EXCLUSIVE: Pentagon warned that UFOs are a threat ‘to the immediate safety of US citizens’ just weeks before Air Force shot down Chinese spy balloon and three suspicious ‘objects’ out of the skies
- DailyMail.com obtained slides from a January 11 presentation by Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the DoD’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
- It warned that the military is finding unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) ‘most often in the vicinity of US military facilities and operating areas’
- One slide said: ‘Consequence of UAP in the vicinity of strategic capabilities is high, potentially threatening strategic deterrence and safety of civil society’
JOSH BOSWELL FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
The head of the government’s UFO office warned of the ‘potentially ubiquitous presence’ of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) flying over US airspace just weeks before a suspected spy balloon and three other suspicious objects were shot down by American jets.
DailyMail.com has obtained a slide deck from a presentation by Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), given at a conference on January 11.
Kirkpatrick’s presentation warned of ‘threats to the immediate safety of US citizens and Government facilities’, and said that the military are finding unidentified anomalous phenomena ‘most often in the vicinity of US military facilities and operating areas’.
One presentation slide says that ‘safety and security risks of UAP heighten US Government awareness and drives research and mitigation efforts’.
The comments have taken on a new urgency following the takedown by sidewinder missile of four objects that entered US airspace over the past two weeks.
The first has been identified by US officials as a 200-ft Chinese spy balloon the size of a jetliner, carrying surveillance equipment. It was shot out of the sky off South Carolina on February 4.
The other three UAPs – government speak for what most people call UFOs – were taken down over far northern Alaska, Canada’s Yukon territory and Lake Huron.
These three smaller objects remain officially unidentified, and in a press conference Sunday US Air Force General Glen VanHerck said the military had not ruled out an extraterrestrial origin – though intelligence officials say they are highly skeptical of that.
‘We’re calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason,’ VanMerck said, adding the Air Force is still unsure how the three objects stayed aloft, as their propulsion systems are currently unknown.
The slides obtained by DailyMail.com are from Kirkpatrick’s presentation on UAP given to the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on January 11 in Washington DC.
The presentation focused on how AARO is working with other agencies to ensure ‘unidentified, anomalous objects are effectively and efficiently detected, tracked, analyzed, and managed,’ and called on civilian pilots to help by reporting strange sightings in the sky.
‘The potentially ubiquitous presence of UAP defines the national-security implications and drives the broad range of stakeholders and demand for rigorous scientific understanding of and intelligence on phenomena,’ the slides said.
‘Consequence of UAP in the vicinity of strategic capabilities is high, potentially threatening strategic deterrence and safety of civil society.’
The report added that the DoD is ‘strengthening observations and reporting capabilities near US strategic capabilities and critical infrastructure’.
Kirkpatrick, a decorated physicist and intelligence official, also included one intriguing bullet point on his slides suggesting that AARO aimed to ‘recover’ downed UAP.
The slide said his office is involved in ‘UAP detection, tracking, mitigation, and recovery’.
According to the 2021 law which created AARO, the DoD must ‘rapidly respond to, and conduct field investigations of, incidents involving unidentified aerial phenomena under the direction of the head of the Office’.
But DoD spokeswoman Susan Gough declined to reveal to DailyMail.com whether AARO has been involved in investigating the four incidents this month.
This month’s sensational cases have prompted lawmakers and former officials to complain that they had been trying to warn the government about frequent incursions on US airspace for years.
Former top military intelligence official Christopher Mellon tweeted: ‘The USAF *really* has some explaining to do when it comes to UAP. People who are surprised at the presence of these objects haven’t been paying attention.
‘One of the reasons why I’ve been calling for changes to our sensor and reporting procedures for years,’ he added.
Marco Rubio, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, tweeted: ‘The last 72 hours revealed to the public what was happening for years, unidentified aircraft routinely operating over restricted US airspace.’
A report on UAP which Kirkpatrick helped prepare, published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last month, says there have been 163 incidents ‘characterized as balloon or balloon-like entities’ between March 2021 and September last year, out of a total 366 new unidentified cases investigated by AARO.
