Chairwoman Gillibrand (00:00):
… where he worked in areas of optics research and crypto mathematics. He previously served at the DOD's Special Communications Enterprise Office. We look forward to regular engagements between you and the committee. When unidentified anomalous phenomenon enter our airspace, we need to know about it. We need to identify it, but in order to do that we need to reduce the stigma and credibility challenges associated with these events.
(00:27)
Our service members, scientists, foreign partners, and the general public need to know that their reporting, research, and analysis will be taken seriously and acted on in good faith. In the spirit of transparency, AARO recently released a consolidated annual report just a few months after releasing the first volume of a historical record report in March of this year. These public documents help highlight the challenges still facing this office, including the lack of timely and actionable sensor data, the need to revisit cases placed in the active archive, and the importance of improving reporting sources both in the interagency and internationally.
(01:10)
In this hearing I want to probe a series of specific issues. First, as incidents at Langley and elsewhere have demonstrated unmanned aerial systems, or UAS, continue to pose significant threats to our national security. In addition to safety of flight issues these UAS create for our own pilots and air crew, the UAS present clear and undeniable counterintelligence concerns around some of the most sensitive airspace. While standard UAS are not part of AARO's mission, your work on sensors at military installations across the country will be critical to making sure that we have the domain awareness necessary to accurately identify and track these objects.
(01:54)
I expect your office to also pay close attention to any anomalous characteristics that these systems could present in the future. Second, I look forward to your presentation of three case studies demonstrating cases that AARO has resolved, including the GoFast, which is one of the most prominent UAP cases. However, I believe it is important to acknowledge ongoing public interest in the Nimitz incident, the Gimbal video, and other prominent UAP cases, and for AARO to share what it can about those cases as well.
(02:25)
It's also important that AARO speak to unresolved cases and what types of anomalous activity have merited further analysis. And while I know AARO has gone through a period of transition over the past year, it is important to share these disclosures, both resolved and unresolved cases, with the public even when a Senate hearing is not scheduled. Lastly, while some have been hesitant to come forward to AARO in the past, I hope that potential individuals with firsthand knowledge of unreported programs view your arrival in this position as an opportunity for a new start. AARO was created by Congress to do this work.
(03:02)
Congress waived non-disclosure agreements for those who disclose information to AARO and gave AARO the authority to go and turn over every rock. I hope those with information to share use this opportunity so that we as your senators who represent you can do our jobs. I look forward to hearing more on these issues from Dr. Kosloski and for members to start a dialogue on this important topic. With that, I would like to turn to Senator Ernst for her opening statement.
Senator Ernst (03:30):
Thank you, madam chair, and thank you, Dr. Kosloski. Our hearing today is about identifying UAPs and understanding their potential implications, which could range from technological advancements to potential threats to our national security. Are these phenomena tied to foreign adversaries such as China or Russia leveraging advanced technologies beyond our current capabilities? Or do they represent unknown scientific phenomena that challenge our current understanding? We must answer these critical questions to ensure that our national security is not compromised. It is vital that all agencies work in tandem to aggregate data, identify patterns, and develop robust analytical frameworks. Our ability to detect, track, and respond to UAPs requires the latest technology and full cooperation from all government branches. Thanks very much, Dr. Kosloski, for your attention to this matter, and I look forward to the valuable insights that you and AARO can provide to our committee. And I yield back. Thank you.
Chairwoman Gillibrand (04:38):
Dr. Kosloski, please make your opening statement.
Dr. Jon Kozlowski (04:42):
Thank you, Chairwoman Gillibrand, Ranking Member Ernst, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. It is a pleasure to be here on behalf of the Department of Defense as the new director of the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. I appreciate the opportunity to provide a status update on AARO's work and respond to your questions about unidentified anomalous phenomenon, or UAP. On behalf of the Department and the entire AARO team, I want to say how grateful we are to Congress for its continued support.
(05:07)
Unidentified objects in any domain pose potential threats to US safety and security. Reports of UAP activity, particularly near national security sites, must be treated seriously and investigated with scientific rigor by the US government. By way of introduction, I'm Jon Kosloski. I'm a researcher at my core with an academic background in mathematics, physics, and engineering. I have spent most of my career at the National Security Agency leading advanced research in the areas of optics, computing, and crypto mathematics.
