“I don’t think the public is aware of the extent of our airspace vulnerabilities and failures, and the degree to which they’ve already been exploited and are being exploited today, and the challenge that we face in trying to sort this out,” Christopher Mellon, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, said during an event hosted on Capitol Hill by the UAP Disclosure Fund and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

Across multiple sessions at the hourslong summit, Mellon and other national security and research experts — including Dr. Avi Loeb, a Harvard professor, and retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, former oceanographer of the Navy — spotlighted recent incidents involving UAP and drones impacting military and civilian infrastructure. 

They also called on Congress to introduce new investments and proposals to help confront challenges associated with the Pentagon’s detection capabilities and what they view as the over-classification of certain UAP records and data.

The U.S. government has a long, complicated history dealing with technologies observed to perform in ways that seem to transcend what’s possible with contemporary capabilities. But with mounting pressure from the public and high-profile proponents over the past decade, Congress has made a series of recent moves to destigmatize the UAP topic, and more strategically investigate perplexing encounters with unidentifiable craft — including by requiring the Pentagon to launch the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) via the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.

At the event Thursday, Mellon and other expert panelists praised that recent progress, but argued that further coordination and accountability measures are needed.

“One of my career frustrations in the intelligence community has been that we have incredible sensors that are far more than $1 billion dollars, and we have a great many of them, and they are collecting information today which is directly pertinent to this topic,” Mellon said. “But that information is not reaching Congress. It’s not reaching the scientific community. In many cases, I don’t think it’s reaching AARO, which is the office that Congress established to study and evaluate this phenomenon.” 

He recommended that the lawmakers in attendance consider mandating a U.S. government- and military-wide assessment of sensor systems collecting data that could support ongoing UAP examinations — as well as an evaluation of classification issues that are preventing the release of unclassified data.

Mellon noted that shortly after he provided three unclassified videos of reported UAP incursions captured by military personnel to the New York Times in 2017, “somebody created the classification guide” inside the government and “we suddenly said, ‘in contradiction to the executive order on classification signed by the president, that essentially, anything having to do with UAP is now suddenly mystically classified because it might damage national security.’”

“Not only did they not damage national security, they helped national security,” Mellon said. “They helped raise an awareness for the public and for Congress that we have an air defense problem here, and the scientific community is very eager to get more of those kinds of videos, because they want to train AI systems. They want to know what it is we’re looking for. They want to measure the signatures.”

During a separate panel at the engagement, Gallaudet also pointed to his frustrations with what he referred to as “over-classification and a deliberate, decades-long disinformation campaign by the U.S. Department of Defense and the intelligence community.”

He and the other participants further discussed recent examples of UAP encounters shared by commercial pilots and military officials who experienced them firsthand.

“Consider the extraordinary report I received this weekend when a former U.S. Navy SH-60 Seahawk helicopter crew chief, who was embarked on the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in 2021, described to me his reporting on forward-looking infrared video of a metallic sphere at an altitude a few 100 feet above the ship, traveling along a linear trajectory, horizontal to sea surface before it accelerated into the horizon at incredible speed, disappearing completely upon landing,” Gallaudet said.

“Moreover, this was not an isolated event for the Eisenhower Strike Group. During that deployment they saw many, many instances of UAP — primarily F-18s frequently encountering them at high altitude, and this topic was widely discussed by the Air Wing during the entire deployment,” he said.

In his presentation, Mellon also detailed multiple reports of what appeared to be drones and swarms of baffling aircraft in restricted military airspace since 2019. For instance, while the average drone is restricted to a flight of 450 feet, he said at Arizona test ranges in 2023 F-35 fighter jet pilots reported encountering drones at up to 35,000 feet, going 500 miles per hour.

“We don’t know what is operating in our airspace — and this continues, often in militarily sensitive areas,” Mellon said. 

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The Congress members are looking to institutionalize more accountability and disclosure from federal agencies on the historically taboo topic.

