Sean Kirkpatrick, 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. Speaking to News Media, he said the newly released account does not contain enough evidence to establish what the witnesses actually observed.
The former director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) said recently declassified UAP records should be evaluated on verifiable evidence—not treated as confirmation of extraterrestrial activity.
Among the documents is a report of a 2026 encounter involving FBI personnel. The witnesses described a dark, nonreflective triangular object with no apparent engines, exhaust or conventional means of propulsion. According to the account, it rose above a mountain ridge before vanishing rapidly into a canyon.
A separate AARO summary said the matte-black triangle rose roughly 200 to 300 feet above the ridgeline, remained suspended for about 20 seconds and then seemed to accelerate nearly instantaneously.
An image released with a 2026 FBI report shows what appears to be a black triangular object above a mountainous landscape. Federal agents said a silent triangle hovered over a ridgeline before speeding into a canyon, but officials have not clarified whether the image is an original photograph or an artistic reconstruction. (Department of War)
Kirkpatrick, a veteran of almost three decades in the Defense Department and intelligence community, said the witnesses’ FBI credentials do not, by themselves, prove the accuracy of their interpretation.
“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 Media. “And that is a classic case of authority bias.”
Without photographs, sensor records or other corroborating material, Kirkpatrick said investigators have little basis for determining what the witnesses encountered—or whether the object was unusual at all.
“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, then 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 potential explanation for some triangular UFO reports, he said, is classified aerospace technology. Kirkpatrick compared them with sightings of the F-117 stealth aircraft before the public became aware of its existence.
According to Kirkpatrick, AARO grouped UAP cases into three principal possibilities: sophisticated technology operated by a foreign adversary, familiar objects or sensor-related effects that were misidentified, and an extraterrestrial origin.
“You’ve got 3 very distinct buckets,” Kirkpatrick said.
Investigators can then look for particular indicators associated with each category and compare them with the information gathered during an encounter, he explained.
“When you get data from an observation, actual data, not just a story, you compare that data to those signatures,” Kirkpatrick said.
A screenshot from video of an alleged unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP) sighting in the northeastern United States in July 2025 appears 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.
Kirkpatrick said the majority of cases reviewed by his office ultimately involved conventional objects or natural events that existing sensors were not built to identify clearly. A limited number raised the possibility of foreign adversary activity and were passed to national security officials for additional review.
He also cautioned against reading too much into the term “unresolved,” which frequently appears in official UAP files. The label does not automatically indicate that investigators discovered 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 have an idea of what an object likely was based on similar cases, he said, but without sufficient raw data, they cannot reach a definitive conclusion.
Kirkpatrick said some cases released publicly as unresolved had previously 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 said Pentagon leadership directed AARO to remove language explaining what investigators had determined before some cases were released publicly as unresolved.
An Air Force intelligence report dated Aug. 28, 1952, documents claims by three Boy Scouts who reported seeing 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 specify when the directive was issued or which Pentagon leaders were involved.
The War Department separately told News Media that it is not providing assessments of the newly released files, allowing the public to reach 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 images accompanying the FBI triangular-object report were illustrations rather than photographs of the object itself.
Kirkpatrick said “unidentified” carries a different meaning than “unresolved,” though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
“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 pointed to objects shot down over North America following the discovery of a Chinese surveillance balloon in 2023 as examples of objects that were initially unidentified before investigators determined they were balloons.
Other records released by the government stretch back decades, including reports of strange objects near California’s Santa Catalina Island in the 1950s.
Kirkpatrick said historical sightings must also be considered alongside the technology that existed at the time, pointing to early high-altitude balloon programs as a possible explanation for some reports 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.”
The possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe should not be confused with evidence that extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth, Kirkpatrick said.
“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.
Looking broadly at the latest records, Kirkpatrick said he saw little that changed his assessment.
“I mean, there’s nothing new,” Kirkpatrick said.
News Media reached out to the FBI for comment.
