Open C3 Subcommittee Hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
HVC-210
May 17 2022 09:00
Mr. Carson (D-IN): The subcommittee will come to order. Without objection, the chair may declare recess at any time. Before we get started, I want to recognize a moment of silence for the victims of the white supremacist hate crime in Buffalo, new york. the subcommittee has focused intently on that threat in both open and closed hearings. it is utterly devastating to see more victims of this violence. buffalo, our heart breaks for you.
with that, i ask my colleagues to join— pardon me. we will now turn to the business of this hearing.
more than 50 years ago, the u.s government ended project blue book, an effort to catalog and understand sightings of objects in the air that could not otherwise be explained. for more than 20 years that project had treated unidentified anomalies in our airspace as a national security threat to be monitored and investigated. in 2017, we learned for the first time that the department of defense had quietly restarted a similar organization tracking what we now call unidentified aerial phenomena or UAPs. last year congress, rewrote the charter for that organization now called the airborne object identification and management synchronization group, or AOIMSG for short. today, we will bring that organization out of the shadows. this hearing and oversight work has a simple idea at its core: unidentified aerial phenomena are a potential national security threat, and they need to be treated that way. for too long, the stigma associated with uaps has gotten in the way of good intelligence analysis. pilots avoided reporting or were laughed at when they did. dod officials relegated the issue to the back room, or swept it under the rug entirely, fearful of a skeptical national security community. today we know better. uaps are unexplained, it's true, but they are real, they need to be investigated, and many threats they pose need to be mitigated.
Undersecretary Moultrie, Mr. Bray, thank you for coming today.
first we need you to update us on the status of AOIMSG. the legislation creating it was passed in december. the deadline for implementation is fast approaching, but the group does not even have a named director. we need to know, sirs, the status of the organization, and the obstacles to getting it up and running.
secondly, you have to convince the audience today (and most especially our military and civilian aviators) the culture has changed, that those who report uaps will be treated as witnesses, not as kooks.
Thirdly, you need to show us, congress, and the american public whose imaginations you have captured, you are willing to follow the facts where they lead. you know we fear sometimes that the dod is focused more on emphasizing what it can explain, not investigating what it can't. i'm looking for you to assure us today that all conclusions are on the table.
one final note: we are mindful today that AOIMSG is not starting from scratch. this is the third version of this task force in dod, and civil society groups like the mutual ufo network [MUFON], mr corbell and others have been collecting data on this issue for years. i hope you'll explain how you can leverage the knowledge and experience of our prior work on this matter to move the AOIMSG along. the last time congress had a hearing on uaps was half a century ago. i hope that it does not take 50 more years for congress to hold another, because transparency is desperately needed. i now turn to ranking member Crawford for comments you'd like to make.
11:50
Mr. Crawford (R-AR): thank you, mr chairman, um, honorable Moultrie, Mr Bray, thank you for coming here today, we appreciate it, to begin the open dialogue between congress and the executive branch on this important topic. while this topic evokes creative imaginations of many, aside from all the hype and speculation there are important underlying issues posed by uaps. despite the serious nature of this topic, i have to say i'm more interested in our understanding of chinese and russian hypersonic weapon development or understanding why this administration was so slow to share actionable intelligence with the ukrainians. however, as much as this topic may help us better understand unknown activities of russia and china, i am on board. the intelligence community has a serious duty to our taxpayers to prevent potential adversaries such as china and russia from surprising us with unforeseen new technologies. as overseers of the intelligence community, this committee has an obligation to understand what you are doing to determine whether any uaps are new technologies or not, and if they are, where they're coming from. in general, the IC spends much of its time and resources trying to understand what we call "known unknowns". when it comes to foreign nations, weapons systems, and sensors, "known unknowns" are those features that we don't fully understand yet. the challenge associated with uap is that they are completely unknown, and require a more expansive collection analysis effort. the intelligence community must balance addressing known threats to our national security with preventing technical surprise. we must continue to follow the facts where they lead us, and ensure that there are no technical surprises. the IC must take it seriously when there are credible observations of phenomena that seem to perform in ways that could pose a threat to safe flight operations, or they could be signs of a foreign adversary's attempt to develop a strategic technological surprise against the united states. it's also essential that our pilots and others feel they can report uaps they observe without any stigma for doing so. this is the open unclassified portion of our hearing, we'll have a closed, classified part later. it's important for the public to know that the classification of information exists to protect national security, not to try to hide the truth. when we're trying to determine if any uaps are new technologies being developed by foreign governments, we are inevitably going to run into classified information about what new systems and technologies we do know or are in the works here or abroad. but where information does not risk national security, it should be shared with our allies and the public when feasible. i hope that we can have your assurance to this end today. it's my hope that the intelligence community will continue to try to determine the nature of uaps we've observed, and will keep congress fully apprised of all developments, i look forward to this hearing and continued dialogue and oversight with the intelligence community on this topic. and with that, I yield back.
