According to two former senior defense officials, the disclosure advocacy community welcomes those directives. However, they’re also calling for further policy changes to impel improved reporting and transparency from the government on unidentified anomalous phenomena — or UAP, the modernized term for UFOs and associated transmedium objects — that could threaten U.S. national security.

“More can — and should — always be done,” Christopher Mellon, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, told DefenseScoop. 

The legislative text targeting Defense Department and military-led efforts on UAP in the massive bill include:

• Sec. 1555 — to require briefings on UAP intercepts by North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command 
• Sec. 1556 — to require a consolidated security classification guidance matrix for programs relating to UAP 
• Sec. 1561 — to require the consolidation of reporting requirements applicable to the Pentagon’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)

In separate discussions last week, Mellon and a former senior military officer provided analyses of the NDAA and their latest recommendations to Congress in response to those proposals. 

‘Low-hanging fruit’

The Pentagon has a storied but complicated history confronting technologies and craft that insiders have reported performing in ways that seem to transcend the capabilities of contemporary assets. At a high level, the DOD’s mechanisms to study what it now refers to as UAP have taken different forms over the decades. 

The most recent iteration — known as the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO — was officially launched under the Biden administration in 2022 to fulfill a mandate in that year’s NDAA. 

The office achieved full operational capacity in 2024. Although its establishment largely stemmed from mounting calls for Pentagon transparency on UAP, government officials have been mostly secretive about AARO’s projects and caseload of dozens of open investigations. 

Still, AARO’s responsibilities have expanded as the organization matures, and particularly as it has been charged with helping the department resolve the recent uptick of mysterious drone incursions at military bases and other sensitive national security sites. 

Building on those tasks, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s NDAA draft includes requirements that would require Northcom and NORAD to alert AARO and Congress about any time they intercept a potential UAP.

Mellon — a longtime UAP transparency proponent who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Clinton and Bush administrations, and later, an influential Senate staff member — said he’s been advocating for such a directive for years.

“NORAD’s historical failure to inform AARO of UAP incidents is inconsistent with the intent of Congress when AARO was created as the central repository and conduit to Congress for all UAP data in the U.S. government. Currently, by the time AARO learns of these intercepts — if it does at all — NORAD’s critical sensor data is often no longer available. But Congress clearly needs this information to determine, among other things, how effective the U.S. air surveillance network is,” he said.

He said this section would mark a “welcome step” towards oversight, if passed. But in his view, more needs to be done. 

“In many cases, for instance, Navy ships report UAP sightings from areas where Air Force radars and aircraft operate but, strangely, these systems appear to report no UAP. At the same time, many official UAP reports refer to U.S. fighters chasing UAP over or near the continental United States … Where is that data? If the Air Force fully and properly reported to AARO, then Congress — and the American people — may even learn of UAP in space or in orbit,” Mellon said. “At a time of rapid advancements in drone and aerospace technology for America’s adversaries, better domain awareness, including in the space domain, is critical for ensuring the nation’s security.”

Elsewhere in the legislation is a provision that would result in a consolidation of all the disparate reporting requirements applicable to AARO. 

“While we appreciate that the [Intelligence Community] and Pentagon often face redundant reporting requirements to Congress, the matter of UAP — where Congress has only lately begun to extend its oversight — is not one of those areas,” Mellon said. 

He also raised concerns about one change to an existing law that currently requires all UAP data to be delivered “immediately” to AARO. 

“The proposed provision appears to restrict AARO’s now-immediate access right by requiring UAP data to be delivered to it ‘in a manner that protects intelligence sources and methods.’ But who makes that determination? AARO is independently empowered elsewhere by statute to receive all UAP data and should retain unfettered access to it. It knows how to protect intelligence sources and methods. There should not be provisions of this sort that could be interpreted to create impediments to AARO’s access rights under law,” Mellon said.

Beyond those inclusions, the bill would require AARO to issue a consolidated security classification guide relating to UAP investigations and events.

