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Media Roundtable on the All-domain Anomaly
Resolution Office
December 16, 2022
Ronald Moultrie, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security; Dr. Sean
Kirkpatrick, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
STAFF: Good afternoon, I'm Sue Gough. I will be -- from Defense Press Operations. I will be your moderator today. We are here to talk about the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which as most of you know, is the office that replaced the former Navy-led UAPTF. We have with us here today, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie, and Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of AARO. And with that, I will turn it over to Mr. Moultrie.
UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE (I&S) RONALD MOULTRIE: Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Ronald Moultrie, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. It's a pleasure to be here today to provide an update on the department's efforts to address unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP. In May of this year, I appeared before Congress for the first open hearing on UAP in 50 years. In my testimony, I underscored that the Department of Defense takes UAP reports seriously. You may have caught that I just said unidentified anomalous phenomena, whereas in the past the department has used the term unidentified aerial phenomena. This new terminology expands the scope of UAP to include submerged and trans-medium objects. Unidentified phenomena in all domains, whether in the air, ground, sea or space, pose potential threats to personnel security and operations security, and they require our urgent attention.
At the hearing in May, I stressed to congressional leaders that the department is committed to improving data collection, bolstering reporting and personnel training, and fully leveraging the resources of our interagency partners to address the challenges posed by UAP. Since that time, we have been translating those commitments into action. In July, we established the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office or AARO, and we named Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick as director. Dr. Kirkpatrick is a distinguished scientist and a career intelligence officer. He embodies the department's commitment to the highest standards of scientific rigor and objectivity. I'm fully confident he's the right person to lead this important work. Dr. Kirkpatrick is building a talented team that combines a wide array of expertise and experience in data collection, research and analysis, operations and technical expertise from across the department, the intelligence community, the interagency, and private industry.
We view Congress as an important partner in this endeavor. Since its establishment, AARO has been providing regular updates to Congress on its efforts to document, analyze and resolve reports of anomalous phenomena. The department has already submitted its first congressionally-mandated quarterly reports on UAP in August in November, and we will continue to provide quarterly updates. I also want to emphasize that the department takes public interest in UAP seriously. As I said to congressional leaders in May, we are fully committed to the principles of openness and accountability to the American people. We are committed to sharing as much detail with the public as we can. With that, I'd like to turn this over to Dr. Kirkpatrick to share some of the progress that we've made since AARO's establishment.
AARO DIRECTOR SEAN KIRKPATRICK: Thanks. Good afternoon. I'm Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick. I'm the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. As you know, AARO is a new office called for in the FY2022 NDAA and established just this past summer. We have an important and yet challenging mission to lead an interagency effort to document collect, analyze, and when possible, resolve reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena. Let me start by thanking Under Secretary Moultrie for his leadership and support in establishing AARO. As he said, we take UAP reports seriously. Unidentified objects in the skies, sea and space pose potential threats to safety and security, particularly for operational personnel. AARO is leading a focused effort to better characterize, understand and attribute these objects and is employing the highest scientific and analytic standards.
Though AARO is only a few months old, I want to highlight some of the early accomplishments. Since AARO's establishment, we've transferred the data and responsibilities from the previous Navy-led UAP Task Force and disestablished it. During that transition, we've taken the opportunity to expand and standardize and integrate UAP reporting and reevaluate the data we've collected. Given the large and disparate nature of the data, and the need to apply rigorous methodology. AARO has developed an analytic framework that structures, formalizes and applies analytic best practices to the evaluation of that data.
AARO is prioritizing reports of UAP in or near military installations, operating areas, critical infrastructure and areas of national security importance. Our team is partnering with the services, the intelligence community, the Department of Energy, NASA, the FAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – NOAA – and others to share information about UAP and tap into the vast resources of the interagency. NASA has been a particularly valuable partner. We are also engaging with a wide range of select partners from across academia, industry and the scientific community, as well as our allies and partners.
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