“This is not a one-time thing. It’s clear this is not a one-time data dump. This is a systemic change to the process in the way that we are transparent with the American people, and with that we’re working on legislation that will put that into practice,” Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., said Thursday.

Burlison, as well as Reps. Anna Luna, R-Fla., and Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., unveiled those plans during a multi-session congressional briefing on “Understanding UAP: Science, National Security and Innovation,” hosted on Capitol Hill by the UAP Disclosure Fund in collaboration with the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

There, the Congress members heard presentations and participated in open-table discussions from a range of high-profile scientists and former government officials, including Harvard University Professor Dr. Avi Loeb, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon and former oceanographer of the Navy retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet.

“I’ve spoken to [U.S. military personnel] that are still in active duty and their sightings of UAP have become so numerous that they are desensitized to the phenomenon. My point being that the Navy possesses a trove of video evidence and data regarding UAP, and I see no reason why [certain] footage of UAP [on] Navy training ranges cannot be declassified and shared with the scientific community,” Gallaudet said.

At various points during the hours-long event, the lawmakers expressed aims to continue to build momentum for UAP transparency in the U.S. government, including via two upcoming congressional hearings Luna announced.

“One is going to be government-focused. We are asking various appointees, I don’t want to release the names yet, but we have been getting good responses from them and we will make those names known soon — as well as military and former military that will be coming forward,” Luna said.

“Also I want to note that we were told by one of Mr. Burleson’s staffers that’s helping us to lead up this investigation about someone that wants to come forward in regards to a crash retrieval program. So that’s pretty interesting to hear someone going on record about that,” she added.

On the sidelines of the event, Burchett told DefenseScoop that the committee will continue to host briefings with the UAP Disclosure Fund and other advocates to raise awareness, gain insights from experts and inform future policy moves or legislation. 

“We’re just going to get more support and maybe make [the legislation] more precise and concise — and I think that that’s going to help a lot,” Burchett said.

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They did so at an invite-only summit hosted on the Hill by the non-partisan UAP Disclosure Fund, on the heels of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s latest hearing on the issue earlier that day. This marked the first time in history that an advocacy group explicitly focused on the formerly more taboo topic of UAP has ever hosted an event inside the Capitol, those leading it said.

“The U.S. government has not been transparent enough about what it knows. UAP transparency is a marathon. It took many decades to result in the status quo of over-classification, and it will likely take time to find the right balance between protecting our national security and an acceptable level of disclosure,” Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., noted.

Humans have long speculated about seemingly unexplainable objects that appear to do things that transcend the capabilities of modern technology — from flying saucers to modern and transmedium UAP.

The Pentagon’s secretive and complicated history grappling with this issue spans decades. 

“For many years, I was entrusted with protecting some of our nation’s most sensitive programs,” Lue Elizondo, a former intelligence officer who was involved in a now disbanded Pentagon task force studying sky-based anomalies, said during his testimony at the briefing.

“Let me be clear: UAP are real. Advanced technologies not made by our government — or any other government — are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe. Furthermore, the U.S. is in possession of UAP technologies, as are some of our adversaries. I believe we are in the midst of a multi-decade secretive arms race, one funded by misallocated taxpayer dollars and hidden from our elected representatives and oversight bodies,” Elizondo, who recently published a New York Times bestseller about his experience, testified.

Pentagon officials have maintained that they’ve found no credible evidence thus far of non-human or extraterrestrial activity.

In direct response to mounting public pressure over recent years, via the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress mandated the Defense Department to set up its latest UAP investigation team known as the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

During the hearing on Wednesday, multiple lawmakers suggested the office’s ongoing pursuits, as Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., put it, have “stoked suspicions that AARO is unable, or perhaps unwilling, to bring forward the truth about the government’s activities concerning UAPs.”

“I’m disturbed that AARO itself lacks transparency — even its budget is kept from the public. So if there is no ‘there’ there, then why are we spending money on it? And how much? Why the secrecy? If it’s really no big deal and there’s nothing there, why hide it from the American people?” Mace said. 

