The head of the Pentagon's office tasked with tracking UFOs told lawmakers of "emerging capabilities" and "advanced tech" from potential foreign adversaries — specifically Russia and China — that "are concerning."
But there's no definitive evidence of extraterrestrial technology or alien life, Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), said during Wednesday's Senate meeting of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.
"Of the cases that are showing some sort of advanced technical signature … I am concerned about what that nexus is," Kirkpatrick said after he was asked about Russia and China's capabilities to attack and surveil U.S. interests.
"I have indicators that some are related to foreign capabilities. We have to investigate that with our [intelligence community] partners."
He didn't expound on what the "indicators" are but said America's adversaries, especially China, "are not waiting" and "advancing quickly."
"They are less risk-adverse at technical advancement than we are. They are willing to try things and see if they work," Kirkpatrick said.
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"Are there capabilities that can be employed within an ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) or weapons fashion? Absolutely. Do I have evidence that they're doing this in these cases?"
Kirkpatrick paused for a few seconds and seemed to weigh his response before answering, "No, but I have concerning indicators."
Again, he didn't expound on what he meant by "indicators."
The AARO director said he's talking about a "single percentage" of all the cases analyzed, which he said is about 650 reports, and it's difficult to definitively determine the object's origin without seeing a country's flag on the side of the object.
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Wednesday's public hearing is only the second one in the last 50 years in which lawmakers have openly discussed UFOs. The first was last May.
Before Kirkpatrick was peppered with questions from lawmakers, he gave a general overview of what his department has done, presented several infographics about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) reporting trends and discussed a handful of specific cases.
The number of reported UAPs, which is a Department of Defense-created term for UFO, has increased in frequency over the last few years as the stigma of reporting these types of encounters slowly wears off and as the government ramps up its focus on the potential safety risks unexplained objects in the sky could pose to U.S. military personnel.
Several whistleblowers and former military pilots have also come forward and talked about their interactions with potential UFOs, including former Navy pilot Ryan Graces, who described objects showing "contacts on our radar, contacts on our camera system."
"We were seeing these with our eyeballs … Two aircraft from my squadron were flying side by side, and one of these objects went right between their aircraft."
The issue heated up again in February after the U.S. shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon and three other unidentified flying objects in American airspace over an eight-day stretch.
The ongoing review by the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon of hundreds of UAP incidents reported by military personnel was one of the techniques that helped identify the Chinese spy balloon, a U.S. official said in February.
"We need to be able to agnostically, as a media, accept that there is uncertainty and look at it from a first principles approach," Graves said in March. "Because if we wrap it into all that context about little green men, we’re going to be barking up the wrong tree."
What the objects are or what they could be, is unknown, he said. But if it's a national security issue, the court of action is clear.
