Americans for Safe Aerospace (ASA) participated in the inaugural Confronting Unknowns program at MIT, a two-day intensive course examining anomalous aerospace phenomena, autonomous systems, and decision-making under uncertainty. The program brought together ASA representatives, military aviators, intelligence analysts, aerospace engineers, and academic researchers to develop frameworks for identifying and responding to ambiguous events in civil and military airspace.

ASA's Ryan Graves, Kevin Cortes, Paul Lomax, Brendan Foster, and Jay Simpson joined a cohort of approximately 55 participants from MIT, Yale, Harvard, and other universities, the intelligence community, defense research laboratories, and aerospace companies. The program was led by Jonathan "JMill" Miller and featured presentations from experts across aerospace safety, autonomous systems, sensor management, information warfare, and national security policy.

ASA played an active role in the program. On day one, Ryan Graves discussed his UAP experiences as a Navy F/A-18 pilot and how those encounters relate to the broader challenges the course addresses. ASA analysts Paul Lomax and Brendan Foster delivered a briefing on ASA's reporting methods, analysis frameworks, and UAP morphology categories, providing the cohort with insight into how ASA processes and categorizes the over 1,000 reports the organization has received.

The course centered on what organizers call "sensemaking at machine speed," examining how operators convert weak or conflicting signals into sound decisions before surprise becomes catastrophe. Participants analyzed real incidents using systems-theoretic hazard analysis (STPA/CAST), open-source intelligence validation, and wargaming simulations that forced teams to make operational calls with incomplete information.

Day one focused on signal detection and system failures, covering topics from geophysics and sensor anomalies to information warfare and intelligence operations. Day two addressed institutional responses, examining governance tensions between public transparency, market dynamics, and national security, along with how autonomous platforms and sensor architectures shape what observers can and cannot detect.

The program's required reading list included ASA's analysis of pilot reporting barriers, "Why Don't Pilots Report What They See? Understanding the Career Risks Behind UAP Reporting." The piece examines how FAA regulation 14 CFR §67 creates medical certificate risks for pilots who report UAP encounters, contributing to ASA's finding that only 5-10% of sightings get reported due to career concerns.

A formal program at MIT examining confronting unknowns and sensemaking under uncertainty represents a significant shift in how academic institutions approach aerospace safety challenges. For decades, discussion of ambiguous aerospace events that don't fit existing checklists has been largely excluded from serious engineering curricula, despite documented incidents involving commercial and military aviation. By framing unknowns as a sensemaking challenge and building analytical frameworks for handling ambiguity, the program creates academic space for examining events that traditional systems struggle to categorize.

The program explicitly rejected speculation in favor of evidence-based analysis. Organizers stated the course would not serve as "a platform for evangelizing highly-speculative or belief-based declarations" or "advocacy for any particular explanation or attribution of UAP." All materials were unclassified and open source.

Several speakers have direct relevance to ASA's legislative advocacy work. Former State Department analyst, Marik von Rennenkampff, who has written extensively on government transparency and UAP policy, and Jordan Flowers of the Disclosure Foundation both addressed the cohort. Their participation reflects growing mainstream policy engagement with issues ASA has been working to elevate, particularly around the Safe Airspace for Americans Act (H.R. 6967/H.R. 5231), which would protect pilots from medical disqualification and employer retaliation for UAP reporting.

The course concluded with an optional writers' workshop for participants to collaborate on a whitepaper synthesizing the program's findings and frameworks. The document aims to provide actionable recommendations for improving detection, reporting, and response systems for anomalous aerospace events.

The program's focus on systems thinking, cognitive bias, information validation, and decision-making under uncertainty provides tools applicable across aerospace safety challenges, from autonomous systems to sensor fusion to regulatory compliance. By treating sensemaking as a learnable skill and creating frameworks for confronting unknowns, the course addresses challenges that extend well beyond any single category of aerospace event.

For ASA, participation in programs like Confronting Unknowns helps build the cross-sector relationships needed to address reporting barriers and safety culture issues. When academic institutions create formal programs examining ambiguous aerospace events and the challenges of decision-making under uncertainty, it contributes to an environment where pilots and aircrew can report what they observe without fear of professional consequences.

Future iterations of Confronting Unknowns are planned as interest in structured approaches to ambiguity and aerospace safety continues to grow. A collaborative whitepaper synthesizing the program’s analytical frameworks and case studies will be published in spring 2026. The paper will offer practical recommendations to strengthen detection, reporting, and decision-making systems when operators face incomplete or conflicting information.

Additional information about the program is available at 

ASA Team Participates in Confronting Unknowns Program at MIT