On November 9, 2023, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks issued the following statement about the departure of All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick: All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick announced that he will retire from federal service in December. During his distinguished 27-year career of public service in the Department of Defense and the United States Intelligence Community, and since assuming leadership of AARO, Dr. Kirkpatrick has served the American people with honesty and integrity, tackling an incredibly difficult mission to explain the unknown. During his tenure, Dr. Kirkpatrick stood up the office…
Author: John Greenewald
Background Operation Highjump, officially known as The United States Navy Antarctic Developments Program, 1946–1947, was a significant United States Navy mission initiated shortly after World War II. The primary objective was to establish the Antarctic research base Little America IV. This operation, also referred to as Task Force 68, commenced on August 26, 1946, and concluded in late February 1947. The expedition was a monumental effort involving 4,700 personnel, 13 ships, and a fleet of aircraft which included 33 planes. It was overseen by Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd and represented the largest sea and air operation in Antarctica up…
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office; Susan Gough, Defense Press Operations SUSAN GOUGH: All right. Good afternoon. I’m Sue Gough, for those who don’t know me, from Defense Press Operations. Thank you for coming today to talk about AARO and its website and the launch of the new secure reporting mechanism on the website. When I call on you, please identify yourself and your outlet, because Dr. Kirkpatrick does not know you like we do. For those who are dialed in, please make sure that you mute your phone. We’re going to go for about 30 minutes or so.…
The Department of Defense (DoD) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) just released a detailed report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) as mandated by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022. The report offers an in-depth look into UAP cases that span from 31 August 2022 to 30 April 2023, with additional inclusions of reports from earlier periods between 2019-2022 that were previously unmentioned. During the stated period, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) registered a total of 291 UAP reports. Out of these, 274 were from the aforementioned period, while 17 were…
The following is NASA press release 23-115, and is archived here for reference: Initial studies of the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid Bennu sample collected in space and brought to Earth by NASA show evidence of high-carbon content and water, which together could indicate the building blocks of life on Earth may be found in the rock. NASA made the news Wednesday from its Johnson Space Center in Houston where leadership and scientists showed off the asteroid material for the first time since it landed in September. This finding was part of a preliminary assessment of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security…