Forget Roswell. Forget grainy amateur photos. The modern UAP story is about trained military pilots, advanced sensor systems, Pentagon-funded black programs, a multi-billion-dollar whistleblower complaint, and sworn Congressional testimony. Two equally credible-sounding narratives now sit side by side — and somebody is wrong.
David Grusch, David Fravor, and Ryan Graves testifying under oath before the House Oversight subcommittee, July 26, 2023. Source: Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
The UAP debate isn't skeptics versus believers anymore. It's Pentagon insider versus Pentagon insider — both with active clearances, both testifying under oath, both telling Congress flatly opposite things.
The Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), headed by physicist Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick from 2022 to 2023, reviewed every historical and current UAP case the Defense Department could surface. Its March 2024 Historical Record Report Volume 1 — the most comprehensive Pentagon review ever published — concluded there is no verifiable evidence of any US government crash-retrieval program, no alien technology in US possession, and no credible indication that any reported UAP represents non-human technology. Most sightings, AARO says, are misidentified conventional objects, sensor artifacts, or classified US programs seen by people who weren't read in.
Retired US Air Force Major David Grusch — a decorated Afghanistan combat veteran, former intelligence officer at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and former NRO representative to the UAP Task Force (2019–2021) — filed a formal PPD-19 whistleblower complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General, which found his concerns "credible and urgent." On July 26, 2023, Grusch testified under oath to the House Oversight Committee that he "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." He said his testimony was based on interviews with over 40 witnesses conducted over four years. Fellow witness Luis Elizondo — who claims to have led the Pentagon's AATIP program (a role the Pentagon has publicly contested) — echoed the claim, asserting the Pentagon holds "non-human biologics." Neither has personally seen any recovered craft or material; both say their testimony is based on what others told them.
"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." — David Grusch, sworn testimony, House Oversight Committee, July 26, 2023
This is not UFO fan fiction. Both camps have active security clearances and legal consequences for lying to Congress. Kirkpatrick, a materials physicist who ran AARO, resigned in late 2023 and has publicly called the whistleblower claims conspiracy-driven. Grusch, a decorated intelligence officer, has filed whistleblower protections through statutory channels. On July 26, 2023, Grusch, Fravor, and Graves each raised their right hands before the House Oversight Committee. One side of the debate is wrong, and the journalism jury is still out. That unresolved tension IS the modern UAP story.
USS Nimitz (CVN-68). Source: U.S. Navy / Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
尼米兹号航空母舰(CVN-68)。来源:美国海军 / 维基共享资源(公有领域)。
The Encounter空中相遇
Five Minutes That Would Change the Story
改变整个故事的五分钟
For roughly two weeks in early November 2004, the AEGIS radar aboard the cruiser USS Princeton (CG-59) had been tracking anomalous objects dropping from around 80,000 feet to 20,000 feet in seconds. On November 14, Commander David Fravor — commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41, the "Black Aces" — and his wingman, then-Lt. j.g. Alex Dietrich, were vectored from the USS Nimitz to investigate. What they found, off the coast of southern California, was a white oval object about 40 feet long, with no wings, no exhaust, hovering over an ocean disturbance. Four people saw it: both pilots and their two weapons systems officers (WSOs). As Fravor spiraled down to intercept, the object rose up to meet him, mirroring his trajectory — then accelerated away in an instant and reappeared at his pre-briefed Combat Air Patrol point sixty miles away within seconds.
⏱️ Nov 14, 2004 · off the southern California coast · ~5 min visual contact · ~40 ft white oval · 4 witnesses: Fravor, Dietrich + 2 WSOs · No wings, no exhaust
Fravor's F/A-18 was not equipped with the AN/ASQ-228 Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) pod that day. The famous FLIR video now seen by millions was recorded by Chad Underwood — a Weapons Systems Officer on a second Super Hornet that launched from the Nimitz to investigate after Fravor returned to the carrier. Underwood, operating the back-seat sensor suite, never saw the object with his own eyes — he tracked it entirely on the ATFLIR. In a 2019 New York Magazine interview, he said he was "more concerned with tracking it, making sure that the videotape was on." He also coined the term "Tic Tac," partially inspired by a joke from the 1980 comedy Airplane! The ~1:16 clip below is exactly what he captured.
FLIR video from the November 14, 2004 Tic Tac incident, recorded by Lt. Cmdr. Chad Underwood. Declassified and released by the U.S. Department of Defense, April 27, 2020. Source: Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
Fravor reported that the Tic Tac was hovering above what looked like a cross-shaped disturbance just below the surface of a calm Pacific — "like something the size of a 737 was about to breach the surface." The disturbance vanished as the object departed. This "trans-medium" behavior — the ability to operate in both air and water — is one of the characteristics that led Congress in the FY23 NDAA to formally expand AARO's mandate to cover "transmedium" objects, and is one of the reasons the Navy, not the Air Force, became the service most publicly engaged on UAPs. Trans-medium capability is not a feature of any known US or foreign aircraft.