“Since I provided historic gun camera footage of Navy warplane encounters with UAP incidents to The New York Times and The Washington Post in 2017, the release of additional footage by the government has all but stopped. In fact, shortly after that footage was aired, the Pentagon cloaked under order of secrecy virtually everything about its UAP investigation,” Mellon noted. “That was wrong, and it’s past time for the current draconian classification guide to change.”

At the same time, even if the requirement passes and a new declassification guide were enacted, he said AARO would still retain ample discretion to keep many UAP records from the public. So instead, Mellon suggested, the office should be mandated by law to routinely submit unclassified videos through the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review for secure dissemination.

“Despite the earlier pledge to Congress by the Department of the Navy to release more records, it appears that the Pentagon, AARO, and the IC don’t view Congress and the public as having a legitimate ‘need to know’ about the wealth of UAP footage the government has within its clasp. That is low-hanging fruit for Congress to fix,” Mellon said.

‘The big picture’

Retired Navy Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet previously led Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command and served as Oceanographer of the Navy. He deployed on multiple tours afloat during his career in uniform, and later served as the Senate-confirmed assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere after retiring from the military in 2017, during the first Trump administration.

During his retirement, Gallaudet has opened up about his experiences on active duty observing now-verified video footage of UAP and unidentified submerged objects (USO) captured by colleagues — and his efforts to help destigmatize this previously taboo topic across the U.S. military.

When asked about his views on the UAP inclusions in the NDAA legislation, Gallaudet pointed to the UAP Disclosure Act (UAPDA), which was first introduced in 2023. That bill has seen continued support in the Senate, but has not been passed to date. It seeks to enable much deeper congressional oversight on UAP-related activities and operations.

“In my opinion, these UAP provisions are all good individually, but the bigger picture is that they dilute, distract, and compete with the authorities and priority of the UAP review board in the UAPDA. I do not think the fragmented approach which they represent is the best path forward, and what is needed is a whole of government approach that the UAPDA will bring us closer to,” Gallaudet told DefenseScoop.

Mellon also mentioned the UAPDA in a separate discussion, noting that the UAP Disclosure Fund — a civil society organization dedicated to protecting whistleblowers and promoting government accountability, on which he serves as chairman of the board — fully supports its passage.

“We hope to see that transparency measure included in the next version of the NDAA by way of a manager’s amendment on the Senate floor. We also hope that the House takes commensurate action to ensure that this vital legislation is enacted into binding law,” Mellon said.

He partnered with two other members of the UAPDF’s leadership team, Hunt Willis and Kirk McConnell, to co-author an upcoming policy brief for Congress, policymakers and potential whistleblowers that addresses a misperception they’ve encountered among possible sources of confidential information that they can’t disclose classified details to Congress behind closed doors. 

Notably, Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) recently expressed frustration at the hesitancy of potential witnesses to step forward as the House Oversight Committee’s task force plans for hearings in the coming months.

The new policy brief, viewed by DefenseScoop ahead of its publication, spotlights legal reasons to demonstrate that lawmakers are “fully authorized to receive classified information and endowed with a clear ‘need to know’ given their oversight responsibilities.”

More broadly, regarding the proposals that have made it into the fiscal 2026 NDAA draft so far, Mellon noted that the UAPDF’s hope is that they’ll help to pave the way for a virtuous cycle, where “more information leads to greater understanding of, and interest in, UAP, impelling further legislation to obtain the release of still more UAP information.” 

“This cycle will help to build consensus across Congress — not within a few pockets of a few committees — for broader reforms in this centrally important issue, leading to greater transparency for the American people,” Mellon said.

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In a sources sought notice released this week, officials unveiled plans for “a new effort” to enable a custom case management system on the intranet that hosts the Defense Department’s top secret and sensitive compartmented information — known as the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, or JWICS.

“The intent is to field this capability for AARO personnel at AARO HQ and for use at supporting organizations,” they wrote.

A defense official told DefenseScoop Wednesday that this marks the first “solicitation” published on behalf of the UAP-sleuthing office since its inception. The term UAP encompasses UFOs and trans-medium objects.

“AARO currently uses a variety of tools for its mission management needs and seeks to integrate them,” the official said.

