Karl Nell

Karl Nell served as a US Army officer and retired at the rank of Colonel after a career across the intelligence and special programmes side of Army service. He held the senior consultant role at the Defense Intelligence Agency's Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications Program from approximately 2008 onwards under James Lacatski's programme management. The consulting role placed Nell across the AAWSAP-era institutional UAP investigation alongside Hal Puthoff and Eric Davis at EarthTech, Colm Kelleher at Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, and the broader contract network.

Following the formal conclusion of the AAWSAP contract in 2010 Nell continued as a senior consultant to the successor Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) inside the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence under Luis Elizondo's direction. The consulting work brought Nell into the inter-agency network across the post-2010 period that subsequently became the documentary backbone of the post-2017 disclosure cycle.

Nell's post-uniformed career has been at Northrop Grumman in the aerospace and defence contractor community. He has held senior programme manager and consulting roles across the post-2010 period in classified work the public record does not detail.

In June 2023 Nell co-signed David Grusch's pre-hearing public statement ahead of the 26 July 2023 House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs UAP hearing. The co-signed statement was the most consequential corroboration of Grusch's substantive claims placed in the public record before the hearing itself. Nell's standing as a recently-retired US Army colonel with documented AAWSAP and AATIP consulting credentials gave the corroboration significant institutional weight.

Nell was on the announced witness list for the 26 July 2023 hearing but did not testify in the open session. The reasons for his removal from the open-session witness list have not been publicly disclosed. He has subsequently spoken on the SOL Foundation symposium circuit and at smaller engineering and aerospace gatherings, maintaining a public position consistent with the June 2023 co-signed statement but with a deliberate restraint that contrasts with the more visible disclosure-circuit engagement of figures like Luis Elizondo.

His role across the post-2023 cycle has been the senior corroborating voice positioned just outside the public-hearing record. Where Grusch and Elizondo testify under oath and engage the press routinely, Nell's contribution sits in the published documentary trail through the co-signed statement, the limited subsequent public lectures, and the briefing-circuit engagement with congressional staff.

• Career as US Army officer through intelligence and special-programmes assignments.
• Retired at the rank of Colonel.
• From approximately 2008. Senior consultant, AAWSAP (DIA) under James Lacatski.
• Post-2010. Senior consultant, AATIP (OUSD(I)) under Luis Elizondo.
• Post-uniformed career at Northrop Grumman in aerospace and defence consulting.
• June 2023. Co-signed David Grusch's pre-hearing public statement.
• 26 July 2023. Announced witness for House Oversight Subcommittee hearing, did not testify in open session.
• 2023 to present. Selective public engagement via SOL Foundation symposia and congressional briefing-staff network.

This biography is built from publicly available material: the June 2023 co-signed statement with David Grusch, the announced witness list for the 26 July 2023 House Oversight UAP hearing, Nell's publicly disclosed Northrop Grumman role, the SOL Foundation symposium public archive, and the Lacatski-Kelleher-Knapp published-book series in which the AAWSAP and AATIP consultant network is documented. If anything needs correcting, please get in touch.