Throughout the hearing, lawmakers and witnesses spotlighted examples that they said demonstrate a clear lack of DOD transparency, and the need for even greater oversight.

“While I applaud previous bipartisan legislation passed by Congress concerning UAPs, a more comprehensive approach is needed to address the broader implication of UAP on public safety and national security, as well as the socio-economic opportunities that open UAP research could unlock,” retired Navy Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet said.

At the UAP Disclosure Fund’s event Wednesday night, Gallaudet doubled down on these claims alongside Elizondo. They were joined by dozens of stakeholders, lawmakers and others in the audience.

“UAP, UFOs are real and they’re interacting with humanity. And we know this without a doubt. Not only that, but there’s some significant implications and effects. We know that there are national security impacts,” Gallaudet, who among other leadership roles previously served as the U.S. Navy’s top oceanographer, said.

Also during the UAPDF event, lawmakers representing both chambers committed to pushing existing proposals and introducing new legislation to enable UAP disclosure and confront the risks such phenomena poses to U.S. national security and public safety.

Sen. Rounds said he’s moving to partner with “colleagues on both sides of the aisle” to re-introduce and enact a law that would establish an official board of officials to comprehensively review federal UAP records and revamp the associated declassification process.

After speaking onstage at the engagement, Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told DefenseScoop that while he was hoping for another “whistleblower to come forward to testify” on Wednesday, he was pleased with some of the materials submitted and released to the congressional record, via the hearing.

“Usually we’re blocked from even getting access to documents,” Burlison said. 

“And I think the next step is going to be to get [whistleblowers including Elizondo and former federal civilian David Grusch], and to get people from AARO and some other people from the Department of Defense in a SCIF — and let’s see where the truth really is,” he added, using an acronym to refer to a secure compartmented information facility.

Burlison also acknowledged his aims to support some of the latest House legislation that he said would “force UAP disclosure,”and was put forward by Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn. 

One of the most vocal contemporary congressional advocates for UAP oversight across government agencies, Burchett introduced the UAP Transparency Act in May. Shortly before the hearing this week, he put forward the UAP Whistleblower Protection Act.

“Our people really like that [sort of legislation]. So I’m hoping to get more of that kind of thing [put forward]. But I’m very hopeful [incoming President-elect Donald] Trump will come forth with this information and quit trusting people at the Pentagon to tell him the right answer,” Burchett told DefenseScoop. 

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Retired Navy Cmdr. David Fravor, former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, and former Air Force intelligence officer and federal civilian David Grusch each testified under oath July 26 about recent military-aligned “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP) encounters that they said demonstrate an “existential threat to national security.”

Grusch — who said he recently made an official whistleblower filing via the Intelligence Community Inspector General — shared the most sensational allegations with lawmakers, including accusations that the U.S. government had secretly recovered UAP-type craft and “non-human biologics” from crash sites, that senior defense and IC leaders have retaliated against him and others who came forward, and that the All domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is not seriously engaging with him on such matters.

In official and unofficial statements shared online and via email late last week, Defense Department personnel pushed back on a number of those and other assertions the witnesses made at the hearing.

AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick issued a fiery statement spotlighting “his own personal observations and opinions” — but “not necessarily official DOD and IG positions” — on social media Thursday. The Pentagon authenticated his post Friday. 

In it, Kirkpatrick wrote that he “cannot let yesterday’s hearing pass without sharing how insulting it was to the officers of” the Defense Department and the intelligence community who have been “working diligently, tirelessly, and often in the face of harassment and animosity, to fulfill their Congressionally-mandated mission.”  

Allegations of “retaliation, to include physical assault and hints of murder, are extraordinarily serious, which is why law enforcement is a critical member of the AARO team, specifically to address and take swift action should anyone come forward with such claims. Yet, contrary to assertions made in the hearing, the central source of those allegations has refused to speak with AARO,” Kirkpatrick wrote — pointing at Grusch without directly stating his name. 

