Posting on Navy Reddit last month, one user — known simply as Senor_Rico — claiming to be a sailor reported that he had tamed the wild and unruly AI beast by using ChatGPT to generate his annual performance evaluation.

Completing such documents, also known as an enlisted evaluation report or “brag sheet,” can consume a sailor’s precious time while a swarm of daily tasks continue to mount.

But Senor_Rico claims the ChatGPT application will allow sailors to “feed it a brag sheet” and watch a fresh, automated eval roll off the cyber line, sparkling and ready to submit.

It took two weeks to train ChatGPT to write a brag sheet, Senior_Rico wrote, adding that the AI was first fed older evaluations in order to learn.

Once up to speed, the program, according to the purported sailor, “will turn your brag sheet into a full eval write-up.”

“This is great,” one Reddit user wrote in response. “I’ll be referring my homies to this.”

ChatGPT was developed by homies at the company OpenAI, an organization later acquired by homies at Microsoft.

The software allows users to feed questions or information to a chat bot and receive a polished report in return.

By February 2023, ChatGPT set the record for having the fastest growing user base, according to a study by UBS, a financial services group.

Some Navy Reddit commenters, meanwhile, expressed concern that using such a tool could threaten other sailors’ security clearances.

“Would not recommend for those that hold clearances or do cleared work,” thinklikeacriminal wrote. “You are gonna f— up and out the wrong s— in there.”

“Well yeah, don’t feed it a classified brag sheet,” Senor_Rico replied.

Another Redditor aired beef not with AI, but with evals altogether.

“Writing evals is stupid since it’s a popularity contest anyway,” Leading-Show8764 said.

To do so, the F-35 program opted to reconstruct one aircraft, dubbed “AF-211,” that was damaged when its nose landing gear failed in June 2020. The aircraft’s nose section will be replaced with the undamaged nose from another jet, called “AF-27,″ that suffered a severe engine fire at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, in 2014.

AF-27 currently serves as a model that lets airmen practice repairing battle damage.

Experts from the F-35 Joint Program Office, the 388th Fighter Wing, the Ogden Air Logistics Complex and Lockheed Martin are working on the project, the release said. (Frankenstein’s assistant Igor, however, will noticeably be absent.)

“It takes a team to make these types of endeavors successful,” Dan Santos, F-35 JPO heavy maintenance manager, said in the statement. “I am very impressed with the collaborative efforts from the various agencies across Hill AFB, working together to make this happen.”

While other F-35s have been repurposed, this particular aircraft takes previous Air Force recycling efforts a step further. The jet merging effort is a first — and these processes are being documented for possible repurpose initiatives in the future.

The project is currently several months ahead of schedule and on track to be finished in March 2025, even without the expertise of an Ingolstadt-based doctor.

“The F-35 program is still young compared to all legacy airframes,” Dave Myers, F-35 JPO Lightning Support Team lead engineer, said in the statement. “We are doing this for the first time, and organizationally for the future, we are creating a process we can move forward with.”

Sean Kirkpatrick, who leads the office tasked with researching and analyzing UFO reports, said he has seen no evidence of any secret U.S. government program regarding reverse engineering or researching extraterrestrial UFOs. Those who provide information to the office, he said, are protected under whistleblower laws, which were extended to the UFO office last year.

“All information shared will be protected as personal and confidential and will only be shared with [AARO] staff for the purposes of contacting individuals,” Kirkpatrick said.

Kirkpatrick said the form is an initial point of contact between the referring individual and the UFO office. He told reporters that there were no restrictions on reporting information to the office based on classification level or where information originated within the U.S. government, and the office would look into information dating all the way back to 1945.

While the portal is for data that may have been recorded decades ago, military personnel who come across an anomalous phenomena should report it “through their command or service,” according to the office’s website. Civilian pilots, meanwhile, should report their sightings to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Earlier in October, the UFO office released its yearly report, which showed the number of UFO reports that have been analyzed exceed 800. None of the UFOs investigated by AARO were found to be a threat.

