Tim Gallaudet
Timothy Cole Gallaudet retired from the United States Navy at the rank of Rear Admiral after a thirty-two-year career that took him from junior oceanographer to Oceanographer of the Navy. He holds a doctorate in oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. After uniformed retirement he served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He is the senior flag officer who placed the March 2019 USS Omaha Strike Group trans-medium UAP observations on the public record, and on 13 November 2024 he provided sworn testimony before the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets alongside David Grusch, Luis Elizondo and Michael Shellenberger.
A Life
Tim Gallaudet graduated from the United States Naval Academy and was commissioned into the Navy's oceanography community. He completed master's and doctoral degrees at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, where his research focused on satellite oceanography and the ocean-atmosphere interface. His thirty-two-year naval career rose through the meteorological and oceanographic specialism rather than the operational fleet community, but the work he did at flag rank brought him into direct contact with the operational and intelligence sides of the Navy.
By 2014 Gallaudet was Commander of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command at Stennis Space Center, Mississippi. From 2015 he served as Oceanographer of the Navy, the service's senior meteorologist and oceanographer, and as Director of the Navy's Task Force Climate Change. He retired at the rank of Rear Admiral in 2017.
Following uniformed retirement Gallaudet was nominated by the Trump administration as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and confirmed by the Senate in October 2017. From that position he served as acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for the first six months of 2018 and again during 2019. He departed federal service in 2020 and founded Ocean STL Consulting, his civilian consulting practice focused on ocean technology and climate adaptation.
Among my many duties as Oceanographer of the Navy, I personally received the March 2019 video showing a green pyramidal craft and the spherical craft entering the ocean from the USS Omaha strike group. There were also other written reports of trans-medium objects I received.Tim Gallaudet, public statement, 2023
The March 2019 incident Gallaudet has publicly described took place off the coast of San Diego, in the same operating area where the November 2004 USS Nimitz Tic Tac encounter occurred. The USS Omaha, a Littoral Combat Ship operating with its strike group, recorded multiple unidentified objects on its sensor systems. One was filmed by ship's camera operators on the FLIR/EO/IR turret entering the water without splashing or surface signature. The footage and the contemporaneous Navy Intelligence Report describing the objects as "Anomalous Aerial Vehicles" were released into the public record by Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp in 2021 via the I-Team unit at KLAS-TV Las Vegas.
Gallaudet's distinctive contribution to the post-2017 UAP conversation is the trans-medium framing. Where Ryan Graves' East Coast incidents and David Fravor's Nimitz Tic Tac concerned aerial encounters, the Omaha case Gallaudet received involved objects transitioning from air to sea without observable transition signature. As a research oceanographer at flag rank he is the senior US naval scientist who has placed the trans-medium pattern on the public record.
On 13 November 2024 Gallaudet provided sworn testimony before the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets alongside David Grusch, Luis Elizondo and Michael Shellenberger. The Task Force was chaired by Representative Anna Paulina Luna. Gallaudet's testimony focused on the inter-agency reporting gap, the institutional resistance to genuine UAP analysis within NOAA and the Department of Defense, and his support for the procedural concerns raised by Grusch and Elizondo regarding congressional oversight.
On UAP
Gallaudet's public position is the most cautious among the 13 November 2024 panel. He testifies to what he received in his official capacity as Oceanographer of the Navy, what he subsequently observed about institutional handling of the material, and what he believes the procedural failures around inter-agency reporting represent for the broader national security framework. He has not extended his testimony into claims about retrieval programmes or biological remains in the manner of Grusch or Elizondo.
His core public concern, repeated across multiple speaking engagements and his sworn testimony, is the trans-medium pattern. He has argued that the official scientific community, including NOAA, the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation and the academic oceanography community, has not engaged the question of unidentified anomalous phenomena seriously because the institutional culture treats the subject as off-limits. He has called for the formal inclusion of UAP observation within the standard oceanographic and meteorological reporting frameworks.
His May 2023 op-ed in The Hill argued that UAP represent both a national security issue and a scientific opportunity. In subsequent interviews and his 2024 testimony he has framed the question as one that the Navy and the broader scientific establishment owe to the next generation of researchers, who he has stated should not inherit the same institutional silence that he encountered during his own career.
Career Record
The publicly available record of Gallaudet's federal service and public engagement:
- United States Naval Academy. Bachelor of Science.
- Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in Oceanography.
- United States Navy. 32 years active service in the meteorology and oceanography community.
- Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, 2014 onwards.
- Oceanographer of the Navy, 2015 to 2017.
- Director, Navy Task Force Climate Change.
- Retired at the rank of Rear Admiral, 2017.
- Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, 2017 to 2020. Senate-confirmed October 2017.
- Acting Administrator, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2018 and 2019.
- March 2019. Received the USS Omaha Strike Group trans-medium UAP video and the contemporaneous Navy Intelligence Report.
- 2020. Departed federal service. Founded Ocean STL Consulting.
- May 2023. The Hill op-ed on UAP as national security and scientific question.
- 13 November 2024. Sworn testimony, House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.
Notable Public Statements
The American people have a right to know about UAP. The federal government should release everything it has, with appropriate protections for sources and methods.Tim Gallaudet, House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, 13 November 2024
UAP represent a tremendous opportunity to advance scientific knowledge if the scientific community engages with the subject without the stigma that has accumulated over seven decades.Tim Gallaudet, The Hill op-ed, May 2023
Sources
This biography is built from publicly available material:
- House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets · Hearing of 13 November 2024, sworn statement
- Tim Gallaudet · "UAPs deserve scientific scrutiny, not stigma" · The Hill, May 2023
- USS Omaha Strike Group video and Anomalous Aerial Vehicle report · released via Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp, KLAS-TV I-Team, 2021
- Office of the Director of National Intelligence · Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, June 2021
- Department of Commerce confirmation hearing record, October 2017
- US Naval Academy and Scripps Institution of Oceanography academic records
The archive takes no position on the substance of the trans-medium claims, only documents that they were placed in the public record under oath by the senior US naval scientist who received the original material. The Department of Defense's broader institutional response to the post-2017 disclosure cycle is documented on the United States country page. If anything on this biography needs correcting, please get in touch.