Mr. Carson: gentlemen yields back. and now we turn to our distinguished chairman Adam Schiff for any comments he wishes to make.
14:33
Mr. Schiff (D-CA): thank you, chairman Carson, for holding this open hearing on unidentified aerial phenomenon, and for your leadership on this issue. holding a portion of our discussion today in open session is critical to the cause of transparency and openness, which was congress's intent in authorizing and funding this new task force. the larger effort that is being undertaken to study and characterize uap reports is an important step towards understanding these phenomenon, what we know and don't know, and i look forward to hearing more during both the open session and the closed setting about how DoD and the IC are undertaking that task. uap reports have been around for decades, and yet we haven't had an orderly way for them to be reported without stigma and to be investigated. that needs to change. uap reports need to be understood as a national security matter, and that message needs to go out across DoD, the IC, and the whole of the US government. when we spot something we don't understand or can't identify in our airspace, it's the job of those we entrust with our national security to investigate and to report back. that is why it's important that we hold this open hearing for the public to hear directly from the department of defense on the steps it's taking to track, analyze, and transparently communicate the work that is being done on this issue. it is also the responsibility of our government and this panel to share as much as we can with the american people, since excessive secrecy only breeds distrust and speculation. i look forward to hearing how the uap task force is being stood up, what challenges they still face, and how this committee can make sure the task force is able to shed light on one of the world's most enduring mysteries. i thank you, gentlemen, for your work, and i'll be very interested to hear what you have to say. to me, among the most fascinating questions are these phenomenon that we can measure: that is, instruments report there is something there. it is not the human eye confusing objects in the sky, there is something there, measurable by multiple instruments, and yet it seems to move in directions that are inconsistent with what we know of physics, or science, more broadly, and that to me poses questions of of tremendous interest and as well as potential national security significance. so we look forward to hearing what you're able to report to us today in open session. and i want to thank chairman carson again for his extraordinary leadership on this issue, and i yield back.
Mr Carson: chairman yields back, thank you. with that we will start our hearing. Undersecretary Moultrie, the floor is yours, Sir.
17:10
Mr Moultrie: thank you, chairman schiff, committee chairman carson, ranking member crawford, distinguished members of the subcommitte, it's a privilege to be here with you today to address your questions regarding unidentified aerial phenomenon or uap. i'm pleased to be joined by mr Scott Bray, the deputy director of naval intelligence, who will speak to the navy's unidentified aerial phenomenon task force, which laid the foundation for the efforts we will discuss today. first, i'd like to thank congress for supporting the department's uap efforts. the NDAA for fiscal year 2022 has helped us to establish a dedicated office to oversee processes and procedures for the timely collection, processing, analysis and reporting of uap related data.
what are uap? put simply, uap are airborne objects that, when encountered, cannot be immediately identified. however, it is the department's contention that, by combining appropriately structured collected data with rigorous scientific analysis, any object that we encounter can likely be isolated, characterized, identified, and (if necessary) mitigated. we know that our service members have encountered unidentified aerial phenomenon, and because uaps pose potential flight safety and general security risk, we are committed to a focused effort to determine their origins. our effort will include the thorough examination of adversarial platforms and potential breakthrough technologies, US government or commercial platforms, allied or partner systems, and other natural phenomenon.
