In an article published by the prestigious "Science News", the journalist Bret Tingley wrote on November 19, 2024 a significative meeting at the Capitol.
Here we present the text of the most important parts of it.
Pentagon UFO chief tells Senate 'very anomalous objects' need careful study
Science News
By Brett Tingley
published November 19, 2024
At least, it hasn't been yet. The United States Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities heard testimony on Tuesday (Nov. 19) from Jon T. Kosloski, director of the Pentagon's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). The U.S. Department of Defense created the office in July 2022 in order to have a single place for military and government personnel to report UFO sightings, or UAP, as they're now known. The new term, short for unidentified anomalous phenomena, encompasses not only unidentified objects or events in the sky, but also those in water, in space or those that appear to travel between these domains.
During today's hearing, Kosloski came in strong, stating that "it is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology."
Still, despite having resolved hundreds of cases with prosaic explanations, Kosloski noted that his office does not believe that every UAP is a bird, balloon or drone. "We do have some very anomalous objects," he said.
Kosloski also reported on the office's latest analysis of UFO/UAP cases, stressing that his office will "continue to follow the science and data wherever they lead" and keep both Congress and the public as informed as possible — at the unclassified level, he clarified.
That stands in stark contrast to testimony presented to a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee last week, in which a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral and a former U.S. counterintelligence officer told lawmakers that the American government is part of a decades-long coverup to conceal the fact that "we are not alone in the cosmos."
During his testimony, Kosloski gave an overview of his office's activities since it issued a report to Congress and testified in a similar setting last year. "Many reports resolve to commonplace objects like birds, balloons and unmanned systems, while others lack sufficient data for comprehensive analysis," Kosloski said, adding that "only a small percentage of reports received by AARO are potentially anomalous."
Kosloski referred to a UAP incident that occurred in 2013 near Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. The infrared video, shot in 2013 by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol helicopter, appears to show an object flying just above the ocean before disappearing into it, or perhaps splitting in two.
"We assessed that it was actually flying over the airport the entire time," Kosloski said. When the object appears to disappear in the infrared video that accompanies the case, it is actually the camera sensing that the object is the same temperature as the water behind it. Instead of splitting in two, it was simply two objects — balloons or sky lanterns — in close proximity that came in and out of view. [[It has to be noted that Retired Commodore Rubén Lianza, Director of the Aero-Space Identification Center belonging to the Argentinean Air Force, solved correctly the case while American private sources continued evaluating the case as a genuine UFO]]
Kosloski also offered how his office was able to close the case on the infamous GOFAST video, shot by a U.S. Navy fighter jet in 2016 off the coast of Florida. In that case, the object's apparent speed in the video was actually due to the parallax effect, or the camera's perspective, Kosloski explained.
Furthermore, the AARO director showed a 2018 video captured by a drone flying over Mt. Etna that he stated is not widely known among the public. "This was a rather difficult case to solve," Kosloski said. "The object was actually 170 meters away from the plume — not flying through it."
During questioning, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) asked Kosloski about whether or not some individuals who have encountered UAP might be reluctant to engage with his office, referring to accusations some UAP disclosure advocates frequently level against AARO. These critics attest that the office is part of an alleged decades-long U.S. government-led campaign of "excessive secrecy" that aims to keep the public in the dark about UFOs.
In response to Gillibrand's questioning, Kosloski defended his office. "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," he said.
Gillibrand also asked about a report released by AARO in March 2024, noting that she has been told "it doesn't show any any evidence of secret programs that have aliens."
But Gillibrand pushed back on that assertion. "That's not how I read the report," the senator said. "What I read in the report is the US government took sightings extremely seriously over the last 75 years, and put some of the greatest minds together to analyze these cases, because they assessed them as some deeply unknown phenomena that may or may not cause threats — that may or may not be related to adversaries".................
Today's hearing concluded with a discussion of recent incidents in which unidentified drones, or uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), were seen over U.S. military bases and other sensitive installations.
Those incidents, Kosloski notes, underscore the need for the United States 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."
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