Kirkpatrick: “Unresolved” Doesn’t Mean It’s Aliens
Without photos or other evidence, Kirkpatrick said, there’s no way to know what the agents saw. Their professional backgrounds alone aren’t enough to verify the account.
Sean Kirkpatrick, former head of the Pentagon office that investigates UFOs, says a report by FBI agents who saw a black triangular object can’t be verified without a photograph or other supporting evidence. He says the label “unresolved” in case files doesn’t mean a phenomenon has no explanation, and that some cases have already been solved.
Sean Kirkpatrick, former head of the Pentagon office that investigates UFOs, told Fox News Digital that an FBI agents’ report of a black triangular object isn’t enough to determine what they saw. The outlet published his remarks after new files from UFO case records were made public.
An FBI report from 2026 describes a dark triangular object with no visible engines or exhaust that rose above a mountain ridge and disappeared into a ravine. A separate report by the office describes a matte-black object that rose about 60 to 90 meters above the ridge, hovered for about 20 seconds, then accelerated almost instantly. The U.S. Department of War said the image attached to the FBI report was an illustration, not a photograph of the object.
No Photo, No Evidence
Kirkpatrick, who spent nearly 30 years in the defense and intelligence community, said the witnesses’ professional backgrounds aren’t enough to confirm their accounts. “A lot of people like to point to people as credible witnesses and then take their testimony as gospel. That’s a classic case of authority bias,” he said.
Without photos or other evidence, he said, it’s hard to know what the witnesses encountered, if anything. “Some of it is just, ‘Hey, I saw something. I don’t know what it is.’”
What “Unresolved” Means
The word “unresolved” appears in official case files. According to Kirkpatrick, it usually means there isn’t enough data to analyze the case, not that investigators encountered something with no explanation. “When a case is called unresolved, that usually means there isn’t enough data to analyze it, and you can’t reach a conclusion either way.”
Kirkpatrick said the office had already solved some cases published as unresolved, and that Pentagon leadership ordered the explanations removed from the files. He didn’t say when the order was given or who was involved. The Department of War said it would not comment on the released files.
Kirkpatrick said most of the cases the office examined involved ordinary objects or phenomena that sensors weren’t designed to detect. A small number pointed to possible involvement by a foreign adversary and were referred to security officials for further investigation. At least some of the objects, he said, could be aircraft using advanced technology, like the F-117 stealth aircraft before it was revealed. “When you have raw data from a sighting, rather than just testimony, you compare it against the characteristics of every possible explanation,” he said. “None of the data we saw matched the alien hypothesis.”
Kirkpatrick added that, quite apart from the alien hypothesis, the sheer volume of reports matters: “There are thousands of these reports. And even if there had been alien visits to Earth, there wouldn’t be thousands of them.”