What to Expect From US Senate's UFO Hearing

A US Senate hearing into Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) or Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) is set to focus on a plethora of intriguing military reports on April 19.

The open hearing is being held by the Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.

There has been a great deal of interest surrounding growing UAP reports in which unknown craft are described as exhibiting "extraordinary" flight characteristics. Lawmakers are also anticipated to urge both greater oversight transparency on the issue and more robust funding for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) that probes UAP sightings.The Pentagon’s expert on the matter, AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick, is to be grilled by the bipartisan gathering.

AARO was created by the Department of Defense when decades of accumulating reports and rumors forced the Pentagon to take reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) more seriously, publishing reports on their findings. Established in July 2022, the AARO was assigned to sort through the roughly 366 newly identified reports at the time using a “robust analytic process” to make an “initial characterizations” of their nature.

Here are some of the questions that the hearing is expected to focus on.

The hearing is reportedly going to probe whether AARO has accumulated enough proof from over 500 UAP reports by servicemembers over recent years to conclude that any UAP indeed “exhibited highly advanced technology.”

At this point, two reports may be referenced. The first, a 2021 analysis, claims that some declassified sightings by fighter pilots suggested that UAPs “appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion.”

Furthermore, from around 366 most recently reported UAP incidents, analysts “judged more than half as exhibiting unremarkable characteristics,” a 2022 government report stated.

Another question that supposedly will be asked is if any of the ‘UFO’ craft in some of the best-known clips, like the object tracked by a navy pilot in 2015 in the “Gimbal” video, or the “GoFast” and “FLIR1” footage, have been unidentified. Should the answer be "no," the follow-up question would be whether AARO has any working theories regarding them.

The hearing might, according to media speculations, question whether AARO is aware of verifiable public assessments of the now-famous navy videos as confirming eyewitness accounts that the flying craft displaying extraordinary flight dynamics, indicating potentially highly advanced technology.

Scores of naval pilots have claimed that when training off the US East Coast in recent years they witnessed anomalous encounters, picked up by radar, infrared sensors, and, on occasion, visually. The objects were described in reports as 'dark gray cubes' appearing 'inside translucent spheres,' often tracked far from shore, flying for long periods at speeds of several hundred miles per hour.

Furthermore, the hearing may weigh in on the reports that US surveillance satellites have observed UAPs, like was the case involving the so-called Tic Tac-shaped craft.

AARO could also be asked to agree or disagree with the statement by former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe that UAP possess “technologies that [the United States does not] have and, frankly, that we are not capable of defending against.”

The hearing could reference a scientific paper recently co-authored by AARO Director Kirkpatrick and Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Avi Loeb, putting forward the theory that water on Earth’s surface could be drawing extraterrestrials to our planet.

According to Kirkpatrick “extraterrestrial technological probes could use… liquid water as their fuel” and, thus, “would necessarily be looking for water.”

The exact number of UAP-related videos and images in AARO’s possession is another issue the Senate hearing is deemed likely to probe. Over the years, Freedom of Information Act requests are described as revealing that the American government has been sitting on dozens of footage from purportedly fighter jet-mounted targeting pods.

Earlier in the year, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote a letter signed by 12 other senators to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks and Deputy Director of National Intelligence Stacey Dixon. They urgently called for full funding for AARO.

Gllibrand, chair of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, deplored how the office remained underfunded, while highlighting "the need for us to continue to improve our understanding of UAP’s over US airspace.”