With aggression from adversaries on the rise and with incidents like the Chinese spy balloon, it’s critical to our national security that we have strong air domain awareness over our homeland and around U.S. forces operating overseas... Fully funding AARO is essential to our national security; the office provides the opportunity to integrate and resolve threats and hazards to the U.S., while also offering increased transparency to the American people and reducing the stigma around this issue of high public interest.

What are UAP, and why are we hearing more about them? I passed legislation requiring more reporting and analysis of unidentified sightings. Now we have much more data about balloons, drones, and other aerial phenomena so we can better protect our skies. This congressionally-mandated report released last month highlights why it's so important to reduce stigma for reporting unidentified sightings, and why AARO, the office I helped create, is protecting our safety by rigorously investigating those reports.

There are so many of us now on the intel committee and armed services that we're going to stand by the service members who documented this stuff. They have video. They have radar. They have heat sensors. They have everything.