(05:36)
By nature, I am drawn to tough scientific problems, which is what brought me to AARO and the UAP mission. Since I arrived at AARO in August, I've been impressed by the breadth and depth of my team's experience, and the framework they've established to rigorously analyze UAP reports. AARO has taken meaningful steps to improve data collection and retention, bolster sensor development, effectively triage UAP reports, and reduce the stigma of reporting UAP events.
(06:03)
Last year AARO worked with the DOD's joint staff to issue guidance to defense personnel worldwide on how to report UAP observations, and is working with the military services regarding implementation. AARO has also launched a public website that features UAP imagery, case resolutions, material analysis, archival records, and more. These are only a few examples of AARO's recent progress, and we're just getting started. To date, AARO has over 1,600 UAP reports in its holdings from across the US government.
(06:34)
I'll share a slide in just a few minutes with updated UAP analytic trends. You'll see that many reports resolve to commonplace objects like birds, balloons, and unmanned systems, while others lack sufficient data for comprehensive analysis. Although only a small percentage of reports received by AARO are potentially anomalous, these are the cases that require significant time, resources, and a focused scientific inquiry by AARO and its network of partners.
(07:02)
It is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology. To accomplish AARO's national security mission, I have set three priorities for the office: building strong partnerships, promoting transparency, and scaling up the work of the office. Aero cannot do its work alone. Building partnerships across government, academia, industry, and with the public is essential to the success of the office. Strong cooperation with the military services is particularly important.
(07:35)
We rely on their support to implement our reporting guidance and to amplify the message that there should be zero stigma associated with UAP reporting. We also rely on partnerships with the National Labs, the office of the Director of National Intelligence, FBI, department of Homeland Security, NASA, all of which play a role in the whole of government effort to address UAP. Recognizing the talent and expertise that reside outside of the government, AARO will continue to explore new ways to partner with the academic and scientific communities to investigate its most complex UAP cases.
(08:11)
A related priority for AARO is transparency. Our ability to collaborate with key partners, including the scientific community and the public, relies on information sharing, to include downgrading and declassifying UAP related information. In some cases it may be unclear to the public why the DOD classified a piece of information in the first place. Why are photos of seemingly benign objects such as balloons classified? It's often the case that an object or phenomenon isn't itself a security concern, but the location, source, or method used to capture it is still sensitive. Many cases are difficult to quickly release to the public but are reported to the appropriate committees in Congress that are authorized by law or House and Senate leadership to receive the information. It is important to note that AARO does not unilaterally declassify
Dr. Jon Kozlowski (09:00):
… classify information. Instead, we work with the originator of a classified record to ensure that declassifying that record does not inadvertently harm national security. This can take time. Nonetheless, the department is committed to declassifying and publicly sharing more information on UAP while protecting sensitive sources and methods. I'll be sharing some newly declassified imagery in just a few minutes. AARO is also working closely with the National Archives and Records Administration to make UAP-related documents publicly available in a digitized collection.
(09:37)
Meanwhile, AARO continues to review the US historical record relating to UAP. We welcome any former or current government civilian contractor, or military service member with relevant information to reach out to us at www.aaro.mil. My final priority is scaling up AARO's work to match its mission. AARO needs to bolster the quantity, quality, and diversity of data that it acquires and examines. This means tapping into existing data sources within the interagency while deploying AARO's own organic sensor capabilities.
(10:10)
To the extent that UAP results from the domain awareness gaps, more and better data will help us fill those gaps and help us understand what is being encountered. In closing, AARO is committed to the highest standards of scientific integrity. We will not foreclose on any explanation for UAP prematurely. We will continue to follow the science and data wherever they lead. We will continue to have an open and frank dialogue with Congress in settings like these and in classified briefings. We will continue to keep you fully and currently informed of all UAP information, active or historical. And finally, we will share as much information as possible at the unclassified level to inform the public of AARO's activities and its findings. For now, I'd like to turn to a brief presentation of UAP trends and cases, and I'd be happy to take questions.
