The U.S. Department of Defense’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office has made two major leadership changes.
These moves include the selection of Timothy Phillips as the office’s deputy director and the upcoming retirement of Sean Kirkpatrick, who serves as director of AARO, the DOD said on Wednesday.
Phillips has been a member of the Senior National Intelligence Service for nearly two decades and holds a strong track record of geospatial intelligence collection and mission management. His experience will support AARO efforts to identify, characterize and resolve unidentified anomalous phenomena.
Kirkpatrick shared his intent to step down from his current role in December in an interview with Politico published on Tuesday. The DOD officially confirmed his retirement in a statement by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks hours before Phillips’ appointment was announced.
Hicks, a three-time recipient of the Wash100 Award, noted Kirkpatrick’s “distinguished 27-year career of public services” within the DOD and Intelligence Community. During his time with AARO, she said, Kirkpatrick “served the American people with honesty and integrity, tackling an incredibly difficult mission to explain the unknown.”
One aspect of Kirkpatrick’s career that Hicks highlighted is his “commitment to transparency with the United States Congress and the American public on UAP.”
She cited his launch of the office’s public-facing website as an example and noted Kirkpatrick’s establishment of the office and its operations, assessment of hundreds of UAP cases and leadership in an exhaustive search for UAP-related government and contractor programs as other key contributions.
“Our department is stronger and better prepared for future scientific and national security challenges because of Sean’s distinguished service to our country,” she said.