What makes the Tic Tac encounter so difficult to dismiss is how many independent data points corroborate it. The Princeton's SPY-1 AEGIS radar had tracked these objects for days before Fravor was ever launched. Four pilots in two F/A-18s visually observed the object. A third F/A-18 piloted by Lt. Cmdr. Chad Underwood tracked it on ATFLIR. Senior Chief Operations Specialist Kevin Day — the Princeton radar operator who first spotted the anomalies — has since gone on the record publicly. In 2021 the Pentagon formally confirmed the videos are real and were made by naval aviators. In 2021 the ODNI preliminary assessment counted this and 143 other incidents as credible unexplained events.
Ten years after the Tic Tac, a different squadron on the opposite coast started seeing UAPs every single day — after a radar upgrade suddenly made them visible.
Ryan Graves flew F/A-18F Super Hornets with Strike Fighter Squadron 11, the "Red Rippers," from the USS Theodore Roosevelt. In 2014, his squadron received the new AN/APG-79 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar — a dramatic upgrade over the legacy APG-73. Within weeks of turning it on, his pilots started seeing objects above their training airspace off Virginia Beach. Not occasionally. Every single day. Objects that would sit stationary in Category-4 hurricane winds, accelerate to Mach-plus without a sonic boom, or track aircraft on identical courses for the entire length of a training sortie. These were not blimps, drones, or weather balloons — they weren't flying like anything in the US or foreign inventory.
The incident that turned Graves from pilot to advocate happened when one object came within about fifty feet of an F/A-18 flown by a squadronmate — a near-midair collision in restricted military training airspace. It was not reported up the chain in the normal way, because the existing Naval safety reporting system had no category for "unidentified." The near-miss, and the bureaucratic dead-end that followed, is what led Graves to eventually found Americans for Safe Aerospace and testify before Congress. His core argument is simple: regardless of what these things are, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense have an aviation-safety obligation to find out, and to give pilots a way to report them without career consequences.
The GIMBAL video was recorded on January 20, 2015, off the East Coast, by an F/A-18 Super Hornet from the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group. In the infrared footage, an object appears to slowly rotate mid-air while moving against a strong wind. In the audio track, an unnamed aviator exclaims "Whoa, got it! Woo-hoo! Look at that thing, dude! It's rotating!" The rolling maneuver is not how conventional aircraft fly. The GIMBAL video is one of three clips formally declassified by the Pentagon on April 27, 2020, alongside FLIR and GOFAST.
GIMBAL video, January 20, 2015, recorded by an F/A-18 Super Hornet from the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group. Declassified April 2020. Source: Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
The GOFAST video, recorded off the East Coast in 2015 by the same Roosevelt carrier group, captures what appears to be a small object skimming just above the ocean surface at very high speed. The aviator's voice in the audio track marvels at how fast the thing appears to be moving. Subsequent analysis — including a public deep-dive by skeptic Mick West — argued that parallax effects make the object appear faster than it actually is. Graves and others counter that even after correcting for parallax, the performance is still unexplained. Whichever way you read the physics, GOFAST is now one of the three officially acknowledged Pentagon UAP clips.
GOFAST video, 2015, recorded off the East Coast by the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group. Declassified April 2020. Source: Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
The First Active-Duty Navy Pilot to Go On the Record
首位公开发声的现役海军飞行员
Graves was the first active-duty US Navy pilot to publicly go on the record about regular UAP encounters — first in a May 2019 New York Times follow-up article, then in additional press coverage that followed. By the time CBS 60 Minutes aired "UFOs on the Radar" in May 2021 with Bill Whitaker, Graves was a former Navy Lieutenant, but the segment brought his account — and Fravor's and Dietrich's — into millions of American living rooms. He went on to long-form interviews with The New York Times, Joe Rogan, and Lex Fridman, and in 2021 founded Americans for Safe Aerospace — a pilot-led advocacy organization focused on aviation safety and reporting mechanisms. He testified under oath at the July 26, 2023 House Oversight hearing alongside Fravor and Grusch, placing his own credibility on the line.
格雷夫斯是首位公开上镜谈论UAP遭遇的美国现役海军飞行员——他最早是在2019年5月《纽约时报》的一篇后续报道中公开发声,之后又接受了一系列其他媒体采访。到2021年5月CBS《60分钟》节目播出比尔·惠特克主持的"UFOs on the Radar"一期时,格雷夫斯已退役(军衔为海军中尉),但这期节目把他以及弗拉沃尔、迪特里希的亲历讲述送进了数百万美国家庭。此后他又接受了《纽约时报》、乔·罗根和莱克斯·弗里德曼等主流媒体的长篇专访,并于2021年创立了"守护美国航空安全"组织——一个以飞行员为主体、聚焦于航空安全与汇报机制的倡导团体。2023年7月26日,他与弗拉沃尔和格鲁什一起走上众议院监督委员会听证席,在宣誓之下亲自把自己的信誉全部押上了台面。
🏛️ The Hidden Pentagon Programs
🏛️ 五角大楼里那些隐秘的项目
From a $22 million black-budget line item buried in DIA appropriations to today's official All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Pentagon has been quietly studying UAPs for almost twenty years.