Following mounting public pressure and a mandate from lawmakers, Pentagon leadership formally established the organization in 2022, under the Biden administration. Details about its budget and internal functions have been sparse since then. 

Currently, the department’s intelligence and security directorate is responsible for administrative support to AARO, while the deputy secretary of defense and the principal deputy director for national intelligence exercise control and direction.

According to the performance work statement attached to the new sources sought notice, the office is “responsible for the whole-of-government efforts to detect, identify, attribute, and as appropriate, mitigate, spaceborne, airborne, and maritime objects of interest in or near national security areas.”

One of the hub’s top tasks is to collect, manage and resolve a continuously expanding caseload of reports from current and former government officials — and eventually the general public — about encounters and events that could involve UAP and are relevant to the U.S. government and military.

“A case management system, or CMS, will assist AARO in tracking the status of the UAP reports in its holdings and in meeting its records management requirements, particularly as the office works to launch a public UAP reporting mechanism,” the defense official told DefenseScoop.

The new notice outlines a core list of minimum technical features that would be expected for the potential vendor-developed CMS, including the capacity to categorize UAP cases under investigation based on type, severity, and priority; convert document content into structured data with unique identifiers automatically (like weather, speed or location) that could subsequently be linked to case objects; maintain a history of actions taken on cases and capture their statuses from initiation to resolution; generate automated responses for people’s case submissions; encrypt data in accordance with proper sensitivity levels; and offer customizable views and dashboards for different user roles, among other criteria.

If the office opts to move forward with a full acquisition down the line, AARO envisions at this point that it would buy software development services, the fielding and certification of the software for the AARO JWICS domain, training for AARO personnel to use the capability — as well as sustainment, and spiral development of additional functionality. 

The performance period would likely be set for one base year, with options for up to four follow-on years.

The defense official declined to share further information Wednesday regarding the total cost estimate for any future CMS procurement. They also did not provide an update on the number of UAP reports and resolutions in AARO’s current investigative portfolio, since leadership revealed the receipt of more than 1,600 in November 2024. 

Contractors with an active top secret clearance that are interested in the new CMS opportunity must submit a capabilities statement and other information for consideration to a government email address provided in the notice, by June 9.

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“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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“I’m confident that next steps are not only going to follow, but I think we’re going to see potentially even more progress this year than we have in the last seven,” Lue Elizondo told DefenseScoop on Thursday in an interview shortly after departing from those meetings.

Elizondo spent much of his early career in the shadows, working as a career intelligence officer and counterintelligence special agent all over the world on counternarcotics, counter-espionage, counter-insurgency and other covert operations. 

In the early to mid-2000s, he led the Pentagon’s now disbanded, secretive task force that was then studying sky-based anomalies, dubbed the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). That hub was essentially a precursor to the Defense Department’s nascent All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was established via the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act following mounting pressure from the public and high-profile proponents like Elizondo and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Christopher Mellon.

Under AARO, the Pentagon’s scope has expanded to investigate not just UFOs, but also other types of “unidentified anomalous phenomena” — a broader term that also encompasses undersea objects and those that transition between mediums.

Elizondo said his team for the series of meetings last week included Mellon, two attorneys and a security representative. They met in-person with lawmakers and staff from multiple offices including at least one senator, as well as Reps. Anna Luna, Tim Burchett and Eric Burlison. Officials from several of those offices acknowledged the meetings but declined to provide comments regarding specific discussions.

“The purpose was twofold. One, was to offer our assistance in helping them find the information they’re looking for and help to, I think, increase transparency [on the UAP] topic that is often misunderstood and not very well-appreciated. And we are now seeing with drone incidents that it is becoming increasingly more difficult to differentiate between the typical or classic UAP-type incursions and signatures, and those of drones, especially now with the proliferation and the fact that the technology is continuing to get better and better,” Elizondo said.

They discussed how, as he put it, “drones can do now what in 2017 we could only dream of.”

Elizondo noted that cutting-edge battery technologies now allow unmanned aerial systems to deploy on longer flights with better power options. New and lighter materials, such as carbon fiber, are more accessible and affordable to use. And innovation in motors is reducing wear and tear on modern systems.

