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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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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