Main gate of the Nevada Test and Training Range — Area 51 — the historical bookend of the modern UAP story. The Pentagon's twenty-first-century UAP work happens far from Groom Lake, but in the popular imagination it all still starts here. Source: Wikimedia Commons (Creative Commons).
AAWSAP / AATIP — The Original ProgramAAWSAP / AATIP——最初的项目
$22 Million, Routed Through DIA, to Bigelow Aerospace
两千两百万美元、经国防情报局拨付、流向毕格罗航天
Initiated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) at the urging of his friend, Nevada billionaire Robert Bigelow, and supported by Sens. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Daniel Inouye (D-HI), the program was set up inside the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2007 and funded at roughly $22 million over five years. Reid originally named it the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP); in subsequent press coverage and in the 2017 New York Times story, it became known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). Whether AAWSAP and AATIP were distinct programs, or the same program under two names, remains disputed in the public record — AARO and Wikipedia treat them as essentially one effort, while some journalists and participants describe AATIP as a smaller follow-on to a broader AAWSAP. The contracts went primarily to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), which produced roughly 38 technical studies on topics including warp drives, traversable wormholes, and antimatter propulsion, and also investigated Bigelow's Skinwalker Ranch in Utah.
The name AATIP entered the public lexicon on December 16, 2017, when The New York Times described it as the program Luis Elizondo had led from inside the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI) until his October 2017 resignation. The Pentagon has publicly contested that characterization. A DoD spokesperson told The Intercept in 2019 that Elizondo "had no responsibilities" with respect to AATIP in his official OUSDI role. Former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick, writing in Scientific American in January 2024, described AATIP as a former DIA program "heavily influenced by a group of individuals associated with" Robert Bigelow, and made no mention of Elizondo running it. The dispute over what AATIP formally was — and whether Elizondo led it — remains unresolved.
August 2020: The Task Force That Made the ODNI Report
2020年8月:促成ODNI报告的特别工作组
On August 14, 2020, Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist established the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), under the direction of the Department of the Navy. UAPTF's job was to detect, analyze, and catalog UAPs that could pose a threat to US national security — and to deliver a public report to Congress within 180 days of an annual NDAA mandate. That report became the June 25, 2021 ODNI Preliminary Assessment, which counted 144 UAP incidents from 2004 to 2021, only one of which had been explained (a deflating balloon). The report was widely seen as the U.S. government's most consequential public acknowledgment of UAPs since Project Blue Book ended in 1969.
In November 2021, the Pentagon replaced the Navy-led UAPTF with the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG), reporting to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. Less than a year later, on July 15, 2022, Deputy SecDef Kathleen Hicks formally established the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), replacing AOIMSG with a broader mandate covering air, sea, space, and trans-medium phenomena. The FY23 NDAA further expanded AARO's scope to include historical investigations going back to 1945. AARO is the current, formal home of the Pentagon's UAP work — and the office that has become the public face of the skeptical, "no aliens" position.
Senate Majority Leader and the political force that quietly created AAWSAP. A long-time UFO enthusiast, Reid worked with Sens. Ted Stevens and Daniel Inouye to secure roughly $22 million for AAWSAP through DIA in 2007. He was a long-time friend of Bigelow Aerospace founder Robert Bigelow, who had contributed at least $10,000 to Reid's campaigns between 1998 and 2008. Without Reid, there is no modern Pentagon UAP program — and arguably no NYT bombshell ten years later.
"If you want to talk about science, I'm all in." — 2019
"只要谈科学,我奉陪到底。" ——2019年
Insider · Contractor圈内人 · 承包商
Robert Bigelow
罗伯特·毕格罗
Billionaire founder of Budget Suites of America and Bigelow Aerospace. His research arm, Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), received the bulk of the AAWSAP contracts and conducted the actual research, including investigations of the Tic Tac case. In 1996, Bigelow purchased Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, the alleged hotspot of paranormal activity that AAWSAP investigated. He sold the ranch to real-estate tycoon Brandon Fugal in 2016. Bigelow has long maintained that he is "absolutely convinced" aliens are real and visiting Earth.