“Drones are now being used like never before. And in fact, we’re seeing in Ukraine the lethality of these drones is to the point now where there are more casualties caused by drones now than there are by artillery. So this is changing warfare. Now, if there’s one thing we haven’t learned since 9/11 it’s that we don’t seem to be taking these emerging technologies very seriously. It is a matter of time — not if, but when — an adversary, whether it’s a state or a non-state actor, decides to deploy these capabilities in a hostile manner” against the U.S. homeland, he said.

One simple difference between UAP and drones, according to Elizondo, comes down to attribution. 

“Our hope is that drones are attributable — to country X, country Y, company XYZ, right? This rebel group, that rebel group, that non-state actor, this non-state actor. UAP is a little bit different. Both have very unique signatures. In some cases, no signature at all. So ultimately, you don’t know what you don’t know,” he said.

However, “it may turn out that some of these UAP are indeed new drones, [or] some sort of adversarial technology that is flying completely unchallenged, like we saw over Langley Air Force Base,” which disrupted U.S. military flights, Elizondo added.

Roughly a year after that incident happened, the Pentagon confirmed that for 17 days in December 2023, officials reported incursions of unauthorized unmanned aerial systems in restricted airspace over Langley, where highly advanced military assets are housed.

More recently, military officials expressed uncertainty and frustration regarding a series of baffling incidents where mystery drones were repeatedly reported maneuvering over at least two defense installations and elsewhere in New Jersey late last year.

The Trump administration suggested in late January that most of those drones were approved by the Federal Aviation Administration and were not perceived as threats.

“People will tell you, ‘Well, these are all attributable drones.’ Why is it we haven’t recovered a single one? Why is it we haven’t found a single source, a single person [on the record] that is actually flying one of these things? Why is it we don’t have the electromagnetic signature, right?” Elizondo said. 

In the meetings with members of Congress last week, his team called for more public transparency on what the government knows about those recent incursions — and for AARO experts to investigate them.

“Everything is unidentified until it becomes identified. You can’t have a conversation about drones of unknown origin without having a conversation about UAP. You have to think of it as a large umbrella of the UAP issue, and then drones is a smaller umbrella, underneath that bigger umbrella. Drones are a subset of a bigger problem,” Elizondo noted.

Participants in the exchanges also explored possibilities around new legislation to further push the government’s UAP records-release campaigns and information-sharing this year.

“We also discussed the need for certain administrative tools and mechanisms to be implemented, which Congress has the authority to implement, to force elements within the intelligence community and the defense community to be more forthcoming, not only with unclassified information, but with classified information,” Elizondo said.

The lawmakers were also keen to connect on some of their “biggest concerns about expectations management,” in the context of their constituents’ demands for government documentation and oversight for UAP-related projects and materials, according to Elizondo.

“I’ve said before that disclosure and transparency is a process — it’s not an event — meaning you’re going to be sadly disappointed if you think all the revelations are going to be provided all at once. Congress is very concerned. They want to make sure that the American people know this is just step one in a multi-step process to give the American people what they want and what they deserve,” he told DefenseScoop.

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Questions have swirled inside the DOD since President Donald Trump directed all federal agencies to dramatically shrink their civilian workforces early into his second administration. 

Those efforts began with actions by multiple agencies across the federal government to fire recently hired or promoted workers who are in a trial period known as probationary status. Several recent legal decisions, however, have reversed those terminations — at least temporarily. The decisions include an order from a Baltimore-based federal district judge affecting 18 federal agencies and another from a San Francisco-based federal district judge affecting six agencies, including DOD.  

Although it’s not a definitive number of all probationary employees separated from DOD to date, a new declaration filed in the case before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California sheds light on some of the early impacts defense personnel are experiencing as a result of Trump’s order. 

In the filing, Timothy Dill — the official performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs — revealed DOD records indicate that since Feb. 13, the department “separated, or notified of termination, 364 probationary employees in light of recent” guidance from the Office of Personnel Management.

