Inside This Report

• Unresolved UAP cases are not proof of extraterrestrial technology.
• Without public guardrails, deadlines, and accountability, the inquiry could become another permanent government mystery.
• Loeb insists the UAP question can only be resolved through rigorous scientific evidence — not belief, and not dismissal — a stance that will likely define the council's approach going forward.

By Samuel López | USA Herald

WASHINGTON — Avi Loeb has now provided the clearest indication yet of how he intends to lead the government-linked UAP Science Advisory Council he says is working with the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the FBI, and the broader intelligence community.

His approach is unmistakable: treat UAP as a “whodunit” investigation, obtain better clues, deploy better sensors, collect more data, eliminate competing explanations, and allow the scientific process to decide whether humanity is dealing with foreign surveillance technology, unknown domestic systems, natural phenomena, sensor errors, or something genuinely non-human.

It is a reasonable framework as far as it goes.

The question is whether it goes far enough.

In his recent Medium article, Loeb said he assembled a 15-member council and submitted requests for more than 50 items of information involving historic UAP reports. He also stated that the quality of the council’s findings will depend heavily on what data the government provides. This admission may be the most important statement Loeb has made since taking the position.

Because in a serious legal investigation, a case does not rise or fall merely on the intelligence of the investigators. It rises or falls on the quality, reliability, preservation, authentication, and availability of the evidence.

A detective cannot solve a homicide if the crime scene has been contaminated, the surveillance video is incomplete, the chain of custody is broken, key witnesses are inaccessible, and the government refuses to produce the underlying files. A scientist faces the same problem when studying UAP. More advanced instruments do not automatically repair missing context, incomplete sensor records, redacted intelligence, faulty calibration, misidentified objects, or decades of compartmentalized government activity.

That is the central legal and forensic issue now facing Loeb’s council.

Loeb argues that the UAP question should not be settled by belief, ridicule, skepticism, or philosophical debate. Instead, he says the answer must come from high-quality scientific data. He has repeatedly emphasized that unidentified phenomena should be approached as a detective story in which the truth emerges through better evidence. The proposition is sound. But it also exposes a major limitation.

An “unresolved” case is not the same thing as an extraterrestrial case.

The Department of War’s own UAP disclosure system makes that distinction clear. It explains that records placed in the public archive remain unresolved when the government cannot make a definitive determination about what was observed, including because the available data are insufficient. The fact that a case is unexplained does not establish that it was non-human, non-terrestrial, technologically impossible, or even physically extraordinary. This legal distinction matters enormously.

In court, an unresolved fact does not prove the opposite of a known fact. A witness who cannot identify a suspect has not identified an alien suspect. A blurry video that cannot be authenticated does not become persuasive simply because no one has yet explained it. A sensor anomaly does not become evidence of advanced technology merely because the initial explanation is incomplete.

The burden of proof never shifts simply because a case is mysterious.

Loeb’s recent discussion of an orange “mother orb” allegedly releasing smaller red orbs is a perfect example. The reported event may deserve serious scrutiny. It may involve an unknown system, a misinterpretation, an unusual atmospheric or optical event, adversarial technology, classified domestic activity, or something else entirely. But without raw data, source provenance, full sensor metadata, witness interviews, geolocation, timestamps, calibration records, and independent corroboration, the public is being asked to react to a conclusion without having access to the evidentiary foundation beneath it. This is not a criticism of Loeb personally. It is a criticism of the evidentiary environment he has inherited.

Loeb is correct that uncertainty is a normal feature of scientific research. But public uncertainty cannot become a blank check for an endless government-funded research project with no measurable finish line.

Taxpayers deserve to know what this council is actually empowered to do, how much government money or staff support is being committed, what evidence it will receive, whether its members will at some point have access to classified holdings, how conflicts of interest will be handled, what reports will be made public, and what would constitute success or failure.

