On April 19, 2023, the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities held both classified and public hearings to receive testimony on the “mission, activities, oversight, and budget of the All-Domain Anomalous Resolution Office, also known as AARO. This is the Pentagon’s most recent UFO effort, focused on improving interagency data sharing related to the topic and working to identify objects of interest reported in military training ranges and other special use airspace.

The sole witness presenting testimony at this hearing was Dr. Sean M. Kirkpatrick, the director of AARO.

In his prepared statement, Kirkpatrick directly specified that the UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) challenge “is more an operational and scientific issue than an intelligence issue,” which seems to suggest that the Department of Defense isn’t all that concerned about UFOs from a national security issue, which isn’t surprising given AARO’s mission. He also added:

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 explainable sources.

He further added that, of the data analyzed by AARO, they’ve seen “no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics.” But he also reaffirmed that AARO is open to all possibilities and will follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Watch the full hearing here: