Pentagon UFO boss says strange sightings are ‘aliens’ or a foreign power – and he hopes they’re aliens

According to the director of the Pentagon’s UFO Research Office, “The best thing that can come from this job is to prove that aliens exist.”

The alternative to what would be a literally earth-changing discovery of alien life exploring our own planet would be for a rival foreign power to “do things in our backyard,” he said.

Dr. Kirkpatrick added, “And that’s not right.”

The veteran laser and materials physicist and head of the Pentagon’s UFO-hunting All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) provided this bracing assessment as news broke of his impending retirement from government service.

The eighteen-month tenure of Dr. Kirkpatrick as AARO’s first-ever director has been riddled with controversy, as expected for a mandate once relegated to the scientific fringe.

While some UFO whistleblowers now accuse Kirkpatrick of fostering an “atmosphere of disinterest,” others have suggested that his superiors are stonewalling AARO’s efforts, even as some have described “really positive” experiences with the office.

“I’m ready to move on,” Kirkpatrick said Politics Tuesday, after official confirmation of his retirement. “I accomplished everything I said I was going to do.”

Dr. Kirkpatrick added that there are lingering tasks he hopes to have completed — including AARO’s Congressionally directed “Historical Record Report” on UFOs, which will be presented to Congress in June 2024, more than six months after Kirkpatrick’s departure.

At a press conference last Halloween, Kirkpatrick announced a new secure reporting mechanism designed to help AARO investigate claims of alleged top secret and potentially illegal UFO programs run by the U.S. government.

“The reporting mechanism is intended for current or former U.S. government employees, military personnel or contractors with direct knowledge of alleged U.S. government programs or activities related to UAP (UFOs) dating back to 1945,” he said.

In its annual UAP (i.e. UFO) report, released last October, the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office stated, “None of these UAP reports have been positively attributed to foreign activities.”

Since UFOs exploded back into the public consciousness with a series of revelations in the New York Times in December 2017, government officials, scientists and devotees have reframed the mysteries as unidentified aerial phenomena, or anomalous phenomena: “UAP.”

The new name hopes to bring caution and reduce preconceptions about the true nature of these mysteries in the sky.

When asked at the Halloween press conference whether AARO has contacted officials of hostile foreign nations in an effort to bundle UAP data, Dr. Kirkpatrick that the concept was a non-starter from a national security perspective.

“We certainly haven’t approached opponents for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is because they are opponents,” Kirkpatrick said.

While AARO’s annual UAP report, released in October, found that “none” of the hundreds of military UFO cases have been “positively attributed to foreign activities,” Kirkpatrick raised concerns about telling but less concrete evidence.

“I’m concerned from a national security perspective,” Kirkpatrick said CNN prior to the publication of the report.

“There are some indicators that can be attributed to foreign activities, and we are investigating them very intensively,” he said.

Last summer, the AARO chief, who once worked on optical and laser physics projects for U.S. intelligence agencies including the CIA, described AARO’s national security mandate to ABC news as avoiding ‘technical surprises’.

Based on AARO’s own presentations to Congress and NASA’s UAP Advisory Panel, the agency has focused on a series of troubling cases involving the so-called “metallic orb” UAP.

This time last year, a classified 22-page report compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) detailed hundreds of unsolved cases, some of which involved ‘orbs’ captured on drone cameras which then ‘suddenly shot off the screen’.

Some non-governmental groups, including OSINT specialists Bellingcat, have offered prosaic explanations for one of these ‘spheres’ – but Kirkpatrick, in an article with Harvard physicist Dr. Avi Loeb openly speculated that these UAP might be alien probes.

Despite serious concerns from AARO’s soon-to-depart director that the solution to the UAP mystery could turn out to involve advanced technology flown by a foreign power, evidence exists that these “metal spheres” even predate the era of the Cold War.

A 1944 Newsweek article entitled “The silver ball puzzle,” examined similar cases of flying orbs during World War II, as well as an Associated Press report headlined “Silver balls seen above Reich intrigue science.’

Even then, journalists and researchers suspected it was a wartime anti-radar device from one of America’s then-enemy nations, Nazi Germany.

“It could be that the floating silver balls that American pilots encountered over the Reich are yet another German attempt to create interference for radio communications,” the AP’s wartime radio editor wrote.

“The most common misconception is that (the possible phenomena) are all the same and all extraterrestrial,” Kirkpatrick told ABC News last July, “and neither is true.”

Have you seen one? The Pentagon reveals what the most reported UFO looks like

Since the first sighting more than 75 years ago, popular culture has commonly depicted a UFO as a flying saucer emitting a powerful halo of light.

But that could finally change following the official release of information from the Pentagon about the mysterious aerial phenomena.

The new Defense Department document reveals characteristics of the typical UFO, including its color and shape, speed and flight level

Based on evidence from reported sightings, the typical UFO has a round shape, usually described as spherical or spherical, with a white or silver color, often translucent.

It also measures between 1 and 4 meters and usually travels through the air at an altitude just below commercial passenger aircraft.

The Pentagon also released a hotspot map revealing the location of reported UFO sightings, including Japan and the Middle East.

Read more here.