Former Pentagon intelligence official who claims to have led the AATIP program until his October 2017 resignation — a claim the Pentagon has publicly contested. He provided the three Pentagon UAP videos (FLIR, GIMBAL, GOFAST) — alongside former DASD Christopher Mellon — to The New York Times, which broke them on December 16, 2017. He co-founded To The Stars Academy with Tom DeLonge of Blink-182 in 2017, and published "Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs" in August 2024. He is one of the public faces of the whistleblower position and claims the Pentagon holds non-human biological evidence — though he has never personally seen any.
On December 16, 2017, The New York Times published "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program," co-bylined by Pentagon correspondent Helene Cooper, investigative reporter Ralph Blumenthal, and independent journalist Leslie Kean (author of the 2010 book "UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record"). The article was the first mainstream publication to name AATIP, identify Luis Elizondo, describe the AAWSAP funding mechanism, and surface the Tic Tac encounter as a credible Navy incident. The same day, The New York Times and Washington Post both published the FLIR and GIMBAL videos — the first time the public had ever seen them. POLITICO ran a separate, simultaneous investigation by Bryan Bender. The story didn't trickle out. It detonated.
"In the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22 million spent on the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program was almost impossible to find." — Cooper, Kean & Blumenthal, NYT, Dec 16, 2017
Before December 16, 2017, the term "UFO" was almost untouchable in serious American journalism. After it, the conversation shifted permanently. Within weeks, History Channel was producing the documentary series "Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation" featuring Elizondo. By 2019, Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough confirmed publicly that the videos were genuine and made by naval aviators. By 2020, the Pentagon formally declassified them. The journalistic decision to put UAPs on the front page of The New York Times — under the bylines of two NYT staffers and a Pulitzer-credentialed investigative reporter — gave other mainstream outlets cover to cover the story seriously for the first time in decades.
A Resignation, Three Videos, and a Sympathetic Editor
一次辞职、三段视频,和一位愿意刊发的编辑
Why did the story break in December 2017 and not earlier? Several things converged. Luis Elizondo had just resigned from the Pentagon in October. He, along with former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Christopher Mellon, was now free to share the three Pentagon videos with the press. Leslie Kean had spent years cultivating sources inside the Pentagon's tiny UAP community. Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy launched the same year, becoming a public-facing collection point for Pentagon insiders. And The New York Times under James Bennet was willing to run a story that would have been killed at most American newspapers a decade earlier. The editorial tipping point was as important as the leak itself.
For the first time in U.S. history, three sworn witnesses — a retired Navy commander, a former Navy pilot, and a retired Air Force intelligence officer — told Congress on the record that the U.S. government has been hiding what it knows about UAPs.
Ryan Graves, David Grusch, and David Fravor at the House Oversight subcommittee hearing on UAPs, July 26, 2023. Source: Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
A Bipartisan Subcommittee, A Sworn Oath, A Historic Day
两党联合的小组委员会、一次宣誓、一个历史性的日子
On July 26, 2023, the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs convened a hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency." The hearing was bipartisan, conducted under oath, and broadcast on C-SPAN. Three witnesses were called: retired USAF Maj. David Grusch (former NRO representative to the UAP Task Force), retired Navy Cmdr. David Fravor (the Tic Tac commander), and former Navy Lt. Ryan Graves (former F/A-18F pilot, founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace). The hearing was organized by Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and Tim Burchett (R-TN), with members from both parties — including Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and Eric Burlison (R-MO) — leading the questioning.
Retired USAF Maj. David Grusch — The Crash-Retrieval Claim
退役空军少校戴维·格鲁什——坠机回收的指控
Grusch is a retired US Air Force Major and Afghanistan combat veteran who served as an intelligence officer at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and, from 2019 to 2021, as the National Reconnaissance Office's representative to the UAP Task Force. He filed a PPD-19 whistleblower complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General, who deemed his concerns "credible and urgent." Under oath, he told the subcommittee that he "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" — adding that his testimony was based on interviews with over 40 witnesses over four years. He has never personally seen any recovered craft or material. In August 2023, The Intercept reported (citing public Loudoun County sheriff's records) that Grusch had been committed to a mental health facility in October 2018 after his wife reported he was suicidal, and that a separate 2014 police report described a similar incident; Grusch, in a statement via his legal representative, acknowledged both incidents as "previous personal struggles" with PTSD, grief, and depression stemming from his service in Afghanistan. His security clearance was retained throughout.
"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."
Commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41 ("Black Aces") aboard the USS Nimitz at the time of the November 14, 2004 Tic Tac encounter. He visually observed the object for about five minutes alongside his wingman Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich and their two WSOs. At the July 26, 2023 hearing, Fravor walked the subcommittee through the encounter step by step under oath. His testimony added an under-appreciated detail: in the years following 2004, the Navy made no formal effort to investigate what he and his crew had seen. He has appeared in 60 Minutes, the Joe Rogan Experience, and Lex Fridman's podcast, and his account has remained internally consistent across every retelling.
Former Navy F/A-18F pilot with VFA-11 ("Red Rippers") aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt, where he and his squadron observed UAPs near-daily off the East Coast in 2014–2015. Founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace, the largest pilot-led UAP advocacy organization. At the hearing he framed UAPs primarily as an aviation-safety issue, arguing that the Department of Defense and the FAA need a stigma-free reporting pipeline so that pilots can disclose encounters without ending their careers. He emphasized commercial pilots — not just military ones — also see UAPs but rarely report them.
"This is a public safety issue. The American people deserve to know what's flying in their skies. It's true. It's real. And the American people have a right to learn about it."
— Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), opening the hearing, July 26, 2023
——蒂姆·伯切特众议员(共和党,田纳西州),听证会开场致辞,2023年7月26日
🔬 The Scientific Front
🔬 科学阵线
While Pentagon insiders argue with each other, a handful of academic scientists are quietly building the first peer-reviewed search for technosignatures in human history.
Prof. Avi Loeb — Harvard's Provocative Astrophysicist
阿维·勒布教授——哈佛那位敢言的天体物理学家
Avi Loeb is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University. He chaired Harvard's Department of Astronomy from 2011 to 2020 — the longest-serving chair in the department's history — and founded Harvard's Black Hole Initiative in 2016. On July 26, 2021, he launched The Galileo Project: an international scientific effort to systematically search for extraterrestrial technosignatures using dedicated, peer-reviewed scientific instruments. The project deploys infrared and visible-light cameras, radio receivers, and audio sensors at observation sites that capture anything anomalous flying through their field of view, tagging and cataloging everything for later analysis. Loeb's argument: if we want to know what UAPs really are, we need actual scientific data, not blurry pilot reports or classified Pentagon footage.
On October 19, 2017, astronomer Robert Weryk, using the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope at Haleakalā Observatory in Hawaii, detected the first confirmed interstellar object ever observed passing through our solar system. It was designated 1I/2017 U1 and named ʻOumuamua — Hawaiian for "scout." The object had no detectable cometary tail, an unusually elongated shape, an anomalous non-gravitational acceleration as it left the Sun, and a tumbling rotation. Loeb was the first major scientist to argue that 'Oumuamua's anomalous properties could be explained by an artificial origin — possibly a defunct light sail. The hypothesis was — and remains — widely rejected by the mainstream scientific community. But it placed the question of detectable extraterrestrial technology back inside mainstream astrophysics.
Animation of 'Oumuamua's hyperbolic trajectory through the inner solar system, October 2017. Source: Wikimedia Commons / NASA / ESO (public domain).
2017年10月,'Oumuamua穿越内太阳系时的双曲线轨道动画。来源:维基共享资源 / NASA / ESO(公有领域)。
Observation Image观测图像
All We Ever Saw of It Was a Dot
我们看到它的全部,只是一个光点
'Oumuamua was discovered as it was already on its way out of the solar system, traveling fast enough that no spacecraft could catch it. The total observational data we have on the first interstellar object ever detected amounts to a series of telescope images of a faint dot against a star field — like the one below, captured by the William Herschel Telescope. Everything we know about its shape, composition, and behavior has been inferred from how that dot moved and how its brightness changed over time. The follow-up interstellar visitors 2I/Borisov (2019) and 3I/ATLAS (2025) gave astronomers more time to study, but neither was as anomalous as 'Oumuamua.
Enhanced observational image of 'Oumuamua (the bright dot, center) captured by the William Herschel Telescope. Source: ESO/Queen's University Belfast / Wikimedia Commons.
Loeb's deliberate methodology contrasts with everything else in the UAP space. The Galileo Project does not start from witness reports. It builds dedicated observatories, calibrates them rigorously, and lets them run continuously, capturing every object that crosses their field of view. Identified objects (birds, balloons, planes, satellites) are tagged and discarded. Anything that can't be classified is queued for deeper analysis. The data is open-source. Findings are submitted to peer-reviewed journals. Loeb's argument is methodological rather than ideological: whatever the answer turns out to be, the world deserves to find out using the same scientific tools we'd use for any other phenomenon — not classified Pentagon programs or anonymous insider claims.
The skeptical voice inside the Pentagon. The legislation that almost passed. The 1,652 cases AARO is now tracking. What we actually know — and what we still don't.
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick is a laser and materials physicist with a PhD and a long career in defense intelligence. In July 2022, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks named him the inaugural director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Over roughly 18 months, he and his team reviewed every UAP case the DoD could access — historical and current. He resigned in December 2023. In a January 19, 2024 op-ed in Scientific American titled "Here's What I Learned as the U.S. Government's UFO Hunter," Kirkpatrick wrote that AARO's year-long investigation "discovered a few things, and none were about aliens." He characterized the Grusch crash-retrieval narrative as "a textbook example of circular reporting, with each person relaying what they heard, but the information often ultimately being sourced to the same small group of individuals." He represents the strongest in-house institutional rebuttal to the whistleblower narrative.