we also understand that there has been a cultural stigma surrounding uap. our goal is to eliminate the stigma by fully incorporating our operators and mission personnel into a standardized data gathering process. we believe that making uap reporting a mission imperative will be instrumental to the effort's success. the defense intelligence and security enterprise provides real-time support to our warfighters and mission personnel across all domains.
to optimize the department's uap work, we are establishing an office within the office of the secretary of defense. that office's function is clear: to facilitate the identification of previously unknown or unidentified airborne objects in a methodical, logical, and standardized manner. these goals will ensure that we are working closely with operational personnel on training and reporting requirements, developing data and intelligence requirements, standardizing and integrating processes and procedures for collection, operational surveillance, analysis, and reporting, leveraging our research and development capabilities to improve detection, characterization and identification of uaps, developing mitigating solutions and procedures, and identifying strategy and policy solutions. this effort will maximize collaboration and build upon already existing relationships with the office of the director of national intelligence, the faa, dhs, and the fbi. we are also committed to strong partnerships with the department of energy, noaa, the dea, nasa, and the national labs, and (just as importantly) our international partners and allies. with regard to the importance of transparency, the department is fully committed to the principle of openness and accountability to the american people. however, we are also mindful of our obligation to protect sensitive sources and methods. our goal is to strike that delicate balance, one that enables us to maintain the public's trust while preserving those capabilities that are vital to the support of our service personnel. in closing, the department is committed to this effort and welcomes the challenge. we thank you for your committed support, and look forward to your questions.
21:20
Mr Bray: chairman Schiff, chairman carson, ranking member crawford and committee members, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today to highlight the ongoing work of the department of defense regarding unidentified aerial phenomena. since the early 2000s we have seen an increasing number of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft or objects in military-controlled training areas and training ranges and other designated airspace. reports of sightings are frequent and continuing. we attribute this increase in reporting to a number of factors, including our work to destigmatize reporting, an increase in the number of new systems, such as quadcopters and unmanned aerial systems that are in our airspace, identification of what we can classify as clutter (mylar balloons and other types of air trash), and improvements in the capabilities of our various sensors to detect things in our airspace.
almost two years ago in august of 2020, deputy secretary of defense Nordquist directed the establishment of the unidentified aerial phenomena task force within the department of the navy. the uap task force was built on the foundation of the navy's initial efforts to respond to the reports from our aviators on unidentified objects observed in our training ranges. the basic issues then and now are twofold: first, incursions in our training ranges by unidentified objects represent serious hazards to safety of flight. in every aspect of naval aviation, safety of our air crews is paramount. second, intrusions by unknown aircraft or objects pose potential threats to the security of our operations. our aviators train as they would fight, so any intrusions that may compromise the security of our operations by revealing our capabilities, our tactics, techniques, or procedures are of great concern to the navy and the department of defense. from the very beginning, we took these reports very seriously. we instituted a data-driven approach to the investigations, where we could collect as much data as possible, and use all available resources to analyze and make informed decisions on the best ways to address our findings. our main objective was to transition uap efforts from an anecdotal or narrative based approach to a rigorous science and technology engineering focus study. this data-driven approach requires input from a wide variety of sources. in the early stages, the task force worked to standardize the reporting mechanisms and processes to make it as easy as possible for personnel to report any engagement, so that we were getting that wide range of reporting that we needed. we also spent considerable efforts engaging directly with our naval aviators, and building relationships to help destigmatize the act of reporting sightings or encounters, and we work with naval aviation leadership to provide additional equipment to record any encounter. navy and air force crews now have step-by-step procedures for reporting any uap on their knee board in there in the cockpit and in their post flight debrief procedures. the direct result of those efforts has been increased reporting, with increased opportunities to focus a number of sensors on any objects. the message is now clear: if you see something, you need to report it, and the message has been received. in fact, recently i received a call from a senior naval aviator with over 2000 flight hours. he called me personally from the flight line after landing to talk about an encounter that he had just experienced.