Since then, the Pentagon “directed DOD military departments and components to offer reinstatement or revoke pending termination notices for these employees,” he noted. The department started a process to rehire roughly 65 employees, so far.

“The remainder are pending notification, declined to accept the offer of reinstatement, or requested additional time to consider the offer,” Dill wrote.

This declaration came after Judge William Alsup requested information from the government about placing reinstated probationary employees on administrative leave. 

Alsup cited “news reports” that at least one agency had placed reinstated staff on administrative leave, and said that was “not allowed by the preliminary injunction.” He later followed up that request, noting that the documents the government provided showing compliance with an order from the District of Maryland didn’t include DOD, and asked for an update from the Pentagon.

In the declaration, Dill confirmed that staff being reinstated are being placed on administrative leave from the time of their termination until they complete appropriate onboarding procedures. Those with pending statuses will remain on administrative leave until a decision is made about their future.

That process appears to reflect a similar approach being taken at other agencies. In the declarations provided in the District of Maryland case, most of the 18 agencies said they were placing reinstated workers on administrative leave.

In a response Thursday, the unions and other organizations that brought the Northern District of California case argued that the information the government provided — including the statement from DOD — doesn’t show compliance with the preliminary injunction.

Specifically, the plaintiffs said the government falls short “by failing to communicate the information ordered by the Court; and by placing previously-terminated employees back only on ‘administrative leave’ rather than returning to service.”

The plaintiffs include AFL-CIO affiliates the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Main Street Alliance, the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, and other groups.

In an off-camera press briefing Tuesday, two senior defense officials noted that removing probationary employees is one of three primary mechanisms DOD is applying to carry out its workforce reduction process across a pool of more than 900,000 employees. Originally, as part of the plan, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced aims for the department to part ways with about 5,400 probationary employees.

“The first removals of probationary employees were directly focused on employees that were documented as significantly underperforming in their job functions, and/or had misconduct on the record,” a senior defense official told reporters.

They also suggested that in recent weeks “there has been no other signal from the department on future intended removals of probationary employees.”

It remains unclear on Thursday where technology-aligned positions fall among the Trump administration’s priorities for what roles will be retained during their major workforce reduction effort. 

DefenseScoop sent requests for more information to spokespersons at DOD’s personnel and readiness directorate, Chief Information Office, Chief Digital and AI Office, Defense Innovation Unit, All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office and the Defense Information Systems Agency.

A communications official for the P&R directorate referred DefenseScoop to each of those individual offices for breakdowns of their probationary terminations and reinstatements. 

Spokespersons from the department’s CIO and DIU acknowledged the inquiries but haven’t yet provided responses. CDAO and AARO spokespersons declined to provide personnel numbers or share details about the impacts on their workforce.

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Sparked by years of mounting pressure from congressional lawmakers and the American public on the historically more taboo topic of UFOs, Defense Department leadership formally set up and funded the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office in 2022, under President Joe Biden’s administration. 

While no major official plans to build on AARO’s momentum have been explicitly laid out by Trump or his team to date, some of his closest confidants have expressed interest in further driving government-led work on UAP transparency, two experts who have been tracking DOD’s long and complex journey to make sense of its still-growing caseload on UAP noted.

Via recent, separate interviews with DefenseScoop, they each shared their aspirations and recommendations for the president and his incoming team regarding this expansive and complicated realm.

“The UAP disclosure movement on the whole, seems to be quite hopeful that the new administration will show greater candor to the American people on this very important issue. The early signs are encouraging,” Dillon Guthrie said in a podcast interview last week. 

Guthrie is a Washington, D.C.-based attorney at DLA Piper focusing on technology and national security. He recently published an article in the Harvard National Security Journal that marks some of the earliest legal scholarship on UAP in the contemporary era.

“President Trump, as well as senior members of his cabinet and advisors — both named and already confirmed — have signaled in their prior positions that they are very much in favor of disclosure,” Guthrie noted. “That said, this is a complicated topic. We’re very much in the early days of the administration, and so the situation is fluid.”

