Official Integration and Outreach Committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)

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The AIAA UAP Integration and Outreach Committee: How We Support Our Stakeholders

Ryan Graves, Michael Lembeck, and Patrick Donovan

Technical UAP study requires a unique, multidisciplinary approach

By nature, UAPs are a complex topic. The DOD considers UAP as sources of anomalous detections across multiple domains s (i.e., airborne, seaborne, spaceborne, and/or transmedium). Their appearance, performance, and signature are largely unknown, and may require a complex and novel approach to identification and attribution. Finally, as UAP intent, if any, is unknown, it is not well understood how to address and/or mitigate a potential threat.

To effectively to support our stakeholders to address the complex and shifting topic, we hypothesize a need for a multidisciplinary core group of subject matter experts who are well-versed in the UAP issue. As issues arise, and as technical progress is made, this core group should be able to seek advice from, and potentially recruit from additional defined fields of aerospace and aeronautics professionals. The above process will keep such a group relevant and able to react quickly to a rapidly shifting field of study.

The AIAA UAP Integration and Outreach Committee was formed on exactly the above premise. We maintain a staff of multidisciplinary subject matter experts, ranging from pilot witnesses to sensor specialists. As our mission and lines of efforts evolve, we can draw from the expertise from the AIAA’s 30,000 members and 71 Technical Committees.

We cover the broader AIAA resources first.

The AIAA – A broad technical resource, and our parent organization

With nearly 30,000 individual members from 91 countries, and 95 corporate members, the AIAA is the world’s largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace and aeronautics profession.

Over its 60+ year history, the AIAA has provided a critical resource to its member companies and stakeholders, offering:

Scientific and engineering expertise
Forums and publications; a platform for thought leadership
Advocacy on technical aerospace topics

The AIAA’s core technical competencies are structured in Technical Committees, which span a wide breadth of commercial, academic, and military areas of focus. The AIAA Technical Activities Division is comprised of 71 Technical Committees (TCs) organized in the following six groups:

Aerospace Design and Structures
Aerospace Sciences
Aircraft Technology, Integration and Operations
Information Systems
Propulsion and Energy
Space and Missiles

These committees bring together leading aerospace engineers and scientists from around the globe with the goal to advance the technical body of knowledge in the fields of aeronautics and astronautics. They develop technical and scientific products, services, and publications including papers, webinars, workshops, and more.

The AIAA UAP Integration and Outreach Committee has access to the entirety of this technical resources described above.

The AIAA UAP Integration and Outreach Committee – A group of subject matter experts dedicated to the UAP topic

The AIAA UAP Integration and Outreach Committee differs from a AIAA’s technical committee in that we focus on the cross-discipline integration/ programmatic support which is required for UAP study, as the UAP spans multiple technical disciplines in its scope. For this reason, we have a dedicated group of core members to triage and work on these multidisciplinary issues, while constantly identifying when, and if we should engage a specific technical resource for further assistance.

Our team represents a diverse group of subject matter experts with a broad set of technical skills from many different fields and disciplines, including:

Aerospace engineering
Military and civil aviation
Physics
Sensor and defense system analysis
Psychology and other health professions
Intelligence and technology research analysts

How we support our stakeholders

Leveraging both our core group of subject matter experts, as well as the broader AIAA, our mission is to advise, staff, and amplify the work of our stakeholders who study, observe, and address UAP. These stakeholders include public civil partners who are specifically tasked with UAP identification, analysis, and potential mitigation and defeat, academia, military and commercial UAP witnesses, and private enterprise partners working in UAP – related fields.

Our operational workflow follows the following steps:

Our stakeholders engage with the UAP Phenomenon as part of their defined mission or during course of operation.
The AIAA UAP Integration and Outreach Committee engages with those stakeholders in either a formal or informal capacity. Our group assesses the challenges passed to us, and determines the staffing requirements, including potentially engaging additional AIAA technical resources and committees as described earlier.
As tasked and recommended by our stakeholders, we provide the following services:
- Structured technical advisory
- Technical white paper development and peer review
- Staffing recommendations and staffing solutions
- Technical policy guidance
Finally, we distribute our findings back to our broader stakeholder pool for continuous improvement across all parties, and publish findings, when allowed.

Additionally, we provide other foundational support functions:

We host and attend dedicated events addressing the UAP issue, including the AIAA Aviation / Aerospace Forum for info sharing and networking.
We form relationships between various stakeholders and technical groups and facilitate those connections and introductions.
In addition to assisting with our stakeholders’ dedicated projects, we proactively select our own technical projects. We list these projects, their staff members, and related content on our mission page.

UAPs represent an incredibly complex technical challenge for all stakeholders. The AIAA UAP Integration and Outreach Committee is dedicated to this topic and has the relevant capabilities, resources, and strategy to move this historic issue forward.

UAP – An Aerospace Safety Concern