Gallaudet Confronts Former AARO Director Kirkpatrick at Public UAP Event

Retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, former Acting Administrator of NOAA and former Oceanographer of the Navy, confronted former AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick during a public question-and-answer session on 9 April 2026. Gallaudet pushed back on Kirkpatrick's attribution of the 2004 USS Nimitz Tic Tac encounter to a calibration sphere, telling him directly that he had no other geophysical explanation for what the Navy pilots reported. Gallaudet has since publicly accused Kirkpatrick of running a disinformation campaign and of lying about their prior interactions, citing a May 2024 email exchange. Kirkpatrick responded by characterising Gallaudet as conspiracy-prone and unsuitable for objective analysis, and asserted that Gallaudet had previously sought a position at AARO. The exchange, covered through late April by IBTimes UK, UFO News and independent UAP researchers including D. Dean Johnson, marks one of the highest-profile public splits between credentialled former defence officials over the credibility of AARO's historical reporting and feeds directly into the broader institutional-trust questions raised by Rep. Burchett's HR 8197 to abolish AARO and Rep. Luna's outstanding 46-video subpoena.