Separately, former Navy aviator Ryan Graves expressed similar sentiment.

“I am heartened to see that the Trump administration is shaping up to be the most pro-UAP administration in history. Leaders like Marco Rubio, John Ratcliffe and Kash Patel are on the record about the need to declassify and pursue the identification and study of UAP. Let the public see the X-Files for themselves,” Graves told DefenseScoop on Tuesday.

Based on his own experiences with military-connected UAP, Graves established and now runs the witness program Americans for Safe Aerospace, which offers a mechanism for the public to safely and securely report observations or encounters.

The former F-18 pilot also previously provided testimony under oath at a congressional hearing on UAP transparency and keeps open communication with lawmakers.

In his view, there’s presently “an urgent need for the Trump administration to treat UAP” as a national security and aviation safety issue — and to close what he referred to as the “current domain awareness gap.”

“Formalizing an investigation across government — especially empowering the FBI as a key resource — will help us identify what’s in our skies,” Graves said.

Towards the end of his newly published 72-page legal research article, and in the podcast interview with DefenseScoop, Guthrie also offered detailed suggestions regarding how officials could further enable government-led UAP investigations and exposure in the near term.

“I think it’s important for the administration to have its national security team fully assembled before a decision like that is made. I will say that one of the principal policies that has been called for is a ‘whole-of-government’ approach to try to not only bring disclosure to the American people with respect to UAP, but also to really fashion policy regarding that — and to try to coordinate the many government agencies that have a hand in some way, or are even thought to have a hand in some way, with respect to the UAP matter,” he said.

Listen to Guthrie’s full interview on the Daily Scoop Podcast below:

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In responses to questions from DefenseScoop this week, Pahon discussed Hicks’ plans and priorities for her final days helping steer the Defense Department’s major technology programs.

“Deputy Secretary Hicks’ priorities today remain the same as they have been since her first day in office: Foremost, in support of the secretary and president, she is maintaining her focus on ensuring that DOD can outpace strategic competitors like the [People’s Republic of China] by fielding more combat-credible capabilities at greater speed and scale, continually iterating on novel operational concepts, distributing and hardening our force posture, and leveraging our unparalleled ability to generate innovation with and through America’s private sector,” he said. 

“She is also maintaining a laser focus on financial accountability, strengthening the department’s institutional pillars, including by ensuring a smooth and professional transition, and taking care of the DOD workforce,” Pahon added. 

On Friday, Hicks is scheduled to speak at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies regarding lessons her team learned in their efforts associated with “strategic competition” and China, the spokesperson noted. 

Hicks was sworn in as the 35th deputy secretary of defense in February 2021. She is the first Senate-confirmed woman to serve in the role and is the highest-ranking woman to have served in DOD to date.

As the Pentagon’s No. 2, Hicks launched the high-stakes Replicator initiative to accelerate the delivery of next-generation warfighting technologies in repeatable processes — beginning with thousands of drones to be fielded by August 2025 to counter China’s growing military prowess. She also set up the recently-sunset Task Force Lima to explore generative AI in a responsible manner and account for the seen and unknown risks it presents within the U.S. national security arena.

Among other high-profile moves, Hicks also created the DOD’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in mid–2022 to investigate military-aligned reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

Pahon confirmed that “Hicks made initial contact with the president-elect’s DOD transition team lead on Dec. 13,” noting that she’ll “remain at OSD through the end of the Biden-Harris Administration at noon on Jan. 20.”

Last month, Trump nominated billionaire investor Stephen Feinberg to serve as deputy defense secretary in his new administration. If they are both confirmed, Feinberg would report to the president-elect’s pick for defense secretary, television presenter Pete Hegseth. 

“The deputy secretary conveyed the department’s commitment to conducting a smooth and professional transition with the incoming Trump administration,” Pahon said of Hicks.

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Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough confirmed on Wednesday that more than 100 meetings were conducted so far to set the Defense Department on its path ahead for the next presidential term — and more are planned between now and the switchover on Jan. 20. 

“The department is committed to conducting a smooth and professional transition with the incoming administration,” Gough told DefenseScoop. 

