The former chief of the Pentagon’s UFO investigation office is urging caution over a reported sighting of a mysterious black triangle by FBI personnel, saying the newly released account does not contain enough evidence to establish what the witnesses observed.
Sean Kirkpatrick, who previously led the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), said recently declassified government records should be assessed through evidence rather than treated as indications of extraterrestrial activity.
The records describe a 2026 encounter involving FBI personnel who reported seeing a dark, nonreflective triangular object without visible engines, exhaust or conventional propulsion. According to the account, it rose above a mountain ridge before vanishing quickly into a canyon.
A separate AARO report said the matte-black triangle climbed approximately 200 to 300 feet above the ridgeline, hovered for about 20 seconds and then seemed to accelerate almost instantaneously.
An image released alongside a 2026 FBI report shows what appears to be a black triangular object above mountainous terrain. Federal agents said they saw a silent triangle hover over a ridgeline before accelerating into a canyon. Authorities have not established whether the image is a photograph or a reconstruction. (Department of War)
Kirkpatrick, a nearly 30-year veteran of the Department of Defense and intelligence community, said the witnesses’ FBI credentials do not by themselves confirm the accuracy of their account.
“There’s a lot of people that like to point to folks as being credible witnesses and therefore their testimony must be taken at face value,” Kirkpatrick told News Outlet. “And that is a classic case of authority bias.”
He said the absence of photographs or other corroborating material leaves investigators with little basis for determining what the witnesses may have encountered.
“Some of this is just, ‘hey, I saw something, I don’t know what it is,’” Kirkpatrick said. “People sometimes have a tendency to fill that gap with very extreme beliefs that have time and again proven to be inaccurate and fallible.”
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, testified before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on April 19, 2023. (U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services)
One possible explanation for some triangular sightings, he said, is advanced aerospace technology. He compared the reports with sightings of the F-117 stealth aircraft before the aircraft’s capabilities became public.
Kirkpatrick said AARO evaluated UAP reports against three broad explanations: sophisticated technology operated by a foreign adversary, ordinary objects or sensor effects that were misinterpreted, and an extraterrestrial source.
“You’ve got 3 very distinct buckets,” Kirkpatrick said.
Investigators can compare each possibility with the specific signatures present in data collected during a sighting, he said.
“When you get data from an observation, actual data, not just a story, you compare that data to those signatures,” Kirkpatrick said.
A frame from video of an alleged unidentified anomalous phenomenon sighting in the northeastern United States in July 2025. The incident was described in files released by the DOW and originally obtained by the FBI. (DOW/FBI)
“None of the data that we saw and reviewed and analyzed matches an alien hypothesis theory,” he added.
Most of the cases examined by his office involved commonplace objects or phenomena that existing sensors were not designed to identify. A smaller number contained indications of possible foreign adversary activity and were sent to national security officials for additional review.
Kirkpatrick also cautioned that the term “unresolved” in government UAP files does not necessarily indicate that investigators encountered something beyond explanation.
“When we say a case is unresolved, it generally means there is no data or there is insufficient data to actually analyze it,” Kirkpatrick said. “And so you can’t conclude one way or the other.”
Investigators may form a likely assessment by comparing a report with similar incidents, he said, but insufficient raw data prevents them from reaching a firm conclusion.
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According to Kirkpatrick, some cases later made public as unresolved had already been resolved by AARO.
“Many of these cases, we did resolve, and I even briefed several of them to Congress with the answers and what they were and what they were likely to be,” Kirkpatrick said.
He claimed Pentagon leadership instructed AARO to remove explanatory language from some cases before they were publicly released as unresolved.
An Air Force intelligence report dated Aug. 28, 1952, records claims from three Boy Scouts who said they saw a silent, silver object moving faster than a conventional jet near California’s Santa Catalina Island. (Department of War)
“Pentagon leadership had told AARO to remove all of the resolution language and put these cases out as unresolved,” Kirkpatrick said. “Letting, and I quote, ‘the people make up their own mind,’ which is the absolute worst thing that you could do because all you’ve done is continue to just feed the flames of conspiracy with a whole bunch of nonsense.”
Kirkpatrick did not identify when the directive was issued or name the Pentagon officials involved.
The War Department separately told News Outlet that it would not assess the newly released records, saying the public should draw its own conclusions.
“We are not providing any comment or assessment on the files overall or on any specific file, so that the American people can make up their own minds regarding the files,” a War Department official said on background.
The department also confirmed that the images included with the FBI report about the triangular object were illustrations, not photographs of the object.
Kirkpatrick said “unidentified” and “unresolved” describe different situations, even though the terms are sometimes treated as interchangeable.
“Unidentified generally means we can see and characterize an object and we have data to support that characterization, but we don’t know what it is,” he said.
He cited objects shot down over North America after a Chinese surveillance balloon was detected in 2023. Those objects were initially unidentified but were later determined to be balloons.
The government’s releases also include decades-old reports, including accounts of unusual objects seen near California’s Santa Catalina Island during the 1950s.
Kirkpatrick said historical reports should be evaluated in the context of the technology available at the time. Early high-altitude balloon programs, he noted, could explain some accounts of bright objects in the sky.
“There are thousands of these reports,” Kirkpatrick said. “And so even if there were alien visitations to Earth, there are not thousands of them.”
He said the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe should not be mistaken for evidence that extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth.
“It’s statistically invalid to believe that’s not going to be the case, but the probability of them being here is just as statistically unrealistic,” he said.
After reviewing the latest records, Kirkpatrick said his overall assessment remained unchanged.
“I mean, there’s nothing new,” Kirkpatrick said.
News Outlet contacted the FBI for comment.
