Members of Congress have called for increased funding for the Pentagon’s unidentified aerial phenomena research office after the Biden administration’s budget request was released.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (DN.Y.) questioned Pentagon officials at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on March 28 — attended by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark A. Milley — on the budget request for the Domain-wide Office of Anomaly Resolution ( AARO), reports the Military Times.
Gillibrand, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Armed Forces Capabilities, asked why the office is now underfunded for the second yr.
Michael J. McCord, a Department of Defense comptroller, told Gillibrand that he was unaware that the office needed more funding and felt that the newly formed organization had “adequate funding.”
Gillibrand argued that the office was not receiving “basic operating funds” and that many senators had previously sent a letter to US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks specifying what funds were needed.
A letter to Hicks, which included Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and 12 other senators, was sent on Feb. 16 and called for ARRO to be fully funded after the Biden administration failed to offer adequate funding to the office over a yr earlier, the service reported.
Gillibrand, who understood that the exact details were classified and will not be revealed during the interrogation, asked Austin why the office needed adequate funding after the Chinese spy balloon incidents.
“Last month’s incidents involving a Chinese high-altitude balloon and three unknown objects highlighted the have to further improve our understanding of UAPs over US airspace,” said Gillibrand. he said.
Austin – who said he would “ensure” the office receives full funding in the future – told Gillibrand that the Pentagon had requested $11 million for its research in the fiscal yr 2024 budget, which Gillibrand revealed was not the budget it had asked for office.
President Biden announced a budget plan in Philadelphia on March 9 that called for a $5.5 trillion tax increase over the next decade.
Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough told the Military Times. on March 14 that AARO’s fiscal yr 2024 budget figures were classified.
AARO was founded in July 2022geared toward detecting and identifying objects of interest in U.S. airspace and “mitigating any associated threats to operational safety and national security”, which “includes anomalous, unidentified space, aerial, underwater and trans-medical objects.”
“They simply put a alternative number on it,” said Rubio Military times. “Fortunately, we can’t concentrate to that [the Biden administration’s] budget numbers.
In early March, Pentagon officials said in a draft document that aliens may already be visiting Earth to review it with probes, just as NASA does in its study of other planets.
“A synthetic interstellar object has the potential to be a mothership that releases multiple small probes during a close-to-Earth pass, an operational construct not very like a NASA mission,” the report said. “These ‘dandelion seeds’ will be separated from the parent ship by the tidal force of the sun’s gravity or maneuverability.”