(11:00)
Okay. This chart represents the UAP reporting since 1996, and as has previously been discussed by AARO, that sensor placement seems to have caused a bias in our data, both geographic and at altitude. And we're working to resolve that bias in 2025 or reduce that bias through broader engagements with the DOD as well as the IC and the rest of the government. Also by incorporating broader sensors into our data and through a public reporting mechanism that we hope to have live in mid-2025. On the left side, it shows the altitudes and we'll see… It's a bit cut off. We'll see that most of the reporting occurs between 15,020 5,000 feet. That happens to be where most of our sensors are. And the reporting above and below that is also often coming from those same platforms. In the center, we'll see that the resolved cases have the vast majority being balloons and UAS.
(12:11)
We're seeing a great increase in satellites recently, particularly with the launch of mega satellite constellations such as Starlink, where the satellites are catching what is called satellite flares or glint off the sun just after sunset or just before sunrise. And on the rightmost we'll see the morphology or the shapes that have been reported. The majority have been lights or orbs. We think that there's going to be a increase in the lights with the mega constellations, but our most interesting cases, some of which I'll discuss later, are actually the shapes such as the triangles or the cylinders. And at the bottom we'll see the geographic bias that I mentioned before where most of the reports historically had been near the government sites. This bias has been reduced recently by reporting from the FAA. We now get weekly reports from them, and great thank you to our aviators for making those reports. It helps our analysis quite a bit.
(13:11)
Okay. A case that we thought would be a transmedium case as it was reported, is well known on the outside, known as the Puerto Rico case, was data collected in 2013 when a Customs and border patrol aircraft observed an object flying near an airport in Puerto Rico. The green line in this diagram is the track that the airplane was taking, and those many crossed lines are the directions that the camera was facing at the time that the airplane was flying around the airport. And we'll watch the video in just a moment.
(13:47)
The orange arrow in the center is where we assess that the UAP was actually flying, and transmedium means that it goes from one domain into another. In this case, it looks like it goes from the air into the water and then back into the air. We assess that it was actually flying over the airport the entire time. And this video was taken with infrared and what appears to be the transmedium part where it goes into the water is actually where the temperature of the water is equal to the temperature of the object, and the camera can no longer distinguish between the two. It's not that the object actually goes into the water.
(14:28)
And so we assess that the object, likely a pair of balloons or sky lanterns was floating at about seven knots over the airport and descending to about 200 meters. And this video will be released and our report will be released later this year. The GOFAST captured the public attention and congressional attention when it was made public in 2017. Looks like an object flying very fast over the water, very close to the water. Through a very careful geospatial intelligence analysis using trigonometry, we assess with high confidence that the app object is not actually close to the water, but is rather closer to 13,000 feet. Diagram here shows as the platform is flying and capturing the object, if it is closer to the platform at a higher altitude, a trick of the eye called parallax makes it look like the object is moving much faster. And so we've written a detailed paper on parallax released on our website so that the public can literally check our math on this analysis.
(15:35)
An interesting case, which I don't believe the public is familiar with, is captured in 2018 from a UAV flying in the Mediterranean watching Mount Etna as it was erupting. And it appears that that object is flying through the plume of superheated gas and ash. This was a rather difficult case to resolve. We had to pull in support from a number of IC and S& T partners and even reach out to a volcanologist. And through very detailed 3D modeling and pixel by pixel analysis of the object as it's traversing across the clouds, they assessed that the object was actually 170 meters away from the plume and not flying through it. And to be clear, AARO does not believe every object is a bird, a balloon, or a UAV. We do have some very anomalous objects. It's just the nature of resolution we can only resolve things that we understand. So we're now working on additional products where we can inform the public Congress and others of the objects as we're studying them rather than once we resolve them. With that, I'll take your questions.
Chairwoman Gillibrand (16:43):
Thank you, Dr. Kosloski. I appreciate your testimony. It's been widely reported that individuals claiming first-tale knowledge of unreported UAP programs have been reluctant to engage with AARO. What message do you have for those individuals and how we work to gain their trust?
