The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has just announced the establishment of an office to monitor strange objects in space, the air, and the sea. This even applies to those who seem to move back and forth between these many worlds.
The government is currently paying unheard-of levels of attention to the unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP), or UFOs as they are more commonly known. In recent hearings and classified briefings held in the halls of the U.S. Congress, many lawmakers expressed concern that America’s airspace may not be as safe as we think due to the numerous sightings of unidentified flying objects that military aviators and other members of the armed forces have reported.
In light of this, the DoD announced in a statement on Wednesday, July 20, 2022, that this new office would open. The “All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office,” or AARO, was formed by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. The director of the new office will be Sean Kirkpatrick, who was formerly the principal scientist of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Missile and Space Intelligence Center.
To “detect, identify and attribute objects of interest in, on or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace, and other areas of interest, and, as necessary, to mitigate any associated threats to [the] safety of operations and national security,” the DoD will coordinate efforts across the department and the federal government.
In a second statement, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said the office is now the “focal point for all UAP and UAP-related activities and may represent the Department for such activities.” It may also participate in such initiatives on behalf of the Department.
Governance, science and technology, intelligence operations and analysis, mitigation and defeat, surveillance, collecting, and reporting, and system capabilities and design are the office’s six core areas of interest.
The office will make an effort to find and identify objects of interest, including “anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, underwater, and trans-medium objects,” the news release states. In this context, the term “trans-medium” refers to things or machines that may move across worlds, for as from aerial flight to space flight or from submerged transport to flight.
The American government has been working to improve its understanding of UFOs for some time now, and the foundation of this new body is only the latest step in that direction. In June, NASA established a panel to investigate UAP with the secondary objective of dispelling some of the stigma or taboos associated with the topic.
According to Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, “one of the things that we tangentially expect to be part of this study, simply by talking about it in the open, is to help to reduce some of the stigma connected with it.” “Naturally, this will result in easier access to data, more reports, sightings, etc. Therefore, there is still another goal we are working toward with it.”