In UFO news, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has officially announced the establishment of an office to track strange objects in space, air, and undersea. This includes persons who appear to move between these many domains.
Unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), or UFOs as they are informally known, are today the focus of unprecedented government attention. In recent hearings and classified briefings held in the halls of the United States Congress, many lawmakers expressed concern that America’s airspace may not be as safe as we think, as a result of numerous sightings of unidentified flying objects reported by military aviators and other members of the armed forces.
The DoD efforts
In light of this, the Department of Defense announced the launch of this new agency in a statement on Wednesday, July 20, 2022. The “All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office,” or AARO, was formed by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. Sean Kirkpatrick, the former head scientist of the Defense Intelligence Agency‘s Missile and Space Intelligence Center, will be the new office’s director.
The DoD will coordinate efforts across the department and the federal government to “detect, identify, and attribute objects of interest in, on, or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace, and other areas of interest, and, as necessary, to mitigate any associated threats to [the] safety of operations and national security,” according to the statement.
According to a second statement from Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, the office is now the “focal point for all UAP and UAP-related operations and may represent the Department for such activities.” In such actions, it may also act as the Department’s representative.
Discover and identify
Governance, science and technology, intelligence operations and analysis, mitigation and defeat, surveillance, collecting, and reporting, and system capabilities and design are the office’s six core areas of interest.
According to the news release, the office will try to discover and identify “anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, underwater, and trans-medium objects.” In this context, a trans-medium object or vessel is one that can travel between domains, such as being able to shift from airborne flight to spaceflight or from submerged travel to flight.
The foundation of this new agency is merely the most recent step taken by the American government in recent months to improve its understanding of UFOs. In June, NASA formed a subcommittee to investigate UAP, with the secondary purpose of dispelling some of the taboos or stigma associated with the subject.
“One of the things that we tangentially want to be a part of this study, simply by talking about it in the open,” Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said at the time at a news conference. “Obviously, this will result in expanded access to data, more reports, more sightings, and so on. So that’s something else we’re attempting to accomplish with it.”
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