On November 14, 2024, AARO released its FY24 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP. Key numbers: 757 new UAP reports received between May 2023 and June 2024. 1,652 total cumulative cases tracked across AARO's lifetime. The report concluded that the overwhelming majority of UAP reports could be attributed to known objects, sensor artifacts, or commonplace phenomena like balloons and drones. Only a "single-digit percentage" of cases remained "truly anomalous" — meaning they could not be explained with available data. AARO has said repeatedly that "anomalous" does not mean "alien." It means: we don't have enough data yet to classify it.
March 8, 2024 — The Pentagon's Most Comprehensive Review
2024年3月8日——五角大楼有史以来最全面的审查
On March 8, 2024, AARO published its Historical Record Report Volume 1, the most comprehensive Pentagon review of US government UAP investigations from 1945 to 2023 ever published. The report's central conclusions: there is no verifiable evidence the US government, any of its components, or any private entity, has any UAP technology or biological remains; many of the most-cited "secret programs" are well-documented but legitimate Special Access Programs unrelated to UAPs; and many witnesses to "alien" technology had simply observed classified human-made systems they were not cleared to know about. The Guardian's coverage called the report a "shake-up" of UFO culture. Whistleblowers say the report is incomplete and that genuine compartmented programs were not within AARO's reach.
In July 2023, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) introduced the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 as an amendment to the FY24 NDAA. The bill was modeled on the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992: it would have created an independent review board with subpoena power, established a presumption of disclosure for UAP-related government records, and authorized federal eminent domain over "recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence." The eminent domain provision was the most explosive — and the first to be stripped. The version included in the December 2023 FY24 NDAA was significantly watered down. Schumer and Rounds reintroduced a revised version in 2024.
Why Whistleblowers Say AARO's Findings Mean Nothing
为何吹哨人认为AARO的结论毫无意义
The whistleblower camp's response to Kirkpatrick and the AARO reports rests on one core argument: a Special Access Program (SAP) that is properly compartmented and unacknowledged is, by definition, invisible to anyone without specific read-in. Grusch claims he was illegally denied access to such a program despite his Top Secret/SCI clearance. Elizondo agrees. From their perspective, the fact that AARO didn't find the program is not evidence the program doesn't exist — it's evidence that AARO doesn't have the right clearances to find it. The Schumer-Rounds Disclosure Act was an attempt to create an external mechanism powerful enough to break that compartmentalization. So far, it has failed.
What is documented: The Pentagon has run, and continues to run, formal programs that study UAPs (AAWSAP, UAPTF, AARO). Trained military pilots have repeatedly observed objects they cannot identify in restricted training airspace. Three videos (FLIR, GIMBAL, GOFAST) have been formally declassified. AARO is tracking 1,652 cumulative cases. A small percentage of those cases remain genuinely unexplained.
What remains contested: Whether any recovered non-human craft or biological material exists in US possession. Whether AATIP was an official program. Whether Luis Elizondo ran it. Whether David Grusch's 40+ sources are credible. Whether the unexplained cases involve novel physics, foreign adversary technology, or sensor / interpretation errors not yet characterized.
"[UAPs are] part of a larger issue of an increased number of training range incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena in recent years."
"[UAP]问题,是近年来不明空中现象越来越频繁地侵入训练空域这一更大问题的一部分。"
— Susan Gough, Pentagon spokeswoman, September 2019
——苏珊·高夫,五角大楼发言人,2019年9月
📅 The Complete Timeline (2004 → 2024)
📅 完整时间线(2004 → 2024)
Twenty years of incidents, programs, leaks, hearings, and reports — every key date that defines the modern UAP era.
二十年来的事件、项目、泄密、听证与报告——勾勒出现代UAP时代的每一个关键节点。
Era I — The Tic Tac Years
第一阶段——Tic Tac的岁月
2004
2004年
A Navy carrier strike group encounters something it can't explain. Officially, nothing happens for thirteen years.
一支海军航母打击群遭遇了一件他们无法解释的事。在接下来的十三年里,官方对此没有任何动作。
Early Nov 2004
2004年11月上旬
USS Princeton AEGIS Radar Tracks Anomalies for ~2 Weeks
普林斯顿号"宙斯盾"雷达连续约两周追踪到异常物体
SPY-1 radar aboard cruiser USS Princeton (CG-59) records objects descending from ~80,000 ft to ~20,000 ft in seconds for roughly two weeks prior to Fravor's intercept.
Cmdr. David Fravor and his wingman, then-Lt. j.g. Alex Dietrich, with their two WSOs, visually observe a ~40 ft white oval object off the southern California coast. Chad Underwood, a WSO on a second Super Hornet, records the FLIR video in a follow-up sortie.
