In a press release issued late on 23rd November 2021, the US Department of Defense (DoD) suddenly announced the establishment of the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG). Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, working in close collaboration with the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, have directed the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security (OUSD (I&S)) to set up, inside the USD (I&S) the AOIMSG as the successor to the US Navy’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF). Its aims, as set out in the press release, are as follows:

“The AOIMSG will synchronize efforts across the Department and the broader U.S. government to detect, identify and attribute objects of interests in Special Use Airspace (SUA), and to assess and mitigate any associated threats to safety of flight and national security.”
– US DoD Press Release

 Oversight of AOIMSG will rest with a newly-created Airborne Object Identification and Management Executive Council (AOIMEXEC), to be comprised of DoD and intelligence community members, which will also enable US government inter-agency representation. According to the Deputy Secretary of Defense’s own memo, the Director of the AOIMSG will “synchronize the activities among the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and DoD Components, and with other US Government departments and agencies, to minimize safety of flight and national security concerns associated with UAP or other airborne objects in SUA.”

USD (I&S) is to be the lead official managing this process and will co-chair AOIMEXEC along with the Joint Staff’s Director of Operations, Lieutenant-General James J, Mingus. It will request Principal-level participation from the Office of the Director of Naval Intelligence.

The press release set out DoD’s stance in taking reports of incursions into SUA extremely seriously, as they are judged to “pose safety of flight and operations security concerns and may pose national security challenges”. The establishment of AOIMSG is as a direct result of the recommendations made in the June 2021 Preliminary Assessment submitted to Congress:

“This decision is the result of planning efforts and collaboration conducted by OUSD (I&S) and other DoD elements at the direction of Deputy Secretary Hicks, to address the challenges associated with assessing UAP occurring on or near DOD training ranges and installations highlighted in the DNI preliminary assessment report submitted to Congress in June 2021.” – US DoD Press Release

 Kathleen Hicks’s memo, for Senior Pentagon Leadership, Commanders of the Combatant Commands and the Defense Agency and Field Activity Directors,  goes onto spell out what the synchronization will entail. She set out the role of the AOIMSG Director:

“The Director, with support from the OSD and DoD Component heads, will address this problem by standardizing UAP incident reporting across the Department; identifying and reducing gaps in operational and intelligence detection capabilities; collecting and analyzing operation, intelligence and counterintelligence data; recommending policy, regulatory or statutory changes, as appropriate; identifying approaches to prevent or mitigate any risks posed by airborne objects of interest; and other activities as deemed necessary by the Director.” – Kathleen Hicks, Deputy Secretary of Defense

 Recommendations for changes, requirements and improvements in “doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, workforce, facilities and resources” are to be brought to the attention of the AOIMEXEC for review, consideration and implementation by the appropriate DoD Component head. These recommendations will be established by the AOIMSG Director, in conjunction with the other DoD Component heads.

 Finally, and effective immediately, the AOIMEXEC will manage the transition of the current UAPTF to the new AOIMSG. An acting Director will be appointed and will submit implementation guidance for the Deputy Secretary of Defense’s approval, guidance that lays out specifications for membership, roles, responsibilities and authorities for AOIMSG and AOIMEXEC, together with the OSD and DoD Components associated with them.

So what does this all mean? At the time of the June 2021 Preliminary Assessment published by the UAPTF, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks stated that the DoD would take the information laid out in the report and its recommendations seriously. Her memo of 25th June 2021 directed OUSD (I&S) to formalise the mission as performed by the UAPTF. On the face of it, this new announcement certainly appears to meet that criteria. However, when one looks at the working contained in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and the amendments sponsored by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and other, there do appear to be differences. The “Gillibrand amendment” would go some way towards greater UAP transparency on the part of the US Government – and the creation of an “Anomaly Surveillance, Tracking and Resolution Office” (ASTRO) is a much easier title to grapple with! Annual reports with unclassified sections would be issued, and the scope of reporting itself may be expanded to include possible UAP links with nuclear installations, which has long been a source of interest to many studying the phenomenon.

The new announcement from the Deputy Secretary of Defense stops well short of these possibilities. Essentially, it appears to be business as usual, albeit with a named organisation charged with looking at the UAP issue. With DoD and other agencies “supporting” the AOIMSG Director, is it likely that any suggestions that information should be unclassified for public consumption will be shot down by the other representatives? With AOIMEXEC oversight still appearing to rest with both the DoD and the intelligence community, that definitely seems like what was already in play. Nothing in the wording suggests that details of new UAP events – or ones which have already happened but have yet to be made public – will ever be released, even as an unclassified summary as per the June 2021 Preliminary Assessment. Or is this simply a case of the DoD setting up a framework to allow the various agencies to liaise with each other in a formal setting, funnelling information through to an as-yet unnamed research department, such as the proposed ASTRO? If you believe that the Pentagon will pull out all of the stops to prevent UAP information leaking, then it sounds like a method of cutting the “Gillibrand Amendment” off at its knees. If you take a more conciliatory stance, then AOIMSG could simply be another element of a much larger, more effective construct. The motives for establishing AOIMSG could also be somewhere in-between.

