantin.
DR. KOSLOSKI: Yes.
Q: So, if you need to -- I mean, I guess a lot of Americans have this view of the government as
kind of all-knowing and being able to ascertain, you know, everything, particularly when they
think of NSA and other agencies.
DR. KOSLOSKI: If only.
Q: And so, I guess if you could help us explain to readers, you know, what is it about these
phenomena that -- that, you know, reach the limits of government of the understanding of the
professionals in the government and why it would be necessary to bring in academics? That'd
be helpful for us.
DR. KOSLOSKI: Great question. So following on Brandi's question, if it's a breakthrough
technology by its very nature, we don't know how it would be done, right? If we knew how to
do it, we'd be doing it already and it wouldn't be a breakthrough technology. And so, usually
those breakthroughs are coming from the academics. Historically, either in science or
engineering, the breakthroughs come from academia and then they go into industry and then
they come into government.
The government's employing a lot of scientists like myself and others who understand a fair
amount about the science. But being able to extend that to something that we could not have
imagined when we were in school or when we were in training is a very difficult process. And so
we're going to have to pull in those folks that they spend all day every day just thinking of what

Cases discussed

About this file

FOIA release, from the osd collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 40 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.