Sen. Harry Reid quietly funds the first modern Pentagon UAP program through the Defense Intelligence Agency.
参议员哈里·里德通过国防情报局,悄然为现代五角大楼第一个UAP项目铺设了资金通道。
Late 2007
2007年末
AAWSAP Funded — $22M Through DIA
AAWSAP获拨款——经国防情报局拨付2200万美元
Sens. Harry Reid, Ted Stevens, and Daniel Inouye insert the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program funding into the DoD black budget. Most contracts go to Robert Bigelow's BAASS.
The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program runs as a successor or subset of AAWSAP. Luis Elizondo later claims he led it; the Pentagon publicly disputes this.
An F/A-18 from the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group films an object rotating mid-flight against strong winds.
"西奥多·罗斯福号"航母打击群一架F/A-18拍下了一个物体在强风中边飞行边自转的画面。
2015
2015年
GOFAST Video Recorded Off the East Coast
GOFAST视频在东海岸拍摄
A small object appears to skim above the ocean surface at very high speed. The aviator's voice marvels at how fast it appears to move.
一个小型物体以极高速度贴海面飞过。录音中的飞行员惊叹于它的速度。
Era IV — The Year Everything Changed
第四阶段——一切都变了的那一年
2017
2017年
A resignation, three videos, and a single newspaper story turn UFO into UAP.
一次辞职、三段视频、一篇新闻稿——把"UFO"变成了"UAP"。
Oct 4, 2017
2017年10月4日
Luis Elizondo Resigns from the Pentagon
路易斯·埃利松多从五角大楼辞职
Elizondo's resignation removes the gag on him sharing the three Pentagon UAP videos with The New York Times.
埃利松多的辞职,为他将五角大楼三段UAP视频提供给《纽约时报》扫除了最后的障碍。
Dec 16, 2017
2017年12月16日
"Glowing Auras and 'Black Money'" Hits the Front Page
《发光的光晕与"黑钱"》登上头版
Cooper, Blumenthal & Kean's NYT investigation breaks the AATIP program publicly for the first time. NYT and Washington Post publish FLIR and GIMBAL the same day. POLITICO publishes Bryan Bender's parallel deep-dive.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence releases its first public UAP assessment: 144 incidents from 2004–2021, only 1 explained (a deflating balloon).
The first systematic, peer-reviewed academic project to search for technosignatures using dedicated scientific instruments launches — exactly two years to the day before the 2023 House Oversight hearing.
A new Pentagon office, a whistleblower complaint, and three witnesses raising their right hands.
一个新的五角大楼办公室、一份吹哨人申诉,以及三位高举右手宣誓的证人。
Jul 15, 2022
2022年7月15日
AARO Established
AARO成立
Deputy SecDef Kathleen Hicks establishes the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, replacing AOIMSG. Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick is appointed inaugural director the following month.
Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal publish a long investigative piece detailing David Grusch's whistleblower claims to the Intelligence Community Inspector General.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Mike Rounds introduce the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 as an NDAA amendment, modeled on the JFK Records Act.
Fravor, Graves, and Grusch testify under oath before the House Oversight subcommittee. Grusch claims, in sworn testimony, that the US government runs a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program from which he was illegally denied access.
The Intercept Reports on Grusch's Mental Health History
《拦截》披露格鲁什的精神健康经历
The Intercept, citing Loudoun County sheriff's records, reports that Grusch was committed to a mental health facility in October 2018 and was the subject of a similar 2014 police incident. Grusch attributes both to PTSD, grief and depression from his Afghanistan service; his security clearance was retained.
A significantly watered-down version of the Schumer-Rounds UAP Disclosure Act is included in the FY24 NDAA. The eminent domain provisions over "recovered technologies" are stripped. Kirkpatrick resigns as AARO director shortly after.
The Pentagon publishes its most comprehensive review ever — and concludes there are no aliens.
五角大楼发布了有史以来最全面的一次审查报告——结论是:没有外星人。
Jan 19, 2024
2024年1月19日
Kirkpatrick's Scientific American Op-Ed
柯克帕特里克在《科学美国人》撰文
"Here's What I Learned as the U.S. Government's UFO Hunter" — Kirkpatrick publicly states that AARO "discovered a few things, and none were about aliens."
Dr. Jon Kosloski is named AARO's second director, succeeding Kirkpatrick.
乔恩·科斯洛斯基博士被任命为AARO第二任主任,接替柯克帕特里克。
Mar 8, 2024
2024年3月8日
AARO Historical Record Report Volume 1
AARO《历史记录报告 第一卷》
AARO publishes its most comprehensive review ever, covering US government UAP investigations from 1945 to 2023. Conclusion: no evidence of any crash retrieval program, no alien technology in US possession.
Luis Elizondo publishes "Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs" with William Morrow, repeating his claims that the Pentagon holds non-human biological evidence.
