In his most recent opinion piece in Scientific American, Sean Kirkpatrick, former head of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), just pretty much confirmed that many UFOs are top-secret Pentagon programs that must remain hidden from the public. He also admonishes members of Congress to avoid the disclosure of secret military programs in the face of public pressure for greater UFO transparency, warning, “These are not town hall topics.”

Here is an excerpt from the Op/Ed, bold and in brackets, to support this idea, and also here is a link to the Op/Ed: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-need-to-investigate-ufos-but-without-the-distraction-of-conspiracy/

[There also is the possibility that some observed and reported phenomena are associated with past or ongoing national security programs completely unrelated to extraterrestrials. Unfortunately, some who have been peripherally involved in these programs are taking advantage of the lack of understanding of security compartmentalization among the public—and some members of Congress—and feel that exposure of national security activities is a public right.

The harm of such exposure would be incalculable: billions of dollars and decades invested in military capabilities exposed to our potential adversaries to satisfy ill-informed curiosity. While some staffers and members of Congress may claim that they and the American people have a right to know of every classified research program, Congress already has an established process for notification of sensitive programs to the bipartisan leadership of both the Senate and House as well as the chairs and ranking minority members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, often referred to as the Gang of Eight. It is incumbent on both the speaker of the House, the Senate majority leader and both chairs of the intelligence committees to ensure that there is no risk of exposing any national security programs in a rush to find extraterrestrials, and that documents are reviewed within appropriate channels. If these members of Congress deem it appropriate not to share classified information, they are doing their job. These are not town hall topics.]

Well, there you have it.

I certainly don’t fault Dr. Kirkpatrick for his commitment to absolute secrecy when it comes to classified programs. After all, he worked for the Pentagon. And, by the way, maybe this explains why a recent seemingly significant UFO encounter involving a pilot from Eglin Air Force Base was not reported to AARO and why official reports have been heavily redacted. Maybe it was one of ours.

In fact, I would argue that the most sensational encounters, think the 2004 Tic Tac, are actually not E.T. at all, but secret U.S. military weapons. Therefore, since AARO is unable to reveal this truth, the office is, ultimately, incapable of truly investigating UFOs.

We need an entirely independent organization, separated from the constraints of federal government, or we’re never going to understand what’s happening. And we need an organization that isn’t fully ensconced in the E.T. hypothesis (that is, the UFOs are extraterrestrial). An organization that’s at least open to the idea that the UFOs aren’t E.T. That the kinds of performance characteristics we’re seeing in UFOs are due to a series of propulsion breakthroughs going all the way back to the immediate postwar period. Developments that have been kept hidden from the public for more than 70 years, conceived, developed, perfected and executed totally by human scientists and engineers. The same species that has brought us similar quantum leaps over the centuries, astonishing advances ranging from nuclear weapons and lasers to microchips and medical imaging.

Let’s call this the terrestrial hypothesis. No assist from space aliens needed!