According to press secretary Cole Stevens, the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services will hold an open hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) or Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) next week on April 19 (Wednesday).
The hearing has been convened to discuss the mounting concerns about the supposedly increasing number of UAP events. The politicians are also expected to advocate for additional transparency and funding for the UAP inquiry.
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), will also appear at the hearing, which will be held by the Emerging Threats and Capabilities subcommittee.
Lawmakers demand to fund
The announcement comes after Democrat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the head of AARO, publicly chastised the Department of Defense for failing to provide funding for a second year in a row.
“The lack of full funding for AARO is a significant concern. We need to ensure that our government is taking the UAP issue seriously and dedicating the necessary resources to improve our understanding and response capabilities,” Gillibrand was quoted as saying by Roswell Daily Record.
She also targeted Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Michael J. McCord, noting that her agency was dissatisfied with the lack of funds.
“Understanding that we cannot get into specific budget figures in this forum, can you discuss why AARO was not fully funded?”
In recent years, the Pentagon has moved forward with its plan to investigate military UFO reports. This has resulted in the leaking of hundreds of classified reports indicating that humans may not be alone on Earth.
Ronald Moultrie and Scott Bray, two top Pentagon officers, came before the US House of Representatives intelligence panel in May 2022 and exhibited the declassified UFO videos.
They stated that UFO sightings are ‘common’ and have been on the rise for more than a decade. They also stated that US officials were baffled by some of the sightings.
The US Navy refuses to reveal UFO footage
However, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last year, the US Navy said that it will not release any more unseen UFO recordings in the public domain because it will jeopardize national security.
“The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. No portions of the videos can be segregated for release,” said Gregory Cason, deputy director of the Navy’s FOIA office.