He also said AARO has yet to see credible proof regarding allegations of any reverse-engineering programs for non-human technology, and that some information reportedly obtained by Congress has not been shared with his office. 

Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough declined to weigh in on Kirkpatrick’s statement in an email to DefenseScoop late Friday evening. 

“The department is aware of Dr. Kirkpatrick’s post, which are his personal opinions expressed in his capacity as a private citizen and we won’t comment directly on the contents of the post. We do want to reinforce the department’s unwavering commitment to openness and accountability to the American people and Congress,” she wrote.

Still, Gough’s official Pentagon responses also echoed some of the notions articulated by the AARO director.

“The department has no information that any individual has been harmed or killed as a result of providing information to AARO. Any unsubstantiated claims that individuals have been harmed or killed in the process of providing information to AARO will serve to discourage individuals with relevant information from coming forward to aid in AARO’s efforts,” she wrote.  

“To date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently,” she reiterated.

Gough did not respond to follow-up questions from DefenseScoop Monday regarding new or existing channels for service members to flag UAP incidents, and whether or not there’s been an uptick in new reports to AARO — or intensified harassment — since the hearing. 

According to Graves, the former F-18 pilot who testified last week, DOD’s responses reflect “a perfect example of why witnesses are reluctant to come forward.”

“The Pentagon Press Office statement following the hearing was misleading. The disconnect between pilot witness testimony under oath at the Congressional hearing and the Pentagon Press Office’s dismissal is a perfect example of why witnesses are reluctant to come forward. It makes zero sense that our military would undermine its own servicemen and women when they are reporting serious flight risks,” he told DefenseScoop on Monday. 

Based on his own experiences with military-connected UAP, Graves formed and now runs the witness program Americans for Safe Aerospace to provide an entity for the public to safely and securely report observations or encounters. He testified at the hearing that his team estimates roughly only 5% of UAP sightings are currently reported to AARO.

“I hope Congress will hold DOD accountable and push for more support for witnesses and whistleblowers. For example, the [Pentagon] Press Office says AARO welcomes witness accounts — but AARO has not even implemented a public reporting mechanism as required by last year’s [National Defense Authorization Act]. How are witnesses even supposed to get in contact?” Graves told DefenseScoop.

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At a House Oversight and Government Accountability subcommittee hearing on UAP transparency — which was highly-anticipated and well-attended — retired Navy Cmdr. David Fravor, former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, and former intelligence officer David Grusch each testified under oath that they believe such seemingly inexplicable phenomena pose “an existential threat to national security,” and can likely collect reconnaissance information about the U.S. and test for vulnerabilities in the nation’s technology infrastructure. 

The three witnesses shared new details about their own and other military officials’ reported UAP experiences throughout the event.

Fravor — former commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron Forty-One, known as the Black Aces — shared how after his team in 2004 captured footage of a UAP that appeared to be shaped like a “Tic Tac” during a routine training mission with the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier off the California coast, there was no immediate investigation of the incident.

“None of my crew were ever questioned, tapes were never taken, and after a couple of days, it turned into a great story to tell friends,” Fravor said.

The Navy eventually authenticated a 90-second video that was captured in 2017.

“What is not seen is the radar tape that showed the jamming of the APG-73 radar in the aircraft, but we do see on the targeting pod video that the object does not emit any infrared plume from a normal propulsion system that we would expect,” Fravor noted.

“I would like to say that the Tic Tac Object that we engaged in November 2004 was far superior to anything that we had at the time, have today, or are looking to develop in the next 10-plus years,” he also said.

Graves, a former F-18 pilot with more than a decade of Navy service including two deployments in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Inherent Resolve, testified that he witnessed advanced UAP on multiple sensor systems firsthand.

In 2014, he said, “UAP sightings became an open secret among our aircrew. They were a common occurrence, seen by most of my colleagues on radar and occasionally up close.” 

That year, “a pivotal incident occurred during an air combat training mission” in an exclusive block of airspace ten miles east of Virginia Beach, he noted in his opening testimony.

