Documents / Hearing transcript
This is the transcript of an April 19, 2023 hearing of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, chaired by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. AARO Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick testified on the office's mission, budget, data collection and review of the historical record. He said AARO had found no credible evidence of extraterrestrial activity or off-world technology. He also presented trend data and two declassified MQ-9 videos, and one of them was resolved as a commuter aircraft.
5 AARO is partnering with the services, intelligence community, DOE, as well as civil partners and across the U.S. Government to tap into the resources of the interagency. The UAP challenge is more an operational and scientific issue than it is an intelligence issue. As such, we are working with in- dustry, academia, and the scientific community which bring their own resources, ideas, and expertise to this challenging problem set. Robust collaboration and peer review across a broad range of partners will promote greater objectivity and transparency in the study of UAP. I want to underscore today that only a very small percentage of UAP reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as anomalous. The majority of unidentified objects reported to AARO demonstrate mundane characteristics of balloons, unmanned aerial systems, clutter, natural phenomena, or other readily ex- plainable sources. While a large number of cases in our holdings remain technically unresolved, this is primarily due to a lack of data associated with those cases. Without sufficient data we are unable to reach defend- able conclusions that meet the high scientific standards we set for resolution, and I will not close a case that I cannot defend the con- clusions of. I recognize that this answer is unsatisfying to those who, in good faith, assume that what they see with their eyes, with their cam- eras, and with their radars is incontrovertible evidence of extraor- dinary characteristics and performance. Yet, time and again, with sufficient scientific quality data it is fact that UAP often but not always resolve into readily explainable sources. Humans are subject to deception and illusions, sensors to unexpected responses and malfunctions and, in some cases, inten- tional interference. Getting to the handful of cases that pass this level of scrutiny is the mission of AARO. That is not to say that UAP once resolved are no longer of na- tional security interest, however. On the contrary, learning that a UAP is not of exotic origin but is instead just a quadcopter or a balloon leads to the question of who is operating that quadcopter and to what purpose. The answers to those questions will inform potential national security or law enforcement responses. AARO is a member of the Department’s support to the adminis- tration’s Tiger Team effort to deal with stratospheric objects such as the PRC [People’s Republic of China] high-altitude balloon. When previously unknown objects are successfully identified it is AARO’s role to quickly and efficiently hand off such readily ex- plainable objects to the intelligence, law enforcement, or oper- ational safety communities for further analysis and appropriate ac- tion. In other words, AARO’s mission is to turn UAP into SEP, some- body else’s problem. The U.S. Government, the DOD, and the IC in particular have tremendous capabilities to deal with those en- countered objects. In the wake of the PRC HAB [high-altitude balloon] event the interagency is working to better integrate and share information to address identifiable stratospheric objects but that is not AARO’s lane.
Hearing transcript, from the govinfo collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 26 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.