Dr. Jon Kozlowski (17:04):
I would let them know that Congress has gone out of its way to create the organization, AARO specifically to conduct these sorts of investigations and has uniquely empowered them to have access to all UAP-related information, whether that's historic or current. And we take that responsibility and those authorities very seriously. And so we have been reaching out to a broader community, encouraging folks who had talked to AARO personnel in the past and maybe felt uncomfortable to come back to us. We've met with several of their interlocutors and a couple of first-hand witnesses, and we are making great progress. And those first-hand witnesses that we have talked to do feel comfortable coming back to us. And so we hope that more folks that do have information would go to www.aaro.mil, fill out the form, send it to us so we can bring them in for interviews and add their information to our investigations.
Chairwoman Gillibrand (17:59):
Thank you.
Chairwoman Gillibrand (18:00):
I recently just read your report from March, your historic report, and I would encourage anyone who's interested in this topic to read the report. Because when I was asked by a reporter about it, they said, "Well, it doesn't show any evidence of secret programs that have aliens." That's not how I read the report. What I read the report is, the U.S. government took sightings extremely seriously over the last 75 years, put some of the greatest minds ever to analyze these cases because they assess them as some deeply unknown phenomena that may or may not cause threats, that may or may not be related to adversaries, but are certainly something that the U.S. government needed to know about.
(18:38)
And what I read from this report is that we resolved numbers of cases, but in almost every instance, whether it was in the forties, the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, the noughts, half the cases were unresolved. So I don't think this is an example of the government not taking these cases seriously. I think this is an example of our government spending 75 years taking these cases very seriously. And interestingly for the group that put together this report, they didn't have access to any firsthand reporting. And so from my perspective, for whistleblowers and people who want to come in, please come in because the purpose of AARO is so that the senators can do our job to provide oversight, accountability, and transparency.
(19:19)
We find it very concerning that our pilots, that our Navy officers, that people who have sightings of UAPs are denigrated, are somehow dismissed or disregarded, they need to be protected. This is a huge issue for national security because number one, we don't have domain awareness, which is very problematic. Number two, we don't have domain superiority if we don't understand how different UAPs are flying, what technology they're using, what their mission is, what their purpose is. And at the base level, we have so many UAPs around our bases, around our military sites, around our nuclear sites that it's deeply disturbing that adversaries at a minimum could be using these opportunities to spy, to glean intelligence that will harm our long-term national security.
(20:10)
So I'm grateful that you're taking the whistleblowers very seriously. I'm grateful that AARO is trying its best to integrate the private sector, the public into their work. Interestingly, in this hearing, we heard that the FAA is now working hand in glove, which is very helpful. We want this public-facing accessibility to be put in place by 2025 so that people can upload their videos, their data, their reports. I've met with people who have followed this issue for decades, and they have thousands of examples, thousands of pieces of data that ultimately I want uploaded into AARO so you can cross-reference historic information with current information. Because this group at AARO are the best scientists that we can find anywhere, and they will do the work that's needed to be done. So I just want to thank you for that.
(21:03)
And then with my last 42 seconds, can you tell us about any of the cases that merit further analysis by your IC and science and technology partners? What is it that makes these cases anomalous? And a large number of reports are placed in the active archive because AARO does not have enough information. What might prompt you to reopen a case like that? And do you have any examples?
Dr. Jon Kozlowski (21:26):
Sure. I'll start with the active archive case. That is just the place where we put cases where we don't have enough scientific information to resolve them at that time, but we're always looking for opportunities to correlate them to new cases that come in as the new cases come in, as well as enrich those cases with additional data. We do have one example that I'm aware of where we were able to correlate a number of observations of interesting lights in the sky. And eventually, we concluded that it was multiple people observing Starlink flares, just as an example.
(21:57)
Three cases that merit analysis that we're working on right now, one we might be in the process of resolving, but nonetheless is still interesting. The first one was brought to us by a law enforcement officer out west where he observed a large orange orb floating several hundred feet above the ground a couple miles away. He went to investigate what was going on with that orb. And as he was pulling up to the location where he thought would be below the orb, about 40 to 60 meters away from some object, the area was well lit, he saw a blacker than black object. He said it was about the size of a Prius, four to six feet wide.