Led by transition director Jennifer Walsh, representatives from the current office of the General Counsel, Washington Headquarters, Services Security Office and the DOD Transition Task Force first met with Trump’s DOD Agency Review Team — or ART — in the Pentagon on Dec. 16 to sign non-disclosure agreements and officially kick-off transition efforts. 

“As of 7:30 a.m. today,” Gough said on Wednesday morning, officials on Trump’s ART have held 106 meetings with current DOD personnel. The department’s Transition Task Force had also responded to 81 requests for information by that time, according to the spokesperson. 

Gough did not reveal any of those RFI topics addressed to date.

She also confirmed that the ART has met with the undersecretaries for acquisition and sustainment and research and engineering, as well as the heads of both the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO).

At this point, however, members of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which investigates reports of “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP), have not connected directly with ART representatives. 

Gough referred questions regarding any future plans for AARO-involved meetings to the president-elect’s transition team. Trump spokespersons did not respond to DefenseScoop’s requests for further information ahead of publication.

Briefing reporters Wednesday afternoon, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh reiterated the same transition stats shared earlier by Gough. When asked whether Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has spoken with Pete Hegseth — Trump’s nominee to serve as SecDef — Singh said: “I don’t have anything to announce. If I have something to announce about a meeting or a call, I’ll certainly keep you updated.”

On Tuesday morning, Gough previously told DefenseScoop that 97 meetings had been held between the administrations’ transition teams by then — and that 77 requests for information had been answered.

“Interactions with the ART are occurring daily,” she said Wednesday.

In response to further questions, Gough said the Pentagon does “not comment on the details of those meetings.”

An official who participated in transition meetings with past administrations told DefenseScoop on the condition of anonymity late last year that such engagements typically cover a wide range of topics including how to use department phone lines, access federal information technology systems, conduct contemporary operations and securely communicate with U.S. military allies.

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But questions continue to swirl as local law enforcement and an interagency coalition investigate the still-growing caseload of thousands of tips about various perplexing aircraft observed flying in multiple states since November.

Broadly, some of the elements that remain unclear include details about the drones’ technical features, the data they transmit, who is operating the vehicles and different agencies’ roles to respond in such incidents.  

“You’ve heard the White House, FBI, DHS, FAA and DOD say that we’re taking this matter very seriously, and significant federal, state and local resources are being devoted to looking into these reports and countering UAS activity,” Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Monday in an off-camera briefing.

Without citing hard evidence, Ryder doubled-down on statements he and other government officials previously made emphasizing that there’s no proof right now that the drones threaten U.S. national security or public safety, or that they have a “foreign nexus.” 

He told DefenseScoop that “to [his] knowledge,” currently, the systems are not considered to be U.S. military drones or associated defense contractor assets running in real-world operations. 

“It’s also important to remember that domestically we in the DOD, understandably, are limited on the kinds of capabilities that we can use when it comes to drone detection, and tracing them. So the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that we can employ outside the homeland aren’t capabilities that we can necessarily deploy inside the homeland. In other words, we don’t conduct intelligence on U.S. citizens,” Ryder said. 

However, he added that there are certain “passive and active” measures the U.S. military can pursue as necessary — specifically in terms of detection and defending its facilities — if it is ultimately determined that any unidentified drones could harm personnel at bases on the ground or national security writ large.

“I won’t go into details, for operational security reasons. But that could include things like affecting the signal. It could include using our own drones to take down drones or, essentially, redirecting them — and things like that,” Ryder told DefenseScoop.

The press secretary did not definitively clarify the military commands and other DOD components involved in such monitoring, detection or response operations, or what their responsibilities could each entail.

Testifying to Congress in November, the new chief of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), Jon Kosloski, told lawmakers that when incursions by seemingly unexplainable technology occur, his team supports other federal agencies and the intelligence community “through an advisory capacity.”

“As AARO is trying to push the bounds on detectability for UAP, we are hopefully going to have best practices that we can also provide to the counter-UAS [mission], and potentially we might have additional technologies that we can offer them to support,” Kosloski said.

