Jay Stratton says the government and defense contractors possess non-human spacecraft, while Loeb says the public evidence does not establish that claim.
CHAMPAIGN, IL — Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb is pushing back on extraordinary claims from former Pentagon UFO investigator Jay Stratton, saying assertions that the United States possesses spacecraft of non-human origin cannot be accepted without physical material, original sensor records or other evidence that independent scientists can examine.
Stratton, the former director of the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, has made the claims while promoting his new memoir, “Out of the Shadows: Revealing the Truth About Non-Human Intelligent Life.” In an interview with Fox News, Stratton said the government possesses non-human craft and that both government agencies and defense contractors have been involved with such technology. The statements have drawn renewed attention to long-running allegations about secret U.S. programs involving unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, but publicly available evidence has not independently established that recovered alien spacecraft exist.
Loeb addressed Stratton’s claims in an Oct. 16 appearance on FOX 32 Chicago and in a written response published earlier in the week. Although Loeb has long argued that scientists should take the possibility of extraterrestrial technology seriously, he said testimony alone is not enough. His position is that an extraordinary claim involving a recovered spacecraft should be testable in the same way scientists examine other physical claims: through original measurements, imagery, documents or material that can be inspected and analyzed.
Stratton told Fox News host Bret Baier that the government has non-human craft. Asked whether he had personally seen such objects, Stratton said he had seen what he described as non-human beings and craft. He also alleged that a secret effort exists to capture and reverse-engineer the technology. Those statements are Stratton’s account. The interview did not publicly produce a recovered object, laboratory analysis or original records that independently demonstrate a non-human origin for the alleged material.
Loeb wrote that Stratton’s professional background makes the allegations worth examining but does not by itself prove them. Stratton spent more than three decades in military and intelligence work and eventually led the Pentagon task force created to investigate UAP reports. Loeb said he met Stratton at the PhenomeCon conference in Utah and invited him to brief the UAP Science Advisory Council, which Loeb chairs. According to Loeb, Stratton did not respond to that invitation or to a later invitation relayed by council member Timothy Gallaudet.
The distinction between a credible witness and independently verified evidence sits at the center of the dispute. Stratton’s memoir describes unusual military incidents and reports from people he encountered during his government career. People magazine reported that Stratton also writes that military contractors hold at least a dozen recovered craft. His account of the 1947 Roswell incident, however, includes information he says came from another source rather than from an event he personally witnessed. Stratton says that source told him a crashed craft and non-human bodies were recovered in New Mexico.
The Pentagon’s public findings have not confirmed those allegations. In its 2024 historical review of U.S. government UAP investigations, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office said it found no verifiable evidence that the government or private companies had access to extraterrestrial technology. AARO has also said many reported UAP cases ultimately resolve as ordinary objects such as balloons, birds and unmanned aircraft, while some remain unresolved because the available information is too limited to reach a firm conclusion. An unresolved case does not, by itself, establish an extraterrestrial explanation.
Loeb made a similar point about recently examined military imagery. During the FOX 32 interview, he said much of the sensor material reviewed by his scientific council appeared to have ordinary explanations. He pointed to birds as one example, saying changes associated with wing movement can help identify them in thermal imagery. The broader problem, he said, is that many UAP recordings were not collected for scientific research and lack enough information about distance, speed, viewing angle or other measurements to determine exactly what the camera recorded.
That argument is notable because Loeb has repeatedly supported scientific searches for possible extraterrestrial technology. He founded the Galileo Project at Harvard to collect new observational data and has publicly considered whether unusual interstellar objects could have technological origins. His willingness to consider those possibilities has also drawn criticism from other scientists. In the Stratton case, however, Loeb is arguing for a higher evidentiary standard rather than accepting the former official’s account on the strength of his résumé.
Loeb has proposed collecting better UAP data with coordinated optical, acoustic and other sensors that can observe the same event from multiple locations. Such measurements could help researchers calculate an object’s actual distance, speed, shape and motion instead of relying on a single ambiguous image. But he said Stratton’s claim presents a more direct test: If a government agency or contractor truly has a recovered spacecraft, researchers should not need to wait for another sighting. The alleged object or scientifically useful data about it could be presented for examination.
For now, the disagreement leaves the central question unresolved. Stratton has made one of the strongest public claims yet from a former senior U.S. official involved in government UAP investigations, but no spacecraft or independently authenticated scientific analysis establishing a non-human origin has been made public. Loeb says that is the evidence needed to move the discussion from testimony to a scientific finding.
Author note: Last updated Oct. 18, 2026.