A very small percentage of the sightings demonstrated characteristics of interest, such as traveling at high speeds or having unknown morphologies, according to the report. The vast majority of sightings have “ordinary characteristics of readily explainable sources,” according to the report, but a large number of the sightings have too little data to support a conclusion.

Kirkpatrick noted that while the public may be interested in filing their own reports, the office is working on how to handle what they expect to be a large influx once a reporting mechanism is open to the general public. Currently, he anticipates the reports from former and current personnel to be manageable, given such classified information is only known by few people, he told Military Times.

“The website is a living thing,” Kirkpatrick told reporters. “It’s going to evolve as we we do more and more. We’ve got a package of a lot of new material that we’ve got ready for release. … So, you should expect to see things evolve on this platform.”

The number of UFO sightings analyzed by the Defense Department numbered more than 800 over the past three years of reporting, according to data released Wednesday by researchers in the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

In the most recent report, which documented cases reported between August 2022 and April 2023, a total of 291 UAP sightings were analyzed “using a rigorous scientific framework and data-driven approach,” the Pentagon stated Wednesday. In total, the three annual reports from 2021 to 2023 comprise reviews of 801 sightings that date back to 1996.

In April, AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick told lawmakers that there were no UAP sightings that had been determined to be of extraterrestrial origin. Additionally, Kirkpatrick noted that there was never a perceived threat by any individual sighting.

“While the mere presence of UAP in the airspace represents a potential hazard to flight safety, none of these reports suggest the UAP maneuvered to an unsafe proximity to civil or military aircraft,” AARO’s yearly report reads. “Although none of these UAP reports have been positively attributed to foreign activities, these cases continue to be investigated.”

A very small percentage of the sightings demonstrated characteristics of interest, such as traveling at high speeds or having unknown morphologies, according to the report. The vast majority of sightings have “ordinary characteristics of readily explainable sources,” but a large number of the sightings have too little data to support a conclusion.

The report by the AARO, an office tasked with researching and analyzing all such credible sightings, also corroborates independent research that links increased sightings of unidentified phenomena to the proximity of military bases, training locations and other areas of military operations. Using a publicly available database, RAND Corporation researchers found the rate of UAP sightings to be 1.2 times greater within 18 miles of military areas of operation.

The Pentagon released its most recent report on the heels the AARO’s launch of a website designed to serve as the public facing portion of the government’s research and analysis of UFOs. The site will eventually allow users to report UFO sightings dating back to 1945, according to the AARO. A number of amendments in this year’s defense policy bill aimed at setting stronger transparency standards for the government’s UFO response are also in the works.

Authored by Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., the House amendment for the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act seeks to provide greater transparency of UAP sightings. Defense Department officials would have 180 days after the passage of the legislation to provide such documents, if the legislation is adopted by both chambers.

“Our government needs to be transparent with its people,” Burchett told Military Times via email in July. “I understand taking measures to avoid compromising national security, but the American people deserve to know what’s going on and what the Pentagon really knows. They can handle it.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a sister amendment to the Senate’s defense bill that would give a review board the authority to review and declassify government documents related to unidentified phenomena. Final passage of any legislation is on hold as the House works to elect a new speaker, or approves limited legislative work to be done via an interim speaker.

The space agency released a report Thursday recommending that its scientists work with the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which spearheads the U.S. government’s investigations of UFOs. That coordination could allow better research and data collection on unknown objects in the Earth’s atmosphere.

“NASA’s long-standing public trust, which is essential for communicating findings about these phenomena to citizens, is crucial for destigmatizing UAP reporting,” the NASA team wrote, referring to unidentified anomalous phenomena – the scientific term for UFOs.

More than 70% of Americans view NASA favorably, according to the Pew Research Center, only slightly behind the National Park Service and U.S. Postal Service.

NASA officials will decide in the coming weeks and months how best to implement the team’s suggestions.

NASA’s call to destigmatize UFO research and reports comes as the public’s interest in “anomalous phenomena” grows. In July, a handful of retired and former U.S. military personnel made headlines describing encounters with fast-moving aircraft. One witness, David Grusch, told lawmakers that the government has a UFO retrieval and reverse-engineering program.

