Mellon, Christopher

Christopher “Chris” Mellon occupies a distinctive place in contemporary ufology and UAP research because he combines long, senior experience inside the US national security system with sustained public advocacy for transparency on unidentified aerial phenomena. Unlike many figures in the UFO field, his credibility rests less on speculative claims than on his former institutional roles and his understanding of how intelligence oversight, classification, and congressional accountability actually work.

Mellon served for decades in US government and defense-related positions. Most notably, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and later Minority Staff Director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In these roles, he was involved in intelligence policy, oversight, and evaluation of classified programs across the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. This background matters in the UAP context because it places him among a relatively small number of people who understand both how highly classified programs are structured and how information can be lawfully brought to the attention of Congress and the public.

His prominence in ufology begins around the mid-2010s, when he became aware—through contacts in the military and intelligence world—of repeated encounters between US Navy pilots and unidentified objects displaying unusual flight characteristics. Mellon concluded that these incidents were being systematically underreported and insufficiently analyzed at senior levels of government. Rather than framing the issue as extraterrestrial from the outset, he emphasized that unidentified objects repeatedly penetrating military training ranges constituted a serious national security and air safety problem, regardless of their ultimate origin.

Mellon is widely regarded as one of the key figures behind the public emergence of the so-called “Navy UAP videos” in late 2017, including footage associated with the Nimitz carrier group encounters. Working behind the scenes, he helped facilitate the release of these materials to journalists, most prominently through the New York Times reporting that brought UAPs into mainstream media coverage. While the videos themselves were already circulating within parts of the defense community, Mellon’s role was crucial in ensuring that they were authenticated, contextualized, and taken seriously rather than dismissed as internet curiosities.

Following this media breakthrough, Mellon became a central advocate for structural reform. He lobbied Congress to require standardized UAP reporting mechanisms, better data collection, and regular briefings to elected officials. His efforts contributed to the inclusion of UAP-related language in successive National Defense Authorization Acts, which in turn led to the creation of formal Pentagon and intelligence offices dedicated to the issue and to the publication of official UAP assessments beginning in 2021. In this sense, Mellon's influence is less about any single claim and more about reshaping the policy environment in which UAPs are addressed.

Mellon also briefly served as a national security adviser to To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, the organization co-founded by Tom DeLonge. This association placed him closer to the more speculative edges of the disclosure movement, and it has been a point of criticism for skeptics. However, Mellon’s public statements have remained relatively cautious. He consistently argues that UAPs represent advanced technology of unknown origin, that some observed performance characteristics appear beyond known US or adversary systems, and that the question deserves rigorous investigation. He has generally avoided making definitive public claims that the phenomena are extraterrestrial, instead stressing that multiple hypotheses remain open. Mellon left TTSA along with Luis Elizondo in January 2021, five months after Garry Nolan had left.

In parallel, Mellon has supported efforts to bring greater scientific rigor to the subject. His affiliation with Harvard’s Galileo Project reflects his view that UAPs should be studied using systematic data collection, sensor fusion, and transparent methodologies rather than anecdote or belief. This positioning allows him to bridge the worlds of intelligence analysis, public policy, and academic research in a way that few others in ufology can.

Criticism of Mellon tends to focus on concerns that he may overstate the anomalous nature of some encounters, or that his advocacy risks reinforcing threat narratives without sufficient evidence. Others argue that his involvement in media and entertainment-adjacent projects blurs the line between serious inquiry and popularization. Supporters counter that without figures like Mellon, the topic would likely have remained buried within classified silos, inaccessible to both scientists and democratic oversight.

In the broader history of ufology, Chris Mellon is best understood as a catalyst rather than a theorist. His significance lies not in proposing a particular explanation for UAPs, but in helping to legitimize the subject within government, to force institutional acknowledgment that unexplained encounters occur, and to open space for sustained investigation. Whether future research ultimately points to advanced human technology, foreign adversaries, novel natural phenomena, or non-human intelligence, Mellon’s role in moving UAPs from the fringe toward the policy mainstream is likely to remain one of his most enduring contributions.