In conversations on Friday and Monday, a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that AARO officials are positioned to assist in the local and interagency investigations as needed.

“So far, AARO has received no reports of UAP in conjunction with the recent drone flights or incursions in New Jersey and other eastern states. AARO is following the reports of drones or other aerial objects over New Jersey and other states closely and is prepared to support law enforcement agencies if requested,” the spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

Around the same time as the media briefing at the Pentagon on Monday, President-elect Donald Trump speaking in Florida suggested without providing evidence that “the government knows what is happening” with the drones reported over New Jersey, but it’s withholding the information from the public.

“I will tell you we are also committed to providing as much information as possible — as quickly as possible — on this issue,” Ryder told reporters at the Pentagon.

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“U.S. Northern Command conducted a deliberate analysis of the events, in consultation with other military organizations and interagency partners, and at this time we have not been requested to assist with these events. If these incidents require additional [Department of Defense] assistance, the Secretary of the Military Department or relevant DOD component head concerned can coordinate with [the command] for an enhanced or increased response,” a Northcom spokesperson said in an email. 

They pointed to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, from which officials revealed on Thursday that they’re supporting New Jersey law enforcement in the ongoing investigations.

To date though, the agencies “have not corroborated any of the reported visual sightings with electronic detection,” according to a joint statement they shared with FedScoop and DefenseScoop. 

As the Pentagon implements a newly unveiled classified counter-drone plan, reports and videos have been shared widely online over the last few weeks of what appear to be drones of different shapes and sizes (and groups of such craft) above multiple locations around New Jersey — including a U.S. military munitions facility. 

“Naval Weapons Station Earle is aware of the recent reports of drone sightings across New Jersey and continues to closely coordinate with federal and state agencies to ensure the safety of our personnel and operations. While no direct threats to the installation have been identified, we can confirm at least two instances of an unidentified drone entering the airspace above Naval Weapons Station Earle,” a public affairs officer for the installation told DefenseScoop.

They said that, right now, members of the community should report any suspicious activity near the base to local law enforcement — not federal agencies.

Meanwhile, certain personnel based at the Naval weapons hub remain “prepared to respond to any potential risks, leveraging robust security measures and advanced detection capabilities,” according to the NWS Earle official.

They declined to elaborate on any features of those mechanisms the base is now implementing.

“For security reasons, we do not discuss force protection capabilities or procedures,” the official said.

Separately, the Northcom spokesperson confirmed that command officials are “aware and monitoring the reports of unauthorized drone flights in the vicinity of military installations in New Jersey to include Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle.” The two facilities are known to house advanced munitions and other crucial military assets.

Spokespersons from Picatinny Arsenal did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

In conjunction with interagency partners, Northcom is continuing to steadily assess new information as it flows in or fresh incidents are recorded. 

The command “is prepared to respond when asked or should the situation escalate to threaten any DOD installations,” the spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

At a White House briefing earlier on Thursday, U.S. National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby repeatedly emphasized that his team has “no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or a public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.”

As commander-in-chief, President Joe Biden would “issue the appropriate directives to not only law enforcement — but perhaps, even the military,” if he was supplied with new information that demonstrated any associated drone activities posed a threat to national security or public safety, Kirby said. He, as well as the officials who spoke to DefenseScoop, did not directly answer questions about whether the government is aware of any sources controlling the drones, and who they are.

Kirby broadly rebuffed claims previously put forth by lawmakers that some of the aircraft were observed maneuvering over critical infrastructure and sensitive government locations.

“While there is no known malicious activity occurring, the reported sightings there do, however, highlight a gap in authorities. So, we urge Congress to pass important legislation that will extend and expand existing counter-drone authorities, so that we are better prepared to identify and mitigate any potential threats to airports or other critical infrastructure, and so that state and local authorities are provided all the tools that they need to respond to such threats,” he said.

A DOD spokesperson could not immediately respond to DefenseScoop’s request for more information regarding whether the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is participating in the interagency effort to make sense of the drones — or if any of the systems reported in the state so far are categorized as “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” also known as UAP.

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