Inside the Pentagon's UFO Office: Ross Coulthart with former AARO science advisor Randy Bostick (NewsNation Reality Check, 2026)

0:00 G'day and welcome to Reality Check. I'm your host Ross Coulthard and yes we're on the road. I'm at the conference of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies in Toronto, Canada and today I'm very very pleased to have with us Dr Randy Bostic who's been on the inside of Arrow the Pentagon's UAP Investigation Office. Dr Randy Bostic is a physicist and electro-optical remote sensing specialist. His conference biography lists bachelor and master's work in mathematics and physics at Wright State University. He earned a PhD in physics from the Air Force Institute of Technology and he's focused very much on electro-optical engineering. He's been 20 years in the U.S. Air Force as a civilian working across image

1:01 processing, remote sensing, sensor exploitation and the extraction of actionable intelligence from Department of Defense and Intelligence Systems. His final government role was as science advisor to the all domain anomaly resolution office, Arrow, the Pentagon's UAP investigation office and he's being a very good sport putting himself into the devil's den of SCU where he's opening himself up for questions and criticism and I actually think he gave a great presentation this morning explaining the importance of bringing science to UAP studies. Dr Randy Bostic, welcome to Reality Check, great to have you here. Thank you. What do we make as the biggest mistake on the outside? What do we on the outside not understand about the job you've been doing on the inside, inside the defense department investigating UFOs? What

2:01 are we all getting wrong? I think, and I don't know that it's I would say getting wrong, but a misconception in some sense of what Arrow is, it's not an office that contains the UAP secrets or anything like that. It was an office set up to go as an independent, still U.S. government agency organization to go around and try to corral all of the stories that are out there, all of the different government offices, former government workers, civilians, military, and to really try to bring that all together under a focus and then report out the findings. So I'm sure many of your listeners are familiar with the yearly reports and the things that have been going out. So I think Arrow is more of a collector and adjudicator and disseminator of the information, not really the owner. So there's that old saying, garbage in garbage out, you're only ever as good as the data that you're given in the first place.

3:02 That's correct, yes. For example, did they give you and all the members of the Arrow team a security clearance when you came in there? Were you given the kind of security access you need to be able to look at all the dirty, dark secrets? Yes. So I, having worked for the government, I had a clearance coming in, and most of my work in the field was related scientifically to what was going on at Arrow. But the people who needed to know, so I, you know, I wasn't just read into everything, blanket all these saps, however people were. So whatever clearance they needed to talk to whomever they needed to see whatever they needed, they were certainly able to do that. So one of the bears in the room, let's deal with this one first, one of the bears in the room on the whole Pentagon UFO investigations is that at the moment we've had the four pursue releases, presidential UFO releases, and they are very much saying, okay, yeah,

4:03 here's anomalous data. These are stuff that we can't explain. The bear in the room, of course, is the allegation that somewhere deep in the dark recesses of the Defence Department, or perhaps in private aerospace, there is a covert program, the so-called legacy program that's involved in reverse engineering and indeed in crash retrievals. Are you in a position, or were you when you were in there, in a position to be able to kick the doors in and say, we want to know, is there a crash retrieval program? Is there a reverse engineering program? And did you do that? That wasn't me specifically. So again, we had several, a few groups within Arrow. We had the science and technology group, which I was in. We had an analysis group, and we had other groups that would take the reports such as that. So the oral reports, the written reports, and they did have the authority to go do that. So if there were word of a program, you know, highly classified or just

5:04 rumors, they would go check those out. So, you know, I suppose I would refer you to the first historical report on some of the work that was done there and some of the things that were found out from doing those investigations. I mean, the first historical report was significant because it acknowledged UAPs are a genuine mystery. Sure. Yes. Which itself was a huge step forward. What did you think before you went in? Were you a skeptic? Yeah. I always like to say any good scientist is always a skeptic. You always need to be convinced by the data, by the information, by the analysis. And in my work before going to Arrow, it was really very similar. You know, we would do Intel analysis to try and figure out what a foreign actor was doing. What do they have? What are they doing? We've got this data. We're not sure what it is, how we figure out what it is. So it was very similar in going to Arrow to say, and as you said, we're