757 new UAP reports received May 2023 – June 2024. 1,652 cumulative cases tracked across AARO's lifetime. Single-digit percentage remain "truly anomalous." Senate UAP hearing held the day before.
Schumer-Rounds Reintroduce a Revised Disclosure Act
舒默与朗兹重新提交修订版披露法案
Schumer and Rounds reintroduce a revised UAP Disclosure Act, again attempting to establish independent disclosure mechanisms. The legislation remains in limbo.
If you want to dig deeper, these are the most credible primary sources — full hearings, mainstream broadcasts, and long-form interviews with the actual witnesses.
The full, unedited C-SPAN recording of the watershed House Oversight subcommittee hearing, with sworn testimony from Fravor, Graves, and Grusch. Several hours long, but the single most important primary document of the modern UAP era.
Bill Whitaker's Emmy-grade segment for CBS 60 Minutes, with on-camera interviews with Fravor, Dietrich, Graves, and Mellon. The most-watched mainstream broadcast on UAPs in twenty years.
Lex Fridman Podcast #122 — David Fravor (Sep 8, 2020)
Lex Fridman 播客 #122 ——戴维·弗拉沃尔(2020年9月8日)
A long, technical conversation with the Tic Tac commander himself, going deep on the encounter, sensor systems, and what trained pilots actually look for when they see something unusual.
Joe Rogan Experience #1361 — David Fravor & Jeremy Corbell
Joe Rogan Experience #1361 ——戴维·弗拉沃尔与杰里米·科尔贝尔
A three-hour deep dive into the Tic Tac encounter with both Fravor and documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell. Notable for the level of technical detail Fravor is willing to share in a long-form, unscripted setting.
Investigative podcast hosted by Emmy-winning KLAS-TV reporter George Knapp (who broke the original Bob Lazar story in 1989) and filmmaker Jeremy Corbell. The most consistently sourced UAP podcast in the field.
Long-form interviews that bring together both scientists (including Avi Loeb) and witnesses/whistleblowers in the same intellectual space. Useful for understanding how the science and journalism camps actually disagree.
Every claim in this Spark is traceable to one or more of the sources below — primary government documents, mainstream investigative journalism, peer-reviewed and skeptical voices, Wikipedia for general reference, and books for further reading.
AARO FY24 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP, Department of Defense, November 14, 2024. media.defense.gov
AARO Historical Record Report Volume 1, Department of Defense, March 8, 2024. media.defense.gov
ODNI Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, June 25, 2021. dni.gov
David Grusch — Statement for the Record, House Oversight Committee, July 26, 2023. oversight.house.gov
David Fravor — Statement for the Record, House Oversight Committee, July 26, 2023. oversight.house.gov
Ryan Graves — Statement for the Record, House Oversight Committee, July 26, 2023. oversight.house.gov
Congressional Hearing Transcript, "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency," House Oversight Committee, July 26, 2023. congress.gov
UAP Disclosure Act of 2024 (S.Amdt.2610), 118th Congress. congress.gov
Schumer-Rounds Press Release on the UAP Disclosure Act, July 14, 2023. democrats.senate.gov
All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, official website. aaro.mil
NASA Independent Study Team Report on UAP, September 14, 2023. science.nasa.gov/uap
Journalism
二、新闻报道
Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal & Leslie Kean, "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program," The New York Times, December 16, 2017. nytimes.com
Bryan Bender, "The Pentagon's Secret Search for UFOs," POLITICO Magazine, December 16, 2017. politico.com
Bryan Bender, "How Harry Reid, a Terrorist Interrogator and the Singer From Blink-182 Took UFOs Mainstream," POLITICO. politico.com
Bill Whitaker, "UFOs Regularly Spotted in Restricted U.S. Airspace," 60 Minutes, CBS News, August 29, 2021. cbsnews.com
Ken Klippenstein & Daniel Boguslaw, "UFO Whistleblower Kept Security Clearance After Psychiatric Detention," The Intercept, August 9, 2023. theintercept.com
Keith Kloor, "The Media Loves This UFO Expert Who Says He Worked for an Obscure Pentagon Program. Did He?" The Intercept, June 1, 2019. theintercept.com
Leslie Kean & Ralph Blumenthal, "Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin," The Debrief, June 5, 2023. thedebrief.org
Scientific / Skeptical Voices
三、科学与怀疑论声音
Sean Kirkpatrick, "Here's What I Learned as the U.S. Government's UFO Hunter," Scientific American, January 19, 2024. scientificamerican.com
Edward Helmore, "Pentagon Ex-UFO Chief Says Conspiracy Theorists in Government Drive Spending," The Guardian, January 27, 2024. theguardian.com
Edward Helmore, "He Quit Heading the Pentagon's UFO Office. Now a Report of His Has Shaken Up Ufology," The Guardian, March 22, 2024. theguardian.com