Sixty-five percent of adults in the U.S. believe there is intelligent life outside of Earth, according to the Pew Research Center. And more than half of Americans believe these UFOs tracked by the government are evidence of intelligent life in the universe.

“If you ask me, ‘Do I believe there’s life in a universe that is so vast that it’s hard for me to comprehend how big it is?’ My personal answer is yes.”

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson

NASA Administrator Nelson believes the odds of finding extraterrestrial life in the universe are high — and that it’s just a matter of time.

“Somewhere out there, we will discover another medium sized, stony planet around a medium sized star, at just the right distance, not too far, not too close with a tilt in its axis that rotates, that has carbon, that will have a habitable atmosphere,” Nelson said, briefing reporters after unveiling the NASA report.

“If you ask me, ‘Do I believe there’s life in a universe that is so vast that it’s hard for me to comprehend how big it is?’ My personal answer is yes.”

The NASA team recommended harnessing the agency’s satellites to differentiate between airborne clutter in Earth’s skies versus objects of interest – like the fast-moving objects that flummoxed U.S. military pilots in 2004. Certain types of radars could also be used to monitor motions on the Earth’s surface.

The report comes as the Biden administration continues to craft and update its policies regarding UFOs. Earlier this month, Defense Scoop first reported that Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks would directly oversee the Pentagon UFO office and receive weekly updates from its lead.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are as skeptical as the public if not more so, suspecting they’ve been kept in the dark on Defense Department UFO discoveries. A bipartisan group of lawmakers asked House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to establish a committee to investigate and oversee federal government UFO policies.

And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that would cut red tape to more quickly declassify UFO-related material. The proposal would also put decision in the hands of an independent review board outside the Pentagon’s chain of command.

Despite calls for UFO transparency, NASA was less transparent as it simultaneously announced appointing its first-ever director for unidentified anomalous phenomena research to coordinate with the Pentagon. The agency did not reveal the individual’s name, a decision stemming from the poor treatment of those on the NASA team for UFOs.

“Science needs to undergo a real and rigorous and rational process and you need the freedom of thought to be able to do that,” said Dan Evans, an assistant deputy associate administrator in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Some of the threats and the harassment have been beyond the pale, quite frankly.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., announced a funding boost for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, tasked with researching and analyzing UAPs, in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. House lawmakers have not made their funding request for the office public. The final spending bills will be debated later this summer.

“With aggression from adversaries on the rise and with incidents like the Chinese spy balloon, it’s critical to our national security that we have strong air domain awareness over our homeland and around U.S. forces operating overseas,” Gillibrand said in a statement. The Senate bill covers more than just the office’s basic operating expenses, as the 2022 defense budget did last year. It also includes measures to reveal more of what they are finding, which will “reduce the stigma around this issue of high public interest,” she added.

The funding push comes after the Chinese spy balloon served as a reminder that U.S. adversaries are increasingly operating in Earth’s upper atmosphere — and as the public’s fascination with unidentified phenomena grow. In a 2021 Gallup poll, more than 40% of respondents blamed alien spacecraft for at least some of the unidentified incidents in recent years.

Gillibrand’s office would not say what how much more funding the anomaly office would receive, if the measure is passed, as it falls under a classified part of the budget.

If the Senate’s text is passed, current or former government contractors would have 60 days to turn over any unidentified-object data they’ve come across to the Pentagon office. Contractors would also be required to provide a “comprehensive list of all non-earth origin or exotic unidentified anomalous phenomena material,” according to the Senate’s intelligence authorization bill text.

The Intelligence Authorization Act also gave Pentagon UAP office director Sean Kirkpatrick a greater role in coordinating the government’s response to unidentified anomalous phenomena.

Defense Scoop first reported on the changes in the intelligence bill regarding the anomaly office.

Lawmakers have been campaigning to fully fund the office for months. In a March hearing, Gilibrand grilled Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin over the administration’s budget request for 2024 that left the unidentified anomaly office underfunded for the second year in a row.

Austin pledged to fully support the office in the future — and told lawmakers the administration initially requested $11 million for the office. The Pentagon would not confirm the figure that Austin mentioned.

