Document · 19 April 2023

Hearing transcript: AARO mission, activities, oversight and budget (Senate Armed Services, April 19, 2023)

The official stenographic transcript of the open session of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on 19 April 2023, chaired by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand with Sens. Joni Ernst and Jacky Rosen, and the first public testimony by AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick.

Gillibrand pressed on AARO's funding, its sidelining during the February 2023 shoot-downs, radar filters and the still-missing public reporting portal. Kirkpatrick set out AARO's process and trend data — about half of reports are spheres, typically one to four meters — showed one unresolved and one resolved MQ-9 video, and said most cases lack data rather than defy explanation, while some advanced signatures may point to foreign capabilities.

Source: Senate Armed Services Committee (local copy)

Facts and claims

Key moments: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Public Hearing - In Full - April 19, 2023

  1. 1:06 Kirsten Gillibrand: Gillibrand: reports since 2017 on work Harry Reid set in motion (the program the 2017 reports called AATIP) showed “strong evidence of advanced technology” in objects observed by service members, with pilots frequently encountering unknown objects for at least eight years.
  2. 1:44 Kirsten Gillibrand: Gillibrand quotes former Deputy Secretary Norquist: had the objects been labeled “made in China” there would be an uproar; because of the UFO stigma the response has been “irresponsibly anemic and slow.”
  3. 3:28 Kirsten Gillibrand: Gillibrand: during the February 2023 shoot-downs DoD disclosed radar filters were adjusted to detect such objects for the first time — “we cannot keep turning a blind eye to surveillance data.”
  4. 10:57 Sean Kirkpatrick: Kirkpatrick: “only a very small percentage of UAP reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as anomalous”; most show the mundane characteristics of balloons, drones, clutter or natural phenomena.
  5. 11:25 Sean Kirkpatrick: Kirkpatrick: many cases remain unresolved mainly for lack of data, and “I will not close a case that I cannot defend the conclusions of.”
  6. 14:17 Sean Kirkpatrick: Kirkpatrick: “AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics.”
  7. 18:10 Sean Kirkpatrick: Kirkpatrick: the typical UAP is round, one to four meters, white, silver, translucent or metallic, at 10,000–30,000 feet, from stationary to Mach 2, usually with no thermal exhaust and intermittent radar, radio and thermal returns.
  8. 18:52 Sean Kirkpatrick: Kirkpatrick shows the MQ-9 “Middle East” video of an apparent spherical object: essentially all the data on the event; “virtually impossible to fully identify”, so it stays unresolved.
  9. 20:29 Sean Kirkpatrick: Kirkpatrick's second case, an MQ-9 over South Asia: an object with an apparent propulsion trail that proved a sensor artifact; frame-by-frame analysis resolved it as the heat signature of a commuter aircraft.
  10. 24:08 Sean Kirkpatrick: Kirkpatrick: AARO is tracking about 650 cases; about half were prioritized as of anomalous interest, and analysis runs through competing intelligence and science teams and a senior technical peer-review group.
  11. 32:21 Sean Kirkpatrick: Kirkpatrick: among the single-digit percentage of cases showing advanced technical signatures, “I have indicators that some are related to foreign capabilities.”
  12. 55:12 Sean Kirkpatrick: Kirkpatrick extends Carl Sagan: “extraordinary claims require not only extraordinary evidence but extraordinary science”, testing hypotheses from adversary technology to extraterrestrials against physics-based signatures.

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