Lawmakers call for more funding of Pentagon UFO office

Members of Congress have called for an increase in funding for the Pentagon’s unidentified aerial phenomena research office after the Biden administration’s budget request was released.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) questioned Pentagon officials during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on March 28 — which included Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark A. Milley — about a budget request for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the Military Times reported. 

Gillibrand, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, questioned why the office was now underfunded for the second year.

Michael J. McCord, Comptroller of the Department of Defense, told Gillibrand that he was unaware the office needed more funding and was under the impression there was “adequate funding” for the newly formed organization.

Gillibrand argued that the office wasn’t receiving “basic operational funding” and that multiple senators previously sent a letter to the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks, specifying what funding was needed.

The letter to Hicks, which included Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and 12 other senators, was sent out on Feb. 16 and called for total funding for ARRO after the Biden administration failed to provide the office with proper funding the year prior, the outlet reported.

Gillibrand, who understood the exact figures were classified and couldn’t be revealed during the hearing, grilled Austin about why the office needed proper funding following the Chinese spy balloon incidents.

“The incidents last month involving the Chinese high-altitude balloon and the three unknown objects highlighted the need for us to continue to improve our understanding of UAPs over U.S. airspace,” Gillibrand said.

Austin — who said he “will” ensure the office receives total funding in the future, told Gillibrand that the Pentagon requested $11 million for its research in the fiscal year 2024 budget, which Gillibrand revealed was not the budget the office requested.

President Biden announced the budget plan in Philadelphia on March 9 — which called for $5.5 trillion in tax increases over the next decade.

Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough told Military Times on March 14 that the fiscal year 2024 AARO budget figures were classified.

AARO was founded in July of 2022, aiming to detect and identify objects of interest in US airspace and “to mitigate any associated threats to safety of operations and national security,” which “includes anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and trans-medium objects.”

“They just put a placeholder number on it,” Rubio told Military Times. “Luckily, we’re not going to pay attention to [the Biden administration’s] budget numbers.”

In early March, Pentagon officials said in a draft document that aliens could already be visiting Earth to study it by probes, just as NASA does in their studies of other planets.

“An artificial interstellar object could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth, an operational construct not too dissimilar from NASA missions,” the report read. “These ‘dandelion seeds’ could be separated from the parent craft by the tidal gravitational force of the Sun or by a maneuvering capability.”