D. Dean Johnson@ddeanjohnson
SEAN KIRKPATRICK COMMENTS ON LUNA'S LETTER TO HEGSETH, REQUESTING 46 UAP VIDEO FILES
I was the first to post on X the March 31, 2026 letter from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, requesting 46 named UAP-related video files. On the same day (April 1), I sent the Luna letter to former AARO Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, with several pertinent questions. Kirkpatrick's complete and verbatim response appears below.
Reading Kirkpatrick's reply, some objections spring to my mind. One inspiration for my objections is a statement by the current AARO Director, Dr. Jon Kosloski: "But there are interesting cases that I, with my physics and engineering background and time in the IC, I do not understand. And I don't know anybody else who understands them either." (Pentagon Media Roundtable, Nov. 14, 2024)
Yet in the 16 months since Kosloski made that comment, AARO has not released any video with an accompanying statement approximating, "Our analysts have done their best and we have come up with no likely explanation for this one; what do you think?" Is AARO's official policy to be understood as allowing release ONLY when a "likely explanation" has been formulated?
I may return to this point when I have more time to flesh it out.
I am again attaching images of the complete Luna letter to Hegseth, so that everyone has readily accessible the Luna request on which Kirkpatrick comments below.
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Sean Kirkpatrick, Ph.D. (2022-2023 AARO director), April 2, 2026, emailed responses to questions from independent journalist Douglas Dean Johnson (@ddeanjohnson) regarding a March 31, 2026 letter from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, requesting 46 UAP-related video files.
Kirkpatrick: If the videos were in the hands of AARO prior to my retirement, then yes I would have seen them. What needs to be noted however, is that Luna tends to get her information from less than reliable sources, often pointing to things that either don’t exist or were never reported. If they weren’t reported in official channels then they usually only exist in social media, which as discussed on many occasions, is not a source from which AARO would be conducting analysis.
Furthermore, Luna’s statement that she has “found responses from AARO, when questioned about UAP sightings and provided data, less than adequate,” stems from her bias and wholly uninformed and uneducated understanding of the scientific explanations and rational analysis behind each case. She doesn’t like the answers because it doesn’t conform to her conspiratory and imaginary theories and allegations.
In answer to your other questions, these are important. First, releasing any raw video without performing the statutory requirement for analysis does not serve the public interest. It will only serve to further speculation, rumor, and pseudoscientific misinformation. The statutory requirement is to gather the cases, analyze the data, and declassify each with its likely explanation. This will not only address the need for transparency but also serves to help educate the ignorance and pseudoscience, combating the misinformation that pervades this area. This process takes time to do it right, something Luna her co-conspirators neither understand nor want. The Department has been complying with this law since the establishment of AARO.
Secondarily, once each case is put through the process and analyzed, it should be declassified and released to the public according to the processes and procedures I established early on, published on AARO’s website. For example, every case with a cigar shape in an infrared camera is an artifact of the camera’s response function and thermal blooming as we demonstrated in the NOVA special some years ago. Putting that out in the public should have educated the public and Congress on why those types of objects are seen. Clearly, Luna didn’t pay attention and continues to listen to her “credible sources” in contradiction to fact. [end of Kirkpatrick response]