(22:34)
And as he got 40 to 60 meters away from the object, it tilted up about 45 degrees and then it shot up vertically, he says 10 to 100 times faster than any drone he's ever seen before. And it did that without making a sound as far as he could tell from inside of his vehicle. And just as it left his field of view through his windshield, then it emitted very bright red and blue lights that illuminated the inside of his vehicle as brightly as if someone had set off fireworks just outside of his vehicle or street flares. So that's anomalous because of the size of the vehicle with the great acceleration. And when he came back to investigate that area, he found no disturbance of the ground beneath it. That's one interesting one.
(23:18)
Another one comes to us from Southeast U.S. There was a U.S. facility where two cars of government contractors were leaving the facility around nine o'clock in the morning. They looked up in the sky and saw a large metallic cylinder about the size of a commercial airplane, and it was stationary. They observed that there was a very bright white light behind or around the object. They saw it stationary for 15 to 20 seconds, and then it disappeared. Obviously, an object that large, stationary unless it's a blimp, is unusual, but then disappearing, we can't explain how that would happen.
(23:53)
And then the last case was interesting. We had a aircraft that was flying parallel to another aircraft and it was capturing imagery of it, and a small looking object appeared to fly between the two of them much faster than them. Through very careful analysis, we think that the object might've actually been further away than the object that it was videotaping, but it requires very careful analysis to come to those conclusions, and we don't have the metadata to support that yet.
Chairwoman Gillibrand (24:26):
Senator Ernst.
Senator Ernst (24:28):
Yes. Thank you, madam chair. And Dr. Kosloski, you mentioned that you do work with the intelligence community, you're working with the FAA. Has AARO involved academia? Have you gone to universities? Do you have outside organizations that you are working with? And if so, can you walk us through some of that collaboration?
Dr. Jon Kozlowski (24:55):
Sure. Right now, most of our collaborations that are veering towards academia are with your university affiliated research centers associated with universities or with FFRDCs. Our partnership with universities, I would say, is lacking right now. We have some one-off associations with university professors. However, that's our fault. And it's largely because of the need to declassify data. We need to give the professors something to work on before we can really engage them.
(25:24)
So we're working significantly on declassification effort. We've hired a number of declassification experts, and we're going to be trying to get cases like the ones that I just discussed here, declassified, so that we can engage with the universities on a regular basis and provide them the data. Talking to a scientist without data is going to be rather disappointing. So hopefully in 2025, we'll be increasing those efforts.
Senator Ernst (25:46):
Right. Well, I appreciate that. I think there's a huge pool of talent out there that you should tap into. Given the public's growing concern and interest in UAPs, how do you balance the need for the transparency that our public is demanding with the potential risks of revealing classified defense information?
Dr. Jon Kozlowski (26:09):
Yeah. That's always a concern that's on the front of our minds. We want to make sure that we're deconflicting both on potential U.S. programs and what the IC might be tracking for adversarial programs as we're aggregating that information and preparing to share it. However, oftentimes, we can remove the discussion of the unidentified and anomalous activity from the sensitive information that our partners are concerned with. And that's usually going to be the platforms that the information was collected with, if it is truly anomalous. And so we have our partners working alongside in the declassification of that data.
Senator Ernst (26:43):
Very good. And then without having to explain the UAP, what do we need to begin really doing about them? What precautions can we take? What should we be doing about them?
Dr. Jon Kozlowski (26:57):
I think that removing the stigma,
Dr. Jon Kozlowski (27:00):
Reducing the stigma is the first step. We need to make sure that we're having honest and transparent conversations about them. Because if we're hesitant to discuss them, then it opens the opportunity for an adversary, as you had mentioned earlier, Senator Gillibrand, to come in and conduct some activity. So we need to do that, and we need to have more persistent monitoring and understand that whether it is a UAP or a counter-UAS issue, that we need to have that complete domain awareness around our national security facilities.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Gillibrand (27:37):
Just a couple of follow up questions. We didn't discuss in this setting. The most recent UAP or UAS encounter with bases like Langley. I know that the incursion by UASs that were publicly made available through the press that took over two weeks was fairly alarming to senators because there was a question about what technology they were using. There was a question about why it was so hard to detect. Can you speak to how AARO will be integrated into the review of these kinds of cases, and how you can be helpful to both the intelligence community and the Department of Defense in analyzing or being able to more quickly analyze what's knowable and what's not knowable? Because once you do identify it as a drone, for example, it then goes to the right department at DOD or the intelligence community to assess, deal with, or take down as the incident might be.
