White House Puts a Scientist in Charge of UFOs

The White House has stood up a new scientific body to study UFOs, and it placed Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb at the head of it. According to Loeb’s own announcement, he was asked over the past week to build and lead a new UAP Science Advisory Council requested by the White House, AARO, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, and the rest of the intelligence community. The announcement arrived on the same day the Pentagon released its third batch of declassified UFO files.

Loeb chairs a team of about a dozen scientists, and the makeup shows the intent. There are people to test physical samples in a lab, people to run raw data through artificial intelligence tools, and people who study why witnesses report what they report. The mandate is to collect and test higher quality data rather than re-argue old cases that could not be verified at the time. One seat stands out. Retired Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, an oceanographer and former acting head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, confirmed his appointment in a separate post. Gallaudet has pushed for years to study objects that move between air and water, what the field calls transmedium activity, which signals the council is not only looking up. It is also looking at the ocean. Loeb added that the real files are stranger than any movie, a reference to Steven Spielberg releasing his film Disclosure Day on the same day.

The document at the center of the release is dated June 5, 2026 and signed by current AARO director Jon Kosloski. According to the report, over two days in October 2023 near a sensitive national security site in the western United States, six federal agents observed an orange orb that appeared for a second or two, released several smaller red orbs, and vanished. In one account a red orb held still over a ridgeline for hours. Speaking on Fox News, Loeb described a mother orb appearing to give birth to smaller ones, and said AARO reviewed all the data and could not explain forty percent of what was witnessed. The report notes flight logs showing military flares in the area, with radar accounting for roughly sixty percent of the activity, while the remaining forty percent is filed as unrecognized technology and remains pending. The same batch holds more than orbs, including a 2008 sighting over Harare airport in Zimbabwe caught on both radar and optical sensors, with beams described as coming off the object.

Avi Loeb

Loeb frames the stakes as two options, either foreign drones flying over restricted American sites that no one can identify, or objects that were not built by anyone on Earth. He has said that confirming a non-human origin would be the biggest discovery ever made by humanity.

The legislative side is moving in parallel. The UAP Disclosure Act matters because it would force records into the open by law rather than leaving it to whoever holds office, setting up an independent board to review and release government files. Files coming out today are coming out by choice, which means a future administration could choose to stop. According to Representative Eric Burlison, speaking to Ask a Pol, his caucus is working to attach the act to the annual defense bill now, and he expects it to happen through the Rules process. That route means the bill may never get a clean floor vote of its own and would instead be folded into the larger defense package, settled largely out of public view, after it failed to make the House Armed Services version of the bill.

On the witness side, David Grusch said he has personally seen photographs of recovered craft and named specific shapes, including lens-shaped discs, crescent forms, flattened sunfish, egg shapes, and boomerangs, and said he expects this administration to release them. According to former deputy assistant secretary of defense Chris Mellon, senior administration officials are under serious pressure from the White House to release as much as possible. A gap remains, as the CIA and the Department of Energy have been almost absent from the releases. Mellon explained that the Department of Energy classifies under its own law passed by Congress, while the CIA has no such excuse, making its silence stand out. A claim raised in the same session points the other way, alleging that a CIA whistleblower tied to the Director’s Initiative Group inside ODNI reported that members were unlawfully surveilled. Underneath all of it sits the funding question of whether parts of this work have run on hidden money outside normal oversight, which is why the legislative fight matters as much as the file drops.

Sources

Fox News. (2026, June 15). Pentagon UFO files describe ‘mother orb’ releasing smaller objects, expert says [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsBwila5F4k

Laslo, M. (2026, June 13). Burlison optimistic about UAPDA’s chances this year: “It will probably happen in the Rules process.” Ask a Pol. https://www.askapoluaps.com/p/burlison-uapda-still-needed-ndaa

Loeb, A. (2026, June). A UAP science advisory council to the U.S. government: Keeping our eyes on the orbs, not the audience! Medium. https://avi-loeb.medium.com/a-uap-science-advisory-council-to-the-u-s-f7262e57b0df

The Anomalous Coalition. (2026, June 14). Livestream Reddit AMA — Chris Mellon, Jordan Flowers of The Disclosure Foundation w/ Leslie Kean [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/live/2VDucC7bxQc