“They just put a placeholder number on it,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told Military Times the week after the hearing. “Luckily, we’re not going to pay attention to [the Biden administration’s] budget numbers.”

On Feb. 16, Rubio, Gillibrand and 12 other senators sent a letter to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks and Deputy Director of National Intelligence Stacey Dixon calling for full funding for the anomaly office. The Biden administration’s previous funding request for 2023 failed to fund anything beyond the office’s basic operating expenses, the lawmakers argued.

The lawmakers wrote that the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office “provides the opportunity to integrate and resolve threats and hazards to the U.S., while also offering increased transparency to the American people and reducing the stigma,” of such sightings. The creation and work of the office has linked its work to popular culture on “Area 51″ conspiracy theories and more recent encounters released by the Pentagon that show U.S. military pilots observing unidentified objects flying in the sky.

The New York Democrat has focused on anomaly research funding and coordination since the office’s inception. In 2021, she introduced an amendment to the 2022 defense authorization act that replaced the Office of Naval Intelligence’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and created the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Gillibrand said the goal of the restructuring was to increase intelligence sharing between the Pentagon and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Alfred University, located in upstate New York, sent a letter to the committee, stating it had closed its Confucius Institute.

“I’m glad to see Alfred University finally doing the right thing and shutting down its Confucius Institute,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.), who chairs the select committee, said in the statement. “But the Confucius Institute is only one tool in the CCP’s toolbox.”

“We’re going to continue to dig into the facts to make sure that no American taxpayer dollars are supporting research partnerships that the CCP can exploit for its own purposes,” he added.

Confucius Institutes are a part of the Chinese government’s efforts to engage other countries in cultural events, academic seminars and business conferences, according to the Congressional Research Service. The first Confucius Institute opened in the United States in 2005 at the University of Maryland, which closed in 2020.

In May 2022, Alfred University was awarded a $13.5 million contract to support a project with the U.S. Army to “conduct advanced manufacturing and characterization research of high temperature materials,” according to an announcement from Alfred University. That research was meant to help materials withstand the extreme temperatures that occur when cruise missiles travel at hypersonic speeds.

This week’s announcement comes after the committee said it would investigate Alfred University over hosting its institute. Gallagher sent a letter on May 31 to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, where he requested information about the Pentagon’s efforts to protect the United States’ military research.

The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act prohibited the Pentagon from providing funds to colleges and universities that host a Confucius Institute. The 2021 NDAA gave universities a deadline of October 1, 2023, to end their relationships with the Chinese government-linked groups.

To date, three universities continue to conduct “sensitive military research” while hosting a Confucius Institute on its campus, according to the statement. The University of Toledo and University of Utah continue to host the institutes on their campuses. St. Cloud State University has paused its institute’s operations while the university conducts a review, according to the National Association of Scholars.

Alfred University did not respond to request for comment. More than 100 universities and colleges have closed — or are in the process of closing — their Confucius Institutes.

The director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office testified last week in the second UAP-related congressional hearing in more than 50 years. The number of sightings, he said, now number more than 650 objects of interest.

“Of those over 650 [UAPs], we’ve prioritized about half of them to be of anomalous, interesting value,” AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick testified.

Kirkpatrick presented updated findings to the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities that included declassified surveillance images of UAPs flying through the skies. None of the objects under investigation by AARO, however, were of extraterrestrial origin, Kirkpatrick said.

In January, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report in which an initial assessment found the U.S. government had 144 UAP reports from March 2004 to March 2021. An additional 119 UAP reports fell within that time frame, but were not discovered until after the initial assessment. Since that evaluation, AARO registered 247 new UAP reports, the January report said, totaling 510 cases since 2004.

But in just the past three months since the report was released, at least 140 more UAP reports have been filed to the office — a more than 27% increase in just under four months.

During Kirkpatrick’s presentation, he noted reports of UAPs were heavily concentrated on the western and eastern seaboards of the U.S., the Middle East and in the Indo-Pacific near China. Of the total UAPs in the January assessment, more than half had a morphology classified as “orb, round or sphere,” Kirkpatrick said.

