Lawmakers frustrated with classified briefings on UFOs, report says

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. But lawmakers are reportedly growing frustrated by the progress being made at the Pentagon’s Anomaly Surveillance and Resolution Office, an office that was created to study the “unidentified aerial phenomenon” alongside the passing of the massive National Defense Authorization Act just before New Year’s. Sen Gillibrand has been a strong advocate for the Biden administration’s initiatives to bring new resources and legitimacy to the study of UFOs, stating previously that: “Our national security efforts rely on aerial supremacy and these phenomena present a challenge to our dominance.” “The United States needs a coordinated effort to take control and understand whether these aerial phenomena belong to a foreign government or something else altogether.” But the New York lawmaker’s aide indicated that the committees who were briefed in recent weeks are feeling let down by the number of resources being committed to the Pentagon’s new effort, with some signalling that the agency should be allocating more analysts and surveillance systems to the cause of determining the unidentified objects’ origin. Rep Tim Burchett, a member of the House Transportation Aviation Subcommittee, took the issue up in more direct terms, slamming the Pentagon’s latest data collection efforts a “bogus cover up”. It’s been four months since President Joe Biden passed the legislation that gave the Pentagon and spy agencies the purview to investigate the aircrafts’ with “any resource, capability, asset, or process” and the office, meant to be fully operational by June, in this time has been tasked with setting up an “intelligence collection and analysis plan to gain as much knowledge as possible regarding the technical and operational characteristics, origins, and intentions of unidentified aerial phenomena”.