Jay Stratton

Military and Intelligence Career

Jay Stratton is a highly decorated defense intelligence senior executive with over 32 years of combined military and federal service. His career has spanned multiple branches, including the Army, Air Force, Naval Intelligence, and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Stratton served as Chief of Air & Space Warfare in the Defense Warning Office at DIA and was stationed in Naval Intelligence at the highest operational levels before being loaned to the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he specialized in reverse engineering and Air & Space Warfare analysis. Over three decades, he completed eight overseas deployments, with multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, managing strategic intelligence operations and advanced technology assessments at the highest levels of national security.

UAP Task Force Leadership

In 2020, U.S. Secretary of Defense officially announced the establishment of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force, naming Jay Stratton as its director. However, Stratton had covertly built the task force for two years prior at the direct request of the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense himself. When forming the task force, Stratton hand-picked members from every agency within the intelligence community and each branch of the military, creating an unprecedented interagency effort focused on UAP and potential non-human intelligence. Notably, Stratton selected David Grusch as a key team member—the whistleblower who later became central to 2023 congressional disclosures. Stratton served as director from the task force's 2020 announcement until his retirement in early 2022.

Age of Disclosure and Public Advocacy

In 2025, Stratton became the most prominent government insider featured in "The Age of Disclosure," a documentary directed by Dan Farah and released through major film platforms. The documentary presented testimony from 34 senior U.S. government, military, and intelligence officials alleging an 80-year global cover-up of non-human intelligent life and reverse-engineering programs. In the film, Stratton made one of the most explicit claims: that he has personally witnessed non-human craft and non-human beings with his own eyes. He stated in the documentary's promotional materials: "The first country that cracks the code on this technology will be the leader for years to come," emphasizing national security concerns about advanced UAP propulsion systems falling into the hands of U.S. adversaries.

Memoir and Current Work

On October 13, 2026, HarperCollins' William Morrow imprint will publish Stratton's long-awaited memoir, "Out of the Shadows: Revealing the Truth About Non-Human Intelligent Life." The book has already generated significant interest, with film and television rights acquired by producer Dan Farah, who is developing it as a scripted series. In the memoir, Stratton promises to reveal everything he can legally disclose about his investigations into UAP and non-human intelligent life on behalf of the U.S. government, as well as the profound personal impact this work has had on him and his family. The publication represents the most senior official ever to break silence on UAP investigations. After his 2022 government retirement, Stratton was hired by Radiance Technologies to serve on the Chief Executive's strategy team as a subject matter expert for intelligence strategy.