6:07 collecting data on things. We don't know what they are. They can't be identified, at least by the data that are collected. Is there any other way of looking at the data? What can be said from the data, even if it isn't conclusive, and perhaps more importantly, what are the types of data that need to be collected? If I'm going to try to truly identify something like the gimbal or the go fast or anything that you've seen in the, in the tranches of videos that have been released, it's going to take more than these, these cameras and sensor systems that are on the existing platforms. It's, it takes true scientific and dedicated, not accidental data collection to really try and resolve some of the cases. Now you did the work and in Arrow to investigate the gimbal. So what did you conclude? So I, myself, the gimbal was actually analyzed starting with UAP task force and before I got there. So not, not to dodge the question, but I, I did not write a report or come to any

7:11 conclusions. I, what would be some of the reports that we would know from what Arrow has published, where you've reached a conclusion that something is anomalous, a genuine UAP mystery? So the reports that we've released that I've worked on, one was the Mount Etna case, one was the GoFast case, and then the Aguadilla case. Okay. So let's go for the GoFast first. Yes. Okay. What did you conclude on the GoFast? So the conclusion for the GoFast, and I think the emphasis is not that we had to come to a conclusion that we know what it is. I can tell you that it's a balloon or a bird, or I can tell you exactly what it was. There were really two points to the GoFast analysis. One was just the analytic technique. So if you, if you go through the data that were available to, to anyone who wants to look at the video, the numbers on the screen, pulling those off, doing the math and then coming to, I wouldn't

8:13 say conclusion, but just results about the speed of the object, the altitude of the object. So just for the sake of our audience who may not know the GoFast, the GoFast essentially is a white ball moving apparently fast across the screen over surface of water. Right. It doesn't appear to go into the water, but it's just moving across what looks like ocean or maybe like, how did you even begin to try and reach any kind of conclusion about speed or anything like that? It, and, and I would encourage your viewers to read the paper. It's, it's kind of hard to go through, but it was really a mathematical process. There are the data on the video, which include the range to the target, the pointing angles of the sensor, the speed of the aircraft, and all these other informations that could be put together to at least relatively come up with how the aircraft trajectory was changing as a function of time. And then really where the object would have to be for the sensor to be pointed at it.

9:16 And it's really just a lot of math that gives a potential result. Now, crucially for us, we don't get to see in the public arena, the data that's often redacted on these defense department videos. You were obviously able to look at the redacted data and get an impression informed on that data, that data were not redacted. No, that, that data were part of the release with the gimbal. And I think the tic tac and a few other events where everything I had is on the, on the screen. And so what did you conclude? So the conclusion really was just that the object was not moving as fast as it appeared to be. It's, it's parallax. And I know that's often an explanation. And parallax is where the object is actually much closer to the camera lens that appears, and that makes it look like it's moving faster. Can you explain parallax to our audience without me making a complete mess of it? Well, I'm not sure I won't do the same. If you can imagine the, the pilots or the sensor looking at this object that may even

10:18 be stationary, not moving at all. But as the aircraft is moving and its point of view is changing, the area it's seeing in the background is also changing. In fact, it's, it appears to move in the opposite direction of the aircraft. So if you are on a moving platform, or you see something from two different angles, something will appear to be in a different place. And as the aircraft is moving very fast and going over this object, what the illusion is, is the object is moving, but in reality, it's that background constantly changing behind it. So the reason why this is significant for our audience's benefit is it did look like the go fast was complying with one of the so-called five observables, that it was going incredibly fast, with no visible means of propulsion. What did you conclude about that? So we concluded that it wasn't going incredibly fast, and I'm not sure I'll remember the numbers, but you know, something like 30 meters per second at an altitude of maybe 15,000 feet

11:21 or so. Again, the numbers are in the report. And that in general, it could have been, well, let me back up. So those are really the two main points to make that it wasn't moving as fast as it appeared to be in the camera. It was at a reasonable altitude for a balloon or possibly even a bird moving at a velocity that could have been with the wind. So it could have been maybe a little faster than a bird might fly, but really didn't necessarily have to attribute it to those things. So that's really where I say you stop short. You look at those parameters. No, I can't say it wasn't in HI. I mean, you could be a little UFO moving along at 30 meters per second. Why not? But I didn't really get into that part of it. It was just really presenting those facts. The fact that there could be a prosaic explanation for it. And at that point, it's why beat the data anymore? You just sort of move on once you understand that there isn't really any advanced technology

12:25 necessary for that to be doing what it was observed to be doing. In the time that you've been doing the work inside Arrow while you were there, did you ever see anything where you went, wow, this is interesting? There were a few videos where you would look at it and it would be different than anything we'd seen before. Usually there were explanations because, you know, it happened to be the sun was hitting something. You get glint reflected right back into the camera. So some of these collection conditions that were unique. I would say most of the data information that we received were really in the oral reports. And those are accounted for in the historical report or even Dr. Koslowski's briefing, the Congress, you know, the glowing orbs, the black triangles, the things that have been seen by people repetitively. You know, many different people reported seeing the same thing. So those are the

13:25 things that I think are most significant, most interesting, and probably, you know, aside from these videos, probably deserve the most focus as far as investigation. Now, as I said, I thought you were a very good sport putting yourself into the lion's den in the scientific coalition for UAP's conference, because you had every right to be nervous. I think arrows on the nose with a lot of people in the UAP field. Is it unfair? Are we unfair to arrow? Is there a perceived bias that you encountered when you were inside arrows, anti-scientific? Yeah, I think so. And I, I told the story in the briefing how when the, when the go fast report came out, or the link was posted, there were objections to the report. And it's just the government people saying it's a balloon and parallax again. And these things, these comments were posted literally 30 seconds or minutes after the link was out. So it's like you didn't even read the paper. Because you know, I don't care if you want to disagree, that's

14:26 fine. But at least read the paper, read, read the math, read the reasoning. I, the largest misconception, in my opinion, and not even necessarily being with arrow, but even being on the outside is that they are doing the responsible for more than I think people would think they are. Because they're only as good as the information they're given. That's right. You know, they go back to Blue Book, they go back to then the mystique of Blue Book and assign that to Arrow. Arrow really is just an organization that is the focus for going out to all the other government organizations to do the research and collect the information and try to get it into one coherent. There was a view for a while inside the Defense Department, after Project Blue Book, that it wasn't necessary to collect UAP data, that we didn't need to monitor these unidentified objects, because it just

15:27 wasn't scientifically beneficial. What's your take on that? Well, first of all, Blue Book occurred in a much different era than today. So I think just the overall technology changing the consumer sensors, electronics, ring doorbells, all these different things have brought the public more into the ability to not just tell stories about what they saw, but to produce some information. I think, and even today, when you look at the result of Blue Book, it's really not so much are UFOs alien, do they exist? It's are they a threat to the U.S. government? If they're not a threat, we, meaning the U.S. government, don't need to be concerned about it, then don't call us anymore with your UFO stories. Go, you know, call someone else. And so what do you think of that? Do you think there is a potential threat? I think there was always a potential threat because of the ability of domestic and foreign actors

16:28 to have now access to technology that you could go to a store and buy drones, these unpiloted craft, and fly them into areas either to try to collect data or just disrupt testing, disrupt government activities. So I think that accessibility creates the threat. I think the term UAP, as it's applied in a more general sense to include those things, I think then that UAP can then be a threat. Were you roped into the investigations during the 2024, 2025, and in fact, into this year unexplained so-called drone incursions across the continental United States, notably New Jersey? Yeah, we, well, we were because as soon as something, you know, the word UAP has said, aero gets involved. Generally, I would say generally we would try to stay away from things where if it is attributed to a drone, then it's really not a UAP anymore. There's some attribution, you

17:28 know, we know they're drones. But because we were the agency that was looking at the data or even trying to collect data on things that were not immediately understood, yes, we were brought into that to look at some of the data from the incursions. What did you think of the so-called drone incursions? We, well, I won't say we had or analyzed a full volume of data, everything that were reported, but certainly it appeared that the activity started with unmanned aircraft and flying around the region. It was then amplified by many, many people in New Jersey going outside and looking at the sky for perhaps maybe the first time at night and either imaginations taking over, thinking that they saw things that were moving around. And again, it could have been the drones again. Do you think there were drones? I think there certainly were drones involved. No, were all of them drones? Because we had this weird situation for a while. And I'll

18:31 just express it. On the outside, for me as a journalist, it never made sense. Because on the one hand, there were people that were talking to us at News Nation saying they were seeing SUV-sized objects hovering over their house with no noise, weird lights, and just sitting there with no apparent means of propulsion. And in some cases, people even describe these objects seeming to change shape. It was the weirdest stuff. Now, obviously, you have to take into account the possibility that people are confused, that they're excited or shocked or emotional when they're watching this. Maybe that was affecting their perception. But we had police. And I think one of the turning points was when Rich McGurr, who's one of our reporters, was out on a Coast Guard boat, and he and members of the Coast Guard looked up and saw what they clearly saw as anomalous objects hovering over the boat. These were never explained. And then the White House spokeswoman Caroline

19:34 Levitt came out and said they were FAA-authorized drones. In your work, did you ever hear of the FAA authorizing drone incursions over that part of New Jersey, New York in that period? Not in our work. But again, that was more local. I would say Arrow's involvement in that was somewhat tangential, just understanding that it was happening. Because then the other thing that was going on was you then had two generals, the serving and former head of Northcom, NORAB, General Glenn Van Herc and Jeffrey Gwillow. And they went on 60 Minutes, CBS 60 Minutes. And they said, we don't know what these objects are. Yeah. So I noticed in your most recent 2024 report, end of financial year 2024, obviously, you're no longer with Arrow and you're not speaking on behalf of Arrow. It acknowledges that this is still an unexplained series of incursions. Was it a mistake to

20:34 use the terminology "drone" all the time? And was that deliberate? I mean, a lot of people fear that the use of the term "drone" immediately conflates what we're describing to as being necessarily manufactured technology, not something anomalous, not something that can be explained as a bird or a balloon or maybe it could be a balloon. What's your take on that? I mean, is the term "drone" appropriate when, frankly, isn't it unscientific to use the term "drone"? Yeah, it's a common term and probably an overused term. Drone, unmanned aircraft, uncrewed aircraft. I think almost like the term "UAP" now, when you say that it implies you know something about the object. I think the term "UAP" has unfortunately gone down the path of UFO a little bit so that when some people think they might say "UAP" they

21:35 think they might be saying it's "NHI" or it's not. Yeah, because the reason we went "UAP" was because we wanted to de-stigmatize the term. Yes. As a descriptor, I think that is the more appropriate way to describe it. I think saying, even just saying we don't know what it was, it was anomalous, aircraft, you know, any of the different terms you could use. I suppose I wouldn't get too hung up in the terminology. I think even if you say it's a drone, we don't know where it came from. We don't know what technology it's using. We know it fits a description maybe that you would want to describe as a drone and that's generally what humans do is if they see something they don't know what it is. They try to put it in some kind of context that they can explain it and understand it. It just depends on how you saw it, how you experienced it, and how you want to label it. But no matter the label, the real key is collecting all that information for post-analysis to really try to get down to what it is. You know, is there anything

22:37 there that can lead to a more substantial conclusion? Now, the thing I find interesting is that Arrow is no longer just a passive receiver of data. It's also been generating its own data. You've got this Gremlin system that you've been developing. Tell me about Gremlin. It's a system for detecting, tracking, and characterizing UAP. What is it? Well, generally speaking, it's a dedicated system to go out and intentionally collect information on UAP or whatever range followers, whatever you want to call them, that might be entering an area. So it's a multi-modal system. It's got different optical and radar things on it. Let's go through what you've got. Do you have active radar, passive radar? Yeah, it's got multiple different modalities and I can't really go into too much detail on what they are, but it's really an attempt to, one, again, get beyond the collections by a sensor that is not built to see the UAP,

23:42 even things that are flying. Most of the airborne sensors are meant to see things on the ground. So, one, how do we do better collection of these things knowing that we are going to collect on something that has certain characteristics? But I think the most important thing is the persistent collection. So you can leave this sensor there for days, weeks, or months. One, you don't miss anything because a lot of the pain of doing this collection is sitting there collecting nothing for weeks at a time, hoping that you don't miss something that happens. But you also get to baseline what we call the pattern of life. So, you know, things that birds fly around, if the wind is blowing the right way, maybe you get balloons. So how do you recognize all of that prosaic matter that might be coming into a space, characterize that as a function of time of day or whatever it might be, the weather, and then be able to see something and say this is truly anomalous. I haven't seen this before. This

24:42 is doing something that doesn't match any of the patterns we've seen before. Did you find that? The data analysis wasn't complete by the time I left and a contractor had been doing most of that. So I can't really comment on any of the results that have come from Gremlin, because I had left before a lot of that analysis really got underway. So there weren't cases that were genuinely anomalous that were detected by Gremlin while you were there? Not that I know of and again, it's, you know, what is anomalous? Is it I just have something that looks like a light moving through the sky? I don't know what it is. It could be an aircraft. It could be any number of things. It may be unknown, maybe not anomalous, but no, there was. Did Gremlin involve collecting of signals? Again, yeah, it was a multimodal system. So we tried to use as many phenomenologies as we could, and they probably added some since I've been there. But yeah, it's, you know, the problem

25:45 when you consider UAP is I'm going to set up a sensor with requirements to collect on something and I have no idea really what that thing is going to be. Sure. So, you know, you throw the proverbial kitchen sink at it, the SIGINT, the GEOINT, the optical, the radar, the RF, multispectral, any of the things you can think of are things that you would want to put on a system in order to make sure you don't miss some characteristic of an object. Sure. Where was Gremlin used? Like, where was it deployed? Unfortunately, I can't answer that. Oh, it's classified. It is classified. I was told that it was White Sands Missile Range at one stage. I cannot confirm or deny that. You know, it's been put into different areas. And certainly, you know, when you try out an instrument, you want to put it in a place where you have control. Sure. But were you there when it was being tested? Yeah, we were testing it. So the idea is you can fly your own objects in

26:46 front of it. You can say, okay, here's what this looks like. Here's what that looks like. Here's how accurate I can measure certain properties. Your area of expertise has been very much in hyperspectral imaging, optical imaging. Were you involved in spectrographic analysis of UAPs in your work at Arrow? When it was available, but it's often never available. Were you ever able to reach any conclusions based on spectrographic analysis? No. Because the cool thing as I understand it with spectrographs is you can actually, if there's say a plasma around an object, explain this to me if I get this wrong, please. You can derive an understanding of what the constituents of that plasma may be by doing the spectrographic analysis. Have you done that kind of work before with UAPs? No. And again, the problem with data collected on UAP is to date, it's all been incidental. You know, it's been these systems that are on aircraft platform or even the

27:47 ground platforms that are doing an entirely different job when they happen to see these things that are not explainable. I think the gremlin and other things that Arrow are doing are trying to close that gap. And even now in my civilian career, it's how do we get people more involved? Because obviously you're dependent on the government to do collection, get the data, maybe give you the data, maybe explain the data to you. But I think these are all things that can be done by people literally in their own backyard. But to your question on the hyperspectral data, yes, if you think of like an LED bulb that will emit very discrete wavelengths, if you have a hyperspectral system, you can see the light split up into those discrete wavelengths and that can tell you what type of LED it is. The same with any material where it's reflecting sunlight or emitting its own photons. You can split that up into the spectrum and do

28:49 some sort of material, gas identification, the things that you talked about. But crucially, that's work that Arrow is now doing on its own back to investigate UAPs. And that's happening at the moment, classified locations. Will it be published? Do you know? Do you think? I don't know. Yeah. And again, I'm not sure exactly what they've done since I left as far as collection. Those are certainly things that you want to do. You want to do an intentional collection on this. You want to control the data that you're collecting. You want to make sure it's high quality and calibrated and you're not just seeing lights or anything that's an anomaly of the sensor. It really has to be close to scientific quality. You were hired actually into Arrow by Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick. Did you get on with Sean? Oh, yeah, more or less. I mean, Sean's a character and I mean, you know, he's a robust individual. He doesn't mind stating his views on things. This is true. But yeah, I mean, that's, you know, he built the office

29:50 out of people who had the expertise he needed in each area. And of course, you know, would get along okay. One of the things you've been talking about in your speech here at the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies Conference is an acknowledgement that to a large extent, the problem that Arrow comes up against is there's a lot of corralling of data. You only use data if you know about it, if you know that it's there and you can ask for it. Is it a problem that departments, intelligence agencies, different organizations inside government are holding on to data and not telling you about it? Well, it's a problem if you look at it from the aspect of what Arrow is trying to do. If you look at it from what these agencies' missions are, their core missions and responsibilities, it's certainly they don't look at it as a problem. And, you know, you have examples of agencies that have a particular task to perform. They are going to take the measures either security-wise with data protection

30:51 or even financially with they have a particular system. It may have been in place since, you know, the 1980s, but it's work. It's what they use. It's completely overhaul and change that system just so Arrow can have better access to data is almost a non-starter due to just the cost. But were there frustrating moments when you couldn't get access to data? It was more frustrating not that we couldn't get access, but the data were not there. Data were deleted. Data were erased, not available. And, you know, it's just very frustrating to go to organizations who could save the data, but there's no requirement, no need to from their perspective. But that is one of the things Arrow has championed. And I know Dr. Koselowski trying to change is if it's funding, if it's just a change in their procedures, how can we get organizations to save the data so that it can be used in post-analysis? Now, we talked about this before this interview because I wanted to give you a heads up on

31:51 what I was going to ask you. So it was the Pursue release, the Presidential Records release number one. And it was very interesting. It had 16 CENTCOM, Central Command reports between 2020, 2024, in which there was a UAP observation. Somebody in the military saw a UAP, but it coincided with active SIGINT collection, signals intelligence collection, or an electronic warfare event on board the reporting aircraft. And there were 13 ISR, Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance sorties, where SIGINT collection was running at the very moment of the UAP observation. And so I think sometimes we get excited about videos and imagery, but we forget that these planes are also collecting incredibly valuable signals intelligence. That's correct. And there was something called the air handler system, which is used on a lot of these aircraft. A number of these events involved jamming,

32:52 actually active jamming. It appeared that there might be, might be a correlation between the UAP and some kind of active jamming or electric interference with the aircraft systems. And for example, there was a fighter at 26,000 feet, directed to identify an unknown contact. It observed and obtained radar lock and targeting pod video of two IR significant contacts, one circling the other. And then something called noise jamming was received. Then there was another aircraft, an F-15s. They received multi-function threat X-band radar jamming on their APG-82. And then one minute later, they observed three UAP at flight level 240. No radar

33:53 returns. The two objects were IR significant. That meant they could see them on IR infrared. And they got a video. But at the same time, they were obviously running signals intelligence. They were getting some kind of feed from the RF of whatever that object was. Is that kept on those planes? No. That, and that's somewhat, I mean, it's discouraging because again, these planes, as you mentioned, they are excellent collectors of ISR data. So UAP or no, if you have a collector flying in regions where they may be close to foreign territories or seeing things, it would be great to have that data. But that data really are used to do a particular task. So as you mentioned, some of it is the plane is trying to do EM work, whatever it needs to do, but then it's getting jammed. That's really the information we have. We don't get the details on what the jamming

34:54 signal was. We don't really get any of that out of the aircraft because it doesn't get saved. It's used to tell the pilot these things. So you get the pilot's situational awareness, the pilot's explanation. But to go back and actually interrogate that the way you would, again, intentionally collect the data, it's almost always impossible. So is Arrow, for example, in that case, I can imagine to be incredibly frustrating to not be able to get signals, intelligent data from a fighter aircraft that's actually kitted up to do that. Shouldn't it be mandated that when they have events like that, when there is a UAP event, that those data be kept and given to Arrow? Yeah. And then again, that's one of Arrow's primary objectives is how do we save that data? Is it even possible with the hardware to save the data? Now, many times it is, but you have to have somebody manually do it almost immediately or it can get destroyed. But yes, to answer your question,

35:55 it is frustrating. And to the extent it's possible on the aircraft, Arrow is very strongly suggesting that the data be saved for analysis in a more forensic manner. The other area that I found really interesting, and this is in your most recent, or Arrow's most recent report, the 2024 year end, the incredible link, there is a link, isn't there, between whatever these objects are and nuclear-related facilities, nuclear weapons facilities like Amarillo Pantex. And the NRC gave, I think, 18 reports of objects observed over sensitive nuclear facilities across the United States. One of the things that being raised with me by somebody in the NRC is that there is very little capacity to do on the ground monitoring of objects over nuclear facilities. Quite often, all they have is a bunch of binoculars. They

36:57 don't have what you would think, radar or video systems to actually observe these objects. Is that something that's being addressed? I mean, this is a serious issue, isn't it? Yeah, because you get these reports and there's a couple of things there. One, the fact that it's happening, but two, one of the things we often found is that, and it's not so much with the nuclear nuclear facilities, but if you go to test ranges and we would get reports that if there's some sensitive testing going on or they're doing training, testing a new weapon, they would see all these objects show up and then they would show up unidentified, fouling the range. And the immediate thought was they're there to observe something that's going on. And so we asked how many were there, were they there last week, how often do they show up? And the answer was, well, we only turn our sensors on when we're doing the testing. So immediately you see there's a collection bias. So, you know, we don't know, maybe

37:57 these things are constantly coming over the range and it goes back to persistent collection and establishing these patterns of life, but even at nuclear facilities or anywhere. Yeah. The, the, the emplacement of the cameras to collect the data that can be analyzed so that it's not just coincidence. Maybe you get to attribution, but it's, it's more detailed data about things that are happening other than relying on people with their binoculars and then their interpretation of what they've observed. Do you agree there is a link between whatever UAPs are and nuclear facilities? I think without that persistent collection, that no kidding, 24/7 months through all the seasons, without understanding what's normal, you know, what appears where. If I put a dozen cameras at a nuclear facility and see what shows up, what flies over versus putting a dozen sensors in a cornfield in Iowa,

38:57 what's the difference? What do I see? Is there a, is there a pattern? Is it related to the, the environment, the wind speed, it's blowing all the garbage from the city over my site, things like that. I think we just don't have the long-term longitudinal study with the available data to come to those conclusions. Just coming back to the jamming, the electronic jamming for a moment. Any kind of interference with a weapon, you know, an armed aircraft is by definition a threat, isn't it? You may need to attribute it. You know, there are different reasons that you might get interference. You're flying over a TV station, but if it is intentional. And again, this is where, how do you know this or not? How do you know the intent of that jamming? And what is natural? What is artificial? So I think those questions have to be answered before you can. How could jamming be artificial or natural rather?

39:58 You get sunspots. You get all sorts of things that can create an RF interference. And there's, you know, you can fly a plane anywhere and you'll get interference. And it's again, important to document all of these things so that you can understand what's anomalous. But, and I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying that information, I think you have to, I think you make assumptions that if I am out for 27, you know, whatever the details were. But I think the more important thing is why was that done? Who is doing that? What's the purpose? Well, I'm just thinking back to the Tic Tac incident, because Commander Dave Fravor, when he describes that incident, I think he describes jamming as well, obvious jamming. There does seem to be a pattern that is echoed in the reports that have been tabled with the Congress by the presidential records release that I think there's 13 active jamming incidents or electronic weapons, electronic warfare interference. That can't all be natural, can

40:58 it? I'm not going to say if it is, if it is or isn't, or it can or it can't be. I will say that the the conclusion shouldn't overshadow the fact that the data are there to be analyzed. It's just, I'll be honest with you, the reason why that irked me was because in the most recent report, Arrow declared, even though there was active jamming of some kind or electronic weapons, warfare interference, they declared there was no flight safety threat. And I mean, how can you do that? How can you say there's no flight safety threat when there clearly is some kind of jamming? Yeah, I have no comment. I didn't do that analysis or come to that conclusion. I would again, from the scientific point of view, say that all of this information deserves analysis. Like you said, you know, what is it about these systems, the way they're engineered? Is it possible that you could see this much natural jamming or is it nearly impossible because the way they're

42:00 designed that this could happen? Sure. One of the things you said in your speech today was you said that military sensors are not designed as physics experiments or UAP detectors. What's the problem with sensor systems that frustrates your ability to derive UAP data from them on occasion? Well, I won't say I'm frustrated. I mean, you certainly understand if a certain system is there to do a mission and it's focused on doing this thing. So it only collects data in a certain mode, a certain bandwidth, a certain frame rate. You understand why that is. I think the problem is that like the aircraft platforms, they do this mission based on the data to alert someone or provide some information that's actionable. They don't save the data that are used to make those decisions. So when you go back to someone and ask them, oh, your radar system saw this,

43:03 you saw the blip and you saw it moving around. Can we go back and look at the phase information and all of the signals that actually came back? They don't save it. One of the things that I was really struck by when you spoke today, you were talking about the fact that there's a lot of redactions on the PISU releases, on the records that have been released by the president in these UFO releases. And you suggested that it might be possible to be perhaps less classified, less redacted. Why are they redacted? What's the reason why these videos are so redacted? Because often it's impossible to reach any conclusion. Right. Well, the videos get redacted because they have the location of the aircraft, where it's operating, the times it's operating, other information that if you look at the video and you have that information, you can start to reverse engineer, in a sense, the capabilities of that system. So you don't want to tell the bad guys how well you can see them. Exactly. Or, and in

44:04 some cases we think this was happening, the bad guys might intentionally be putting these things into the airspace. These things get collected by our systems. We can't resolve them. We don't know what they are. And now we're putting the video out. So now we basically just run the experiment for the bad guy to say, here's what this thing looked like and how our system reacted to it. So you have to be very careful that you're not releasing that type of information. And not even in one video, but 30 or 40 videos collected over time can start to add up to information that we don't want to share. Could there be a more liberal approach to what's being redacted on the files that have been released to date? I mean, it looks to me like almost every file has had very serious, strict reductions. Could they be more liberal? I think so. I think to the extent that you don't know, you don't need to know the exact location of the aircraft or the exact time it was operating. So if you go back again and look at the go fast event, we, there's no, or at least it wasn't

45:05 released where the aircraft was operating, but I didn't really need to know that. I don't, I didn't need to know that the aircraft started at this particular latitude and longitude. I could call that zero. I could just say it started at point zero and flew from there. I could say it started at time zero and flew from there. So I think some of that information can be taken away that doesn't reveal location and times of operation. Not to say it, it can be unredacted, but I think some information can be provided that's more relative in time and space, not in absolute time and space. Now, that would take quite a bit of time and effort for someone to do that, but it is possible. Yeah. Is it possible that say civilian technology, I mean, it's now possible with AI and all of the incredible micro processes that we've got,

46:07 the software-defined radios, it's now possible to gather data and do, you know, use quite cheap sensor systems to develop sensor systems that equate with or come close to a lot of the technology that's being used by government. Is there a nervousness inside government that if Arrow doesn't lift its game with releasing data and being more transparent with data, you're going to see more aggressive approaches by civilian organizations doing that kind of data gathering? It's a threat really, isn't it? Because you don't want, for example, the capabilities of a, I don't know, an MQ-9 Reaper or a F-15 fighter to be revealed to the potential enemy, do you? No. And again, that's why most of the data either is never shared in the first place or is heavily redacted. But there are technologies, consumer technologies, that can be used that I think can collect very usable data. In some cases, again, if it's designed to do a better job

47:10 of looking at the things that we want to see, like higher resolution imagery or thermometry or hyperspectral, the things that we don't even get from these platforms that are different, not better, not classified, just different ways of looking at it in a more dedicated sense. So you're not relying on an accidental collection by some of these sensors. Now, I know you've been very careful to point out you're not speaking for Arrow, but would you like, you know, what's the benchmark? In five years time, what would be the benchmark measurement for you that shows that Arrow's been an effective organization? That's a, that's a very hard question. And you can go back and look at Arrow's charter and the different things that are on there. I think for me, advancing the science of UAP, advancing how we look at not just the data and it's not, you know, the disclosure that Arrow disclose everything that people want to see. I don't know that you can appease everyone from that point of view, but I

48:11 think trying to make it more legitimate to do analysis on the data, on things where you don't, you don't know what it is and you're trying to find out what it is, that scientific rigor. I think some of the accountability throughout the government, which, which was reported in one of the annual reports to go back and say, when other agencies, other organizations throw around the terms UFO and UAP, they do it almost pedantically. But you know, how do we take seriously the fact that we've got unknown objects in our own airspace? Could be foreign actors, could be whatever they are, but how do we take that more seriously? How do we come up with a more centralized approach to addressing that that involves not just the government, but academia, industry, and the public? Is there anything that you learned that changed your perception of the UAP issue while you were working inside Arrow? I don't know that it changed my perception, but I think just really that revelation,

49:12 again, of, of the data that are collected that aren't very high quality. And, and I, you know, I think, I think everybody understands the fact, again, that different government agencies operate in different ways. So, you know, how do we do that? It's almost maybe not as severe, but when you look at the 9/11 report and you see how all these government agencies were somewhat independently doing things and not sharing information. You know, I think you see some of that, but then you start to see it coming together where, again, Arrow not necessarily responsible for all the UAP, but at least trying to go out and coalesce some sort of story from all these different organizations. So I think, I think just seeing that process, um, but again, just the fact that these data are collected and it's just not enough to come to some of the conclusions that I think people want to see and deserve to see. Um, but you know, how do we advance that not just with government collection, but with civilian collection as

50:12 well? Um, you know, how do we make people better reporters so that they can not provide their own analysis of an event? Um, you know, famously, one of the first reports ever was a pilot saw bright objects out of his airplane flying, doing all the things that he described, but when he went to the reporter, he said flying saucer and that's, that's what it turned into. So, and you know, how do we get away from these generic descriptions back to more informational reporting that can be used to help resolve some of these cases? So, Arrow's not a cover-up, Dr. Randy Vostek. They're serious. They are serious, uh, you know, a cover-up in the sense that any organization that deals with classified information is a cover-up, but I wouldn't say they're, they're special in any way. And if there's a truth there to be found, they're serious about finding it? I think so. I think as much, again, as it's in their power to go and talk to other people, um, agencies, hopefully civilians soon, they, they haven't

51:13 been able to do that, but as, as much as others are willing to share, Arrow's willing to receive, and Arrow's willing to report, they're, they're doing the best. Well, Dr. Randy Vostek, thank you so much for speaking to Reality Check, and if you'd like to ask questions, you can send your questions to Reality Check at News Nation now, and of course, this episode will also appear on all good audio platforms, including Audible and Spotify. Thank you very much for joining us, and thank you very much, Dr. Vostek. Thank you.