Former Pentagon Investigator Warns of UFOs With Characteristics “We Could Not Duplicate Today”
Written by Christopher Sharp - 12 June 2025
A former Pentagon Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) investigator says he examined craft with “performance characteristics that we [the USA] could not duplicate today,” yet has no idea what they are.
Tim Phillips, the former deputy director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), made the disclosure during an interview with New York Post journalist Steven Greenstreet. He told Greenstreet:
“A small percentage of the cases that have unusual flight characteristics and performance anomalies that we don’t understand, and that's where you have this potentially disruptive technology or emerging technology that we need to understand.”
Phillips highlighted two recurring—and still unexplained—types of UAP:
Fiery orbs that appear over U.S. military ranges and seem to mask their presence
Black triangular craft that manoeuvre with little noise or heat signature.
Describing one fiery-orb incident, he recalled:
“When we start seeing a corona or plasma discharge, and when we've had some of these really really strange events from the reports of the security personnel on site, these devices attempted to conceal themselves.
“In one case, when a truck from main side was coming out onto the range, this device stopped, hovered, went off the road and turned its fricking lights off.”
Turning to the black triangles, Phillips said:
“There were some reports from credible people where they saw something, and they saw a flying vehicle, triangular in shape, trans… just good performance coming off it, not a huge acoustic sound, not a lot of heat picking up….I want to know what it is, because I think it's an adversary capability.”
He claimed that AARO has been studying photographs, videos, and witness reports of these triangular craft.
The fiery-orb’s sudden blackout and the black triangles’ low heat and muted acoustics mirror the handful of incidents in the UAP Task Force’s June 2021 report, which states that some objects showed “a degree of signature management.”
In other words, Phillips is describing the very behaviour the report flags as most noteworthy—and still unexplained.
Reacting to Phillips’ comments, The Hill opinion contributor Marik von Rennenkampff told Liberation Times:
‘Viewed through a historical lens, former AARO deputy director Tim Phillips’ comments on the UAP incidents that have left the Pentagon baffled are remarkable.
‘His statements, along with those from current AARO director Dr. Jon Kosloski in recent months, admitting that the U.S. government is utterly stumped by “several dozen” “true anomalies” and “really peculiar” UAP incidents, mean that the Overton Window has shifted in dramatic ways on the UAP topic. In nearly a century of government reporting and commentary on the phenomenon, this is truly unprecedented.
‘Notably, Phillips stated that the Pentagon is baffled by “fiery orbs,” a morphology that dates back to at least World War II, when pilots reported observing “foo fighters” in the European and Pacific theatres. “Balls of fire” also feature prominently in the earliest surviving U.S. government assessment of UFOs. Identical reports can be found in great numbers in declassified Project Blue Book files from the 1950s and 1960s, suggesting that the objects currently perplexing the U.S. government are not a new phenomenon, nor a terrestrial adversary.’
Phillips’ testimony aligns with that of former Department of Defense official-turned-whistle-blower Matthew Brown, whose submission to the Congressional Record likewise alleges the existence of advanced triangular craft.
Brown recounts infrared footage showing a large, equilateral-triangle “reproduction vehicle” (RV) that suddenly appears 500–1,000 metres above foreign naval vessels in the Pacific, hovers while slowly rotating, and then vanishes.
The craft, he writes, carried three bright lights—one on each corner—and its rotation briefly revealed a sweeping horizontal bar of lights beneath the hull.
In the same document, Brown notes that intelligence analysts identified the craft as a reproduction vehicle—perhaps tied to the foreign warships beneath it—and observed that those ships looked deliberately positioned at the precise coordinates in anticipation of the RV’s arrival.
Taken together, the accounts by Phillips and Brown hint that a rival nation—China, Russia, or another advanced actor—may already possess technology that, as Phillips warns, “we could not duplicate today.”
Sightings of triangular UAP are not new.
During the early 1980s, hundreds of witnesses reported V-shaped objects rimmed with multi-coloured lights gliding or hovering over New York’s Hudson River valley.
Sightings of similar triangles span the globe—from Wales and Belgium to Phoenix, Arizona—underscoring a long-standing mystery that remains unresolved.
*Responding to Phillips’ remarks and providing greater historical context, triangular UAP researcher and Executive Director of the National UFO Historical Records Center, David Marler, told Liberation Times:
‘As a researcher who has spent more time than most collecting and examining these triangular UFO/UAP reports for over 25 years, it was validating to hear of Phillips' recent comments. It suggests there is a tangible reality to this subset of UFO/UAP reports. However, the question remains: What reality? Are these military assets from a foreign adversary or derived from a more exotic source (i.e., extraterrestrial)?
‘As I outlined in my 2013 book and in subsequent research and lectures, the history of triangular UFOs/UAPs date back much further than the 1980s. In fact, there are global reporting of these objects dating back decades earlier. These are documented in contemporaneous newspaper accounts and military reports and historic UFO/UAP case files housed at The National UFO Historical Records Center.
‘The identical details related to their physical appearance, flight dynamics, and lighting configurations over such a period of time coupled with their widespread geographic distribution, argues against a man-made explanation for some of these reports.
‘Certainly, we do not know what "state-of-the-art" technology exists today in the black budget world. But, looking back through the lens of history, we cannot ignore the wealth of eyewitness reporting and radar cases related to these triangles from both civilian and military sources.
‘We must concede that, regardless of origin, it is imperative that we try to understand why these triangles are here; what is their mission; and how can AARO better understand this subset of reports in the vein of national security.’
*Article updated at 23.45 GMT on 12 June.