(28:40)
But talk to us a little bit about what role you can play for both the DOD and the IC community in these kinds of incursions that are happening when we don't know what tech is being used and we don't understand a flight pattern, or we don't understand how they arrive and depart in the way they do.
Dr. Jon Kozlowski (29:01):
We are generally going to be supporting them through an advisory capacity. As an organization that naturally needs to conduct baseline experiments of the environment to see what normal looks like, whether it's balloons, birds, anomalous activity, or drones flying through an environment, we're going to gather a lot of data that will allow us to characterize an environment very well and then detect and follow those tracks hopefully rather efficiently.
(29:29)
There's also a lot of overlap in the type of sensors that are going to be used for the counter UAS mission and the UAP mission, whether that's active detection like radars or passive like cameras. And so as AARO is trying to push the bounds on Detectability for UAP, we're hopefully going to have best practices that we can also provide to the counter UAS, and potentially we might have additional technologies that we can offer them to support.
Chairwoman Gillibrand (29:59):
I'd like to just address a little bit of reporting and feedback. As you know, AARO is required to develop a mechanism for the public to report UAP information. Now that that mechanism for current and former military civilian and contractor personnel has been established. Can you speak to AARO's plans for a public reporting mechanism, how did AARO arrive at this approach, and were other options considered? And second, for pilots and operators who have reported a UAP, what feedback, if any, has AARO provided to these individuals related to what AARO is doing with their report and how the report has been resolved? How does such feedback or lack thereof impact the frequency of UAP reporting?
Dr. Jon Kozlowski (30:40):
The public reporting mechanism that we've decided to go with is going to look similar to the reporting mechanism that we currently have for historical events where we're going to ask folks to go to our website, download a PDF form, put in the narrative for their account, and then email that to us with accompanying media. Usually it'll probably be imagery. We went with that option because we thought, one, we could do it rather quickly, we could do it efficiently, make it very cost effective for the taxpayer. But also, we think we can gather all the data that we're going to need to conduct our analysis, and then we're going to have that feed into an automated processing system that will cross-correlate that against all the other public reported cases as well as the US government cases.
(31:23)
We did consider a number of other reporting mechanisms to include automated online forms as well as cell phone apps, and we ultimately decided that this would be the safest, cheapest, and easiest to maintain in the future while protecting the private information of the individuals who are reporting.
(31:45)
Regarding the feedback from the resolved reports, right now we don't have a good feedback mechanism. It's fairly informal. We're working on building a case management system that AARO will use at all classification levels, and hopefully in that we'll be able to provide feedback as the case is going through the resolution process. We have multiple phases. Then the folks who report that, whether it's a pilot at the classified level or someone potentially reporting through another mechanism, they'll get that automated feedback. It is not determined at this point yet how much information we'll be able to include in that feedback where it is in the process. It'll depend on the classification of the resolution of the case.
Chairwoman Gillibrand (32:37):
My final question is, is there anything that you need to tell the Senate that you need from us, whether it's funding, whether it's support, whether it's legislation? Is there any request that AARO has of us or anything else you need to brief us on for us to be able to do our jobs to protect our service members as well as integrate public interest and public data and information into the future analysis efforts of AARO?
Dr. Jon Kozlowski (33:06):
First of all, I want to say thank you again. I think that the authorities that we have are remarkable, and I think that we are well-resourced as an office. The only ask that I would have is that you continue to champion us, particularly with witnesses; encourage them to come forward and report to us so that we can have a more fulsome investigation of the potential historic or ongoing legacy programs.
Chairwoman Gillibrand (33:31):
Thank you so much. Hearing adjourned.