A retired Rear Admiral and former head of NOAA has gone on record describing submarine encounters with physically impossible underwater objects — and is calling for a formal US government programme to search the oceans for evidence of non-human intelligence. This is not a fringe claim. This is a four-star oceanographer with decades of US Navy sensor experience describing what he has been told by active and retired submariners.
Who Is Tim Gallaudet
Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet is a retired US Navy oceanographer who served as Acting Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — the US agency responsible for all ocean and atmospheric monitoring, including NOAA’s global hydrophone network which tracks underwater sound anomalies. He is not a UAP enthusiast. He is a career military scientist who, by virtue of his role, has direct knowledge of every ocean sensor system the United States operates.
The Submariner Account
Gallaudet has spoken with both retired and active submariners about first-hand encounters with advanced submerged objects tracked on military sensor systems. He referred one retired submariner to AARO. The incident the submariner described took place in the North Atlantic in the 1980s during a severe storm with 40-foot waves — conditions that make submarine detection near-impossible due to acoustic noise.
Despite those conditions, the submarine’s sonar detected an object closing at high speed. The acoustic signature resembled a Russian torpedo. The crew executed emergency evasive manoeuvres and dove near the crush depth of the vessel. At crush depth, the pressure differential is within the structural tolerance limits of the hull — this was a genuine emergency response, not a precautionary manoeuvre.
The object slowed as it approached. It circled to the stern of the submarine. It trailed the vessel for a period. Then it rapidly departed.
No Russian submarine could have operated sonar effectively in those sea conditions. No torpedo in any known inventory exhibits autonomous pursuit behaviour — slowing, circling, trailing, departing. The incident has no conventional explanation.
The Admiral’s Position
Gallaudet told Liberation Times: “I want to look in the oceans for UAP and evidence of higher non-human intelligence because I know the area really well. I know all the collection systems out there and the universities and government agencies that do ocean exploration and research. I want to pursue the study of UAP in the oceans to add to the overall body of knowledge. Why just limit ourselves to looking up when we know if we look below we’ll find that evidence too?”
He published a formal white paper for the Sol Foundation on the undersea dimension of UAP — a document now circulating in congressional circles. He has called for the White House National Security Council to direct DOD and the Intelligence Community to provide greater transparency specifically on the ocean dimension of the UAP programme.
Why This Matters
Gallaudet’s significance is institutional. He ran NOAA. NOAA operates the global hydrophone network — the same network that recorded the “Bloop” anomaly in 1997 and has recorded other unexplained ultra-low frequency sounds from ocean depths. He knows what the sensors can detect and what they have detected. His call for an ocean-based UAP investigation is not a request to start looking — it is a statