The Defense Department opened its new space alien and flying saucer web portal Thursday. The office running the site is named in the Pentagon language: the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which offers individuals a one-stop-shopping experience to meet their curiosity about what the government wants them to know about what Americans still call UFOs.

“Our team of experts is leading the U.S. government’s efforts to address Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena using a rigorous scientific framework and a data-driven approach,” said Sean Kirkpatrick, who is an expert in laser technology with stints at the Navy, CIA, and joint projects with NASA, before settling at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from 2012 until becoming the director of the new office. The AARO was created on July 15, 2022.

“Since its establishment in July 2022, AARO has taken important steps to improve data collection, standardize reporting requirements, and mitigate the potential threats to safety and security posed by UAP,” he said. 

Fitzpatrick presents himself as a fair-minded skeptic, such as his remarks at the May 31 open meeting on UFOs, hosted by NASA.

The majority of unidentified objects reported to AARO demonstrate mundane characteristics of readily explainable sources. While a large number of cases in AARO’s holdings remain technically unresolved, this is primarily due to a lack of data associated with these cases. Without sufficient data, we are unable to reach defendable conclusions that meet the high scientific standards we set for resolution.  

The director, who earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Georgia in 1995, said there were incidents he and his team could not explain. 

“Meanwhile, for the few objects that do demonstrate potentially anomalous characteristics, AARO is approaching these cases with the highest level of objectivity and analytic rigor,” he said.

Later this fall, according to the website, the office intends to create a secure reporting function for current and former federal employees, military personnel, and contractors with direct knowledge of government programs and activities related to UFOs or aliens. 

This reporting function goes through a bureaucratic process so that the reports and the people making reports are all consistent with the Privacy Act of 1974, the Whistleblower Protections Enhancement Act of 2012, the Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002, or the No FEAR Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. 

Members of the general public with no professional affiliation with the federal government cannot use the reporting function. Instead, AARO plans a different process for their reports.

The new site is also going to be a place for people to find official reports, transcripts, press releases, and other resources, such as links to sites that track aircraft, balloons, and satellite tracking sites.  

The Defense Department site comes just past one month after the House Oversight Committee hosted UFO whistleblower David Grusch, who served on the government's Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Task Force as a major in the Air Force Reserve. 

Grusch told the committee he spent four years corroborating evidence of UAP activity and the military's program for reverse engineering alien technology from crafts the government came into possession.  

In 2019, the UAPTF director tasked me to identify all Special Access Programs & Controlled Access Programs (SAPs/CAPs) we needed to satisfy our congressionally mandated mission.   At the time, due to my extensive executive-level intelligence support duties, I was cleared to literally all relevant compartments and in a position of extreme trust in both my military and civilian capacities.  I was informed, in the course of my official duties, of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access to those additional read-on’s.  

A congressman asked Grusch about the possibility that one government agency had a craft that was unknown to other government agencies so that what appeared to be a UAP was just a case of compartmentalized technology.

Grusch dismissed that narrative out of hand: “The recoveries predate our advanced programs.”

The major said he and his wife personally witnessed harmful behavior towards humans by alien activity, but he could not go into details in an open session. “It was very disturbing,” he said.

ChiComs balloons, UFOs over our skies

Earlier in 2023, Americans looked in the skies, and if they lived near missile silos or sensitive military bases, they might have seen a ChiCom spy balloon.

In the balloon panic, the Air Force shot down one spy balloon on Feb. 4 after it had finished its mission across the country.

Suddenly, it was no longer safe to be a balloon. The Air Force may have also shot down a weather balloon belonging to a student club, the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade.

Of course, there was the distinct possibility the Air Force also shot down UFOs because of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s post-ChiCom balloon zero-tolerance policy.

At an April 19, 2022, Capitol Hill hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Kirkpatrick shared this video of a silver orb captured by an MQ-9 drone over a military installation in the Middle East.

The Pentagon said the orb did not exhibit anomalous behavior, but it remains unidentified, which would make it, literally, an unidentified flying object but why live in the past? 

At another Capitol Hill hearing on May 17, 2022, in front of the House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee, Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray shared a video taken by sailors taking part in a July 2019 Navy exercise off the coast of Southern California.

 In the video, at least five glowing triangular objects are above the ships in the exercise.

A digital camera captured this video through the lens of night goggles, which is why the sky is a green hue. The Pentagon classified the objects in the video as unmanned aerial systems.