Kirkpatrick also noted during the hearing that the AARO is planning to develop a website where members of the public can document experiences with UAPs. The initial design for the website has been in the review process since before Christmas of last year, he added.

An amendment passed in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act replaced the Office of Naval Intelligence’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force with the AARO. The goal of the restructuring, amendment sponsor Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said, was to increase intelligence sharing between the Pentagon and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“Congress established this office in law to get to the bottom of the very serious problem of unidentified anomalous phenomenon or UAP,” Gillibrand said during the hearing. “While we have made progress, there remains a stigma attached to these phenomenon. There is a vast and complex citizen engagement, and there’s also very challenging scientific and technical hurdles.”

A total of 100 Guardians were selected as fit test participants, which the service called an “essential” stage in the development of the uniform’s size and fit, according to a service press release.

“We used Guardian focus groups and roadshows to narrow service dress design options,” Wade Yamada, the deputy director of staff in the Office of the Chief of Space Operations, said in the release. “We listened intently to Guardian design and fit requests. In many ways, Guardians helped select our current service dress design.”

The final fit test is another checkpoint in a uniform saga that has elicited no shortage of online commentary — notably, the uniform’s resemblance to duds worn on various space-based shows.

In an article written after the uniform’s unveiling, the science and entertainment website Giant Freakin Robot suggested that the service had drawn inspiration from the hit television series “Battlestar Galactica.”

But for those Trekkies feeling left out, fear not. The uniforms have also been compared to those worn by Capt. James Kirk, played by William Shatner, in the movie “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”

“We are excited by Guardians’ input into their future uniform,” Catherine Lovelady, the head of the service’s Office of Change Management Team. “We are passionate about ensuring our members continue to have a voice in shaping a unique Space Force uniform.”

The next step for the Space Force dress uniform will begin this summer, when the service tests for durability, functionality and comfort.

During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) questioned senior Pentagon officials, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, about the budget request for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Questions from Gillibrand, who chairs the Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, focused on why the office was underfunded for the second year in a row.

“The incidents last month involving the Chinese high-altitude balloon and the three unknown objects highlighted the need for us to continue to improve our understanding of UAP’s over U.S. airspace,” Gillibrand said.

In response, Austin pledged to fully fund the office in the future, and said the Pentagon requested $11 million for its research in the fiscal year 2024 budget.

Military Times has reached out to Gillibrand’s office for clarification on the figure, which was disputed during the hearing. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment about Austin’s remarks as of publication. On March 14, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough told Military Times the fiscal year 2024 AARO budget figures were classified.

Gillibrand has focused on AARO funding and coordination since the office’s inception. In 2021, Gillibrand introduced an amendment to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act to replace the Office of Naval Intelligence’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force with the AARO. The goal of the restructuring, she said, was to increase intelligence sharing between the Pentagon and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“Our national security efforts rely on aerial supremacy and these phenomena present a challenge to our dominance over the air,” Gillibrand said in a statement on Dec. 9, 2021, ahead of the office’s formation. “Staying ahead of UAP sightings is critical to keeping our strategic edge and keeping our nation safe.”

As part of the amendment’s text, the ODNI is required to release an annual public report on UAPs.

On Feb. 16, Gillibrand and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote a letter signed by 12 other senators to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks and Deputy Director of National Intelligence Stacey Dixon calling for full funding for the AARO. In the fiscal year 2023 budget, the Biden administration failed to fund anything besides basic operating expenses for the AARO, lawmakers argued.

“They just put a placeholder number on it,” Rubio told Military Times on Wednesday. “Luckily, we’re not going to pay attention to [the Biden administration’s] budget numbers.”

“I think they need enough to do their job. If not, don’t have it,” he added.

Gillibrand also questioned Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord about their budget request for AARO. McCord said he was not told by the Under Secretary of Defense Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie, who has purview over AARO, that the office needed more funding.

“[AARO] is a relatively new office we are standing up,” McCord testified. “I am under the impression that we have adequate funding for the relatively new [office].”