DISCLOSURE DEBATE
Harvard Astrophysicist Asks Former Pentagon UFO Chief: Where Is the Evidence?
Avi Loeb says testimony, however credible, is no substitute for physical material or data, after Jay Stratton's claims of recovered nonhuman craft.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — A Harvard astrophysicist has called on a former Pentagon UFO investigator to produce scientific evidence for his claim that the United States holds spacecraft of nonhuman origin, according to a report published by Unknown Country.
The dispute follows an Oct. 12 interview given by Jay Stratton, former director of the Pentagon's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, to Fox News anchor Bret Baier, and the Oct. 13 release of his memoir, Out of the Shadows. Stratton asserted that government agencies and defense contractors possess recovered nonhuman craft, and said he had personally witnessed nonhuman beings and spacecraft, the report states.
He also described an alleged operation in which a nuclear submarine and a Navy P-3 surveillance aircraft were sent to attract and gather information on unidentified anomalous phenomena. According to his account, an unidentified object appeared on the first mission and the aircraft collected sensor data. The report notes that neither the recovered craft nor the submarine encounter has been independently verified through public evidence.
In an essay of Oct. 13, Avi Loeb, who leads the Galileo Project and chairs a UAP Science Advisory Council, argued that even highly credentialed officials cannot establish extraterrestrial technology by word alone. Loeb said he met Stratton at PhenomeCon 2026 and later invited him to brief the council; by Loeb's account, no reply came.
The report places the quarrel within a longstanding tension in the disclosure movement: former officials may hold firsthand knowledge of classified work that the public cannot examine, while scientists require the underlying evidence. It adds that the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has reported no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial technology or reverse-engineering programs, though that finding neither explains every sighting nor disproves Stratton's specific allegations.
Until materials or supporting records are made available for independent examination, the report concludes, the claims remain allegations rather than established scientific findings.