AOIMSG comments - Chief Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby

Travis. Thanks, John. I wanted to ask you about this new UAP office that was created by Deputy Secretary Hicks and announced last week, the Aerial Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group. It's a mouthful. Was there any coordination with lawmakers on Capitol Hill? They're proposing related legislation like Representative Gallego and Senator Gillibrand. And secondly, some former Pentagon officials who had worked on this issue, Chris Mellon and Lou Elizondo, have said that this is an effort for the Pentagon to be less transparent on UAPs. And I was just wondering if you had any response to that. On the first one, I can't speak to pending legislation. Obviously, I'd refer to those members. But we absolutely kept members of Congress informed as we fashioned this group together and announced it. And it is, to your second question, it is really designed to help us better coordinate the reporting processes, the actual reports themselves, and the analysis of those reports. So that rather than getting them sort of piecemeal and ad hoc, as we've been getting them from the services, this is a way to coordinate the input so that there's a common set of parameters for how to report them and to analyze them and then to assess what we've got. And not all reports are going to manifest themselves in something that we consider a national security threat. So this is a chance for us to be much more organized in the way we process these reports. And as we have, we will certainly continue to be as transparent as we can about these phenomena and the impact that they may or may not be having on our ability to operate. Is there any specific commitment to release some data or information on these to the public at some point? Something beyond a briefing to Congress or a closed meeting? I don't have a specific report to announce today that on any kind of a frequent basis that we would do. But I can assure you that our intention is to be as transparent about this phenomena as we can. Again, try this understanding that there'll be national security considerations that we have to keep in mind. But we'll be as transparent as we can. But not, I don't want to leave you with the impression that there'll be sort of a regular drumbeat of some kind of report that gets posted on the website every couple months.