In June, former Air Force pilot David Grusch filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that the U.S. government is in possession of crashed spacecraft — including the bodies of their "non-biologic" pilots — that are of non-human origin. Grusch, alongside former Navy pilot Ryan Graves and former Navy commander David Fravor, testified before a Congressional committee in July.
The three men spoke publicly about their first-hand encounters with UFOs, alleging that such unidentified phenomena are real and grossly under-reported.
"If everyone could see the sensory and video data I witnessed," Graves said, "our national conversation would change."
Related: Neil DeGrasse Tyson says he wants to meet the aliens, but there’s a catch
In the weeks following their testimony, both NASA and the Pentagon have released reports on the progress each office has made thus far in further researching UFO sightings. An October report from the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was re-established last year, found that the bulk of the 800 alleged UFO sightings it has been examining are likely the result of poor data.
"With an increase in the quality of data secured, the unidentified and purported anomalous nature of most UAP will likely resolve to ordinary phenomena," the report reads.
The report went on to explain that only a very small percentage of these sightings display any of the characteristics described in the July testimony: high-speed travel and "unknown morphologies."
The head of AARO, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, testified in April that his office has uncovered "no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics."
After the whistleblowers' testimony, Kirkpatrick explained in a memo that Grusch had refused to speak with his office, adding that his allegations were "insulting to the officers of the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community who chose to join AARO."
"To be clear, AARO has yet to find any credible evidence to support the allegations of any reverse engineering program for non-human technology," he wrote.
Kirkpatrick announced Tuesday that he will be leaving AARO by the end of the year. Over the course of his 18-month tenure as the head of the office, he said that he has accomplished everything he wanted to accomplish
And though he has not found any extra-terrestrial evidence, he told Politico that he would like to.
Related: U.S. Government releases big new update in its UFO investigation
"The best thing that could come out of this job is to prove that there are aliens," Kirkpatrick said. "If we don’t prove it’s aliens, then what we’re finding is evidence of other people doing stuff in our backyard. And that’s not good.”
In a draft paper co-authored by Kirkpatrick and posted online in March, he wrote that such unidentified objects as the ones AARO has been tasked with researching could be probes from an alien mothership.
As a former aircraft radar/avionics engineer, who studied and explained sensor anomalies for NASA, I still haven’t seen anything suggesting we are detecting advanced flying technology. Even just now reading Kirkpatrick’s paper (co-authored with Loeb), I see no evidence. https://t.co/hjULFxTEGq
— Dr. Phil Metzger (@DrPhiltill) November 8, 2023
The theme of the scientific community, however, remains centered around finding and collating better data, a project NASA is undertaking.
"I want to meet the aliens, I just need better evidence than what has been presented," astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson said recently. "If there are aliens, I would like better evidence than simple eye-witness sworn testimony. In science, what you swear on is not the measure of what is true, it's just the measure of what you think is true. I need better data than that."
Related: Why alleged alien evidence isn't the mind-blowing revelation it appears to be
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