A review of public information currently available shows Loeb’s own Medium posts as the primary public source describing the council’s formation, membership, and work. The publicly available material reviewed by USA Herald does not identify a publicly released charter, funding figure, formal scope document, or timetable for deliverables.

That does not establish misconduct or impropriety.

It does, however, create an accountability question.

Federal law generally recognizes that advisory councils created or used by executive-branch agencies to provide recommendations may be subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which is designed to ensure transparency involving a committee’s purpose, membership, activities, costs, and records. The rules are not automatic in every circumstance. ODNI-related advisory groups may be exempt where the Director of National Intelligence determines that national-security concerns prevent compliance. That exception, if invoked, should not become a permanent shield against public accountability.

Even if classified work must remain classified, the government can still disclose a non-classified charter, identify the council’s mission, establish a public reporting schedule, disclose general budget categories, provide ethics safeguards, and explain how the council will distinguish between a national-security threat, a sensor anomaly, an intelligence gap, and a truly unexplained physical event.

That is where Loeb’s data-first philosophy may be both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

The strength is obvious. The Pentagon needs better detection, tracking, attribution, and mitigation of anomalies around military and national-security areas. AARO’s stated mission is to reduce technical and intelligence surprise by improving the identification and assessment of UAP near sensitive locations.

But the weakness is that science can only analyze what it is given.

Science can examine a radar return. It can study infrared imagery. It can compare flight characteristics against known aviation systems. It can test an alleged material sample. It can determine whether an object appears to violate known performance limits.

What science cannot do alone is determine whether critical evidence was withheld, whether records were improperly classified, whether witnesses were pressured into silence, whether a contractor possesses relevant information, whether an intelligence agency misidentified a program, or whether the government itself created the confusion through decades of compartmentalization.

Those are not merely scientific questions.

They are intelligence questions, legal questions, oversight questions, auditing questions, and in some cases, constitutional questions.

A truly serious UAP inquiry must therefore include more than scientists and engineers. It requires skilled evidence auditors, counterintelligence professionals, forensic investigators, legal analysts, chain-of-custody specialists, inspector-general oversight, and a protected process for witnesses who claim firsthand knowledge of government activity.

Loeb’s public statements suggest the council will pursue a heavily sensor-centered model. He has pointed to infrared, optical, audio, radio, triangulation, artificial intelligence, anomaly detection, material science, oceanography, and future study of interstellar objects as central pieces of the effort.

But the government should not confuse an advanced instrument package with a complete truth-seeking system.

NASA currently says the available high-quality UAP observations remain too limited to support scientific conclusions about the nature of such events. NASA also states that it has no data supporting the idea that UAP are evidence of alien technology. AARO likewise says it has found no evidence of extraterrestrial technology. These statements do not prove that every UAP report has an ordinary explanation. They do show, however, that neither the federal government nor the scientific community currently possesses publicly verified proof that a UAP or interstellar object represents non-human technology.

That reality should guide Loeb’s council.

The council should be built around the disciplined pursuit of evidence, with clear stop points, public benchmarks, independent review, and a requirement that every extraordinary conclusion survive the same scrutiny that would be expected in a courtroom, a national-security assessment, or a peer-reviewed scientific finding.

If Loeb can force agencies to release higher-quality evidence, preserve raw data, identify foreign threats, improve sensor coverage, and resolve cases that have sat in bureaucratic limbo for decades, the council could provide a legitimate public service.

But if the mission becomes a permanent cycle of uncertainty, research grants, new observatories, more theories, and promises that the next dataset will finally produce answers, then Washington may simply be building another mystery-management institution.

The public deserves more than another government office that studies the unknown.

It deserves proof.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Samuel López is a Senior Legal Analyst, investigative journalist, and legal researcher with more than two decades of experience analyzing litigation, government proceedings, regulatory matters, insurance disputes, and complex legal controversies. His reporting focuses on translating complex legal and regulatory developments into understandable, fact-driven journalism that helps readers understand not only what happened, but why it matters and what consequences may follow.