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Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) testified before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday.
During the hearing held by the Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, Kirkpatrick revealed that his office in the Department of Defense is currently is investigating more than 650 potential UFO sightings.
“Of those over 650, we’ve prioritized about half of them to be of anomalous interesting value, and now we have to go through those and go ‘How much of those do I have actual data for?'” Kirkpatrick said during the hearing.
Related: Head Of Pentagon UFO Office Claims Recent Sightings Could Be Alien Probes
Back in January, the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), or UFOs, which covered 510 UFO sightings gathered from government agencies and branches of the United States military.
Kirkpatrick also claimed during his testimony to the Senate, “I should also state clearly for the record that in our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics.
He also added, “I encourage those who hold alternative theories or views to submit your research to credible, peer-reviewed scientific journals. AARO is doing the same. That is how science works, not by blogs and social media.”
The AARO director also shared that a little over half of all UFOs reported are orbs, round or spherical.
DOD/AARO
“Extraordinary claims require not only extraordinary evidence but extraordinary science,” Kirkpatrick said as the hearing neared a close. “And so how do you do that? You do that with the scientific method.”
“And so, as AARO is developing and implementing its science plan, it has to do so grounded in a solid foundation of scientific theory across the entire range of hypotheses that have been presented for what UAP are.”
“That range spans adversary breakthrough technology on one hand, known objects and phenomena in the middle, all the way to the extreme theories of extraterrestrials.”
Kirkpatrick added, “We have a lot of work to do.”