One could argue that the DoD have come up with a cunning plan, one which satisfies the Deputy Secretary of Defense’s directions as stated in her 25th June 2021 memo but falls well short of the Pentagon’s nightmare scenario of further UAP details being made publicly available, as the “Gillibrand Amendment” would pave the way for. It appears to water down the language mentioned in the 2022 NDAA and its proposed amendments to a more acceptable form for those already engaged with the issue, and may even jeopardise Congressional approval, especially among representatives who are sitting on the fence about the issue. Whilst there is no specific mention of working with ASTRO, or even the proposed organisation itself, this is not too surprising since the NDAA amendments have not yet been accepted. However, should those same amendments be passed into law, then ASTRO will be a reality, and where does that leave AOIMSG? Would it be forced to funnel information into the new research construct, or will there be a Blue Book Version 2.0 situation with a front-facing organisation called ASTRO that has little power or influence, and the real work continues in the background? Will there be, as Tim McMillan suggested on Twitter, a “showdown” between the DoD and ODNI over who gets to work on the UAP issue? ASTRO would work with an Aerial And Trans-medium Phenomena Advisory Committee (ATPAC), made up of civilian engineers and scientists advising and assisting in collection and analysis efforts. This could lead to the situation where competing offices look at the UAP issue, where one is made up of civilians and the other is “in-house”. If multiple organisations start working on the same subject, we could be treated to years of internecine bickering, one-upmanship and power plays, which will at best simply delay transparency and at worst make engaging with the subject much less attractive to the general public. And then there’s the impending issue of the Inspector General’s evaluation of the DoD’s actions into UAP, which could potentially pose further problems should anything contentious be discovered.

Several commentators have drawn attention to the inability of USD (I&S) to effectively engage on the UAP issue, yet it will now home to the AOIMSG. Is this a reward for years of failure? It certainly seems that way. Lue Elizondo, former Director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, was extremely vociferous regarding the announcement of AOIMSG, as this Twitter message proved:

“Please, please, please contact your representatives and let them know this is unacceptable and not in the best interest of the American people. The USDI is the one single office that has continually lied about this topic and persecuted whistleblowers.”

AOIMSG has the potential, either by accident or design, to undermine the proposed ASTRO structure, and if this occurs, the opportunity to see a huge breakthrough in transparency on the UAP issue will have been lost. Advocates for disclosure will find themselves no further forward than they currently are now. Taxpayers would, quite rightly, kick up a fuss if there is perceived to be a duplication of effort and resources, particularly on a thorny issue such as UAP, which, despite our own personal interest, has yet to find favour with the vast majority of the general public in terms of being a governmental priority. Defence budgets are not bombproof and given the scale of rebuilding the national economy in a post-Covid world, there will be a temptation for politicians to save money where possible. Creating ASTRO where another organisation already exists and has the support of the Deputy Secretary of Defense behind it, may prove to be a financial step too far, and voting against it would be an “easy win” for politicians wanting to brand themselves as financially prudent yet meeting the perceived need to see resolution on the UAP issue. 

On a more optimistic note, as AOIMSG is now a reality, then will Senator Gillibrand and her co-sponsors issue further amendments to the 2022 NDAA Bill, in response to Kathleen Hicks’s new announcement? At least one of her colleagues is, according to Politico’s Bryan Bender. Senator Ruben Gallego still believes that legislation was required to provide more authority, resources and direction for the government to collect and analyse UAP reports. He had also agreed to work together with Senator Gillibrand to get some form of legislation into the final NDAA 2022 bill in December. However, should the language be accepted within the NDAA 2022 Bill, can ASTRO work effectively alongside or in conjunction with this new organisation, and will the proposed ATPAC still be allowed a role?

Just when you think there is a straight-forward path to greater transparency on the UAP issue, something else comes along to muddy the waters. The next few weeks will decide whether or not ASTRO becomes a reality, but one thing is certain – AOIMSG will be part of that new construct. How it fits into a greater, overall method of delivering transparency on the UAP subject is anyone’s guess right now.

Maybe, just maybe, there was an in-joke buried away in the title “Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group”. As Douglas Dean Johnson, someone who keeps a beady eye on developments at Washington remarked not twelve hours after the announcement of its creation:

“AOIMSG = An Office Intended to Mainly Stop Gillibrand”

Only time will tell how this sorry saga will play out.