“All traffic into the training area goes through a single GPS point at a set altitude. Just at the moment the two jets crossed the threshold, one of the pilots saw a dark gray cube inside of a clear sphere — motionless against the wind, fixed directly at the entry point. The jets, only 100 feet apart, were forced to take evasive action. They terminated the mission immediately and returned to base. Our squadron submitted a safety report, but there was no official acknowledgment of the incident and no further mechanism to report the sightings,” Graves explained. 

Based on those and other experiences, Graves founded and now runs the UAP witness program Americans for Safe Aerospace to provide observers with a “haven” to share their experiences without fears of professional retribution. 

On the sidelines after the hearing, Graves told DefenseScoop that he hopes his testimony will inspire the “many” active duty military pilots he knows who have encountered UAPs on the job to come forward and speak up about their experiences. 

“I think that Congress needs to hold the Department of Defense accountable — not only to increase reporting but also to share that data,” he said.

The biggest bombshells during the hearing were dropped by David Grusch, who served as an intelligence officer for 14 years — first in the U.S. Air Force at the rank of major and most recently, from 2021 to 2023, at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at the GS-15 civilian level. 

Grusch served as an agency co-lead for unidentified anomalous phenomena and trans-medium object analysis — and also reported directly to the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force (UAPTF) that recently evolved into the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

“I was informed, in the course of my official duties, of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access to those additional read-ons. I made the decision, based on the data I collected, to report this information to my superiors and multiple inspectors general, and in effect become a whistleblower. As you know, I have suffered retaliation for my decision,” Grusch testified. 

Both he and Graves also hinted at “upsetting” retaliation tactics they and others they know allegedly faced from senior government leaders for coming forward with UAP information. 

Though he said most of what he knows can only be discussed in a classified environment, Grusch also spoke briefly of “non-human biologics” or “bodies” found with some of the recovered UAP craft.

In response to those claims, lawmakers pointed out how Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the inaugural director of the Pentagon’s AARO, testified at a hearing in April that, at that point, his team’s research had “found no credible evidence thus far of extra-terrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics.”

Grusch said he met once this year with Kirkpatrick — and hoped to brief him further on the topic moving forward — but that the AARO director never followed up. 

“AARO’s congressionally-mandated historical review of U.S. government UAP programs is ongoing. We are not going to comment on any details of the review, including interviews. AARO is committed to following the data and its investigation wherever it leads,” Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough told DefenseScoop in an emailed response to questions regarding Grusch’s request.

She added: “AARO has established a safe and secure process for individuals to come forward with information to aid AARO in its congressionally-mandated historical review. AARO welcomes the opportunity to speak with any former or current government employee or contractor who believes they have information relevant to the historical review.”

AARO is set to supply Congress with its next UAP investigation report and briefing sometime this summer. Beyond that, lawmakers suggested further testimony, and relevant legislation, is already in the works.

“I’m shocked, actually, by just the amount of information that came out [of this], because of all the roadblocks that were put up against us. So I think what’s going to happen now is the floodgates [are open]. Other people are going to say, ‘I’ve got some information I’d like to come swear in.’ And that’s what we’re going to start doing: We’re going to start talking to people, and we’re going to start naming names,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., told DefenseScoop in a press gaggle immediately after the hearing. 

“This is just the first of many [hearings],” Burchett said in the press gaggle.

Throughout and after the hearing, he and other lawmakers also repeatedly emphasized that UAP transparency is an inherently bipartisan issue. 

“I confess that I’m very much a newcomer to this whole field, so I’m just reading up on it now. But I certainly would support as much transparency and disclosure as possible — and we have to treat it through the lens of reason and science,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told DefenseScoop after the hearing.

“There was a lot of credibility to the witnesses, and what they were saying did not seem outlandish to me. That doesn’t mean that everything was necessarily true that we’ve heard. We’ve got to maintain a skeptical mind. But we should be able to arrive at factual conclusions without fear,” Raskin said.

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