those were just the initial steps. we also made a concerted effort to assemble subject matter experts from across the department of defense and the intelligence community and other us government agencies and departments. we forged partnerships with the research, development, and acquisition communities, with industry partners and with academic research labs, and we've brought many allies and international partners into our discussions on uap. additionally, subject matter experts from a wide variety of fields, including physics, optics, metallurgy, meteorology ( just to name a few) have been brought in to to expand our understanding in areas where we may not have organic expertise. in short we've endeavored to bring an all hands on deck approach to better understand this phenomena.
so what have we learned so far? any given observation may be fleeting or longer, it may be recorded or not, it may be observable by one or multiple assets, in short, there's rarely an easy answer. for example, let me share with you the first video that we have here today, which shows an observation in real time.
[25:57 Video 1 2021 Flyby.mov]
there it was. that's—in many cases, that's all that a report may include, and in many other cases we have far less than this. as we detailed in both the unclassified and classified versions of the preliminary assessment released by the office of the director of national intelligence last june, this often limited amount of high quality data and reporting hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of uap. as detailed in the odni report, if and when individual uap incidents are resolved, they likely fall into one of five potential explanatory categories: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, US government or US industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, or another bin that allows for a holding bin of difficult cases and for the possibility of surprise and potential scientific discovery. we stand by those initial results. since the release of that preliminary report, the uap task force database has now grown to contain approximately 400 reports. the stigma has been reduced. we've also made progress in resolving the character of a limited number of uap encounters. for example, let me show you a couple of— another video and image taken years apart in different areas.
[27:22 Video 2 2019 West Coast.wmv]
in this video u.s navy personnel recorded what appears to be triangles, some flashing, recorded several years ago off the coast of the united states. this was recorded while the u.s navy ship observed a number of small unmanned aerial systems in the area. importantly, the video was taken through night vision goggles with a single lens reflex camera. these remained unresolved for several years.
several years later and off a different coast u.s navy personnel again in a swarm of unmanned aerial systems and again through night vision goggles and an slr camera recorded this image,
[28:27]
but this time other u.s navy assets also observed unmanned aerial systems nearby, and we're now reasonably confident that these triangles correlate to unmanned aerial systems in the area. the triangular appearance is a result of light passing through the night vision goggles and then being recorded by an slr camera. i don't mean to suggest that everything that we observe is is identifiable, but this is a great example of how it takes considerable effort to understand what we're seeing in the examples that we are able to collect. in this example, we accumulated sufficient data from two similar encounters from two different time periods in two different geographic areas to help us draw these conclusions. that's not always the case, though.
we recognize that that can be unsatisfying or insufficient in the eyes of many. this is a popular topic in our nation with various theories as to what these objects may be, and where they originate. by nature, we are all curious, and we seek to understand the unknown, and as a lifelong intelligence professional, i'm impatient: i want immediate explanations for this as much as anyone else. however, understanding can take significant time and effort. it's why we've endeavored to concentrate on this data-driven process to drive fact-based results, and given the nature of our business, national defense, we've had to sometimes be less forthcoming with information in open forums than many would hope. if uap do indeed represent a potential threat to our security, then the capabilities, systems, processes, and sources we use to observe, record, study, or analyze these phenomena need to be classified at appropriate levels. we do not want—we do not want—potential adversaries to know exactly what we are able to see or understand, or how we come to the conclusions we make. therefore, public disclosures must be carefully considered on a case-by-case basis.
so, what's next? we're concentrating on a seamless transition to the new organization. future analysis of complicated issues of uap issues will greatly benefit from the infrastructure of the process and the procedures that we've developed to date. i'm confident that the task force under navy leadership has forged a path forward that will allow us to anchor assessments in science and engineering vice anecdotal evidence. we remain committed to that goal as i know the usdi [Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence] organization does as well.
so thank you very much for your interest in continuing support for the uap task force. the team's made a lot of progress, but we really are just establishing the foundation for the more detailed analysis that's yet to be done. and with your continued support we can sustain that momentum necessary to produce data-centric analysis and understanding the phenomena. i look forward to your questions. thank you.
