Did you work on a secret government UFO program? The Pentagon is ready to believe you

If you worked for a clandestine government project on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena – formerly known as UFOs – then the Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, is giving you a chance to come forward.

Sean Kirkpatrick, director of AARO, said that his organization’s website now features a form for current and former government employees, service members, and contractors with direct knowledge of alleged U.S. government programs or activities dealing with UAPs going back to 1945 to report what they know.

“This reporting mechanism that is on the website is for people who think that they have firsthand knowledge of clandestine programs that the government is hiding,” Kirkpatrick told reporters on Tuesday, which happened to be Halloween.

By law, AARO can receive any and all data about UAPs from the military and intelligence community including classified national security information, Kirkpatrick said during a news conference.

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These reports will help AARO submit a historical record to Congress next June about alleged U.S. government UAP programs, Kirkpatrick said.

When asked why current and former government employees with direct knowledge of an ultra-secret government UAP program should trust AARO, Kirkpatrick said that his office is the authorized reporting authority for UAPs and anyone who comes forward would be protected under the Whistleblower Protection Act.

“We want to hear from you,” Kirkpatrick said. “The information you submit in the form will be protected. Additionally, any information that you provide in a subsequent interview will be protected according to its classification.”

Kirkpatrick stressed that people should not use the form to submit sensitive information, and U.S. pilots and other military personnel who observe a UAP during operations should report their sightings through their service and combatant commands under separate reporting procedures established in May 2023.

This latest reporting mechanism is not available to the general public, Kirkpatrick said. AARO will review the information that it receives and follow up with people as needed, but it will not respond to everyone.

At the moment, it is unclear whether the U.S. government ever had an official UAP program in the past.

“I currently have no evidence of any program having ever existed to do any sort of reverse engineering of any sort of extraterrestrial UAP,” Kirkpatrick said. “We do have a requirement by law to bring those whistleblowers or other interviewees in who think that it does exist, and they may have information that pertains to that. We do not have any of that evidence right now.”

Kirkpatrick said that the number of responses that this new reporting mechanism receives could help determine whether the U.S. government has been hiding a UAP program from the wider American public.

“If we start with the hypothesis that there is a highly protected program that very few people have access to, then I would expect very few people would be able to come and report that, because there just aren’t that many people that then in theory would be briefed to that,” Kirkpatrick said. 

“If I, however, get hundreds and thousands of people trying to make a report because they think they know something,” Kirkpatrick continued,  “That is also an indicator of – well, there isn’t one there then, because you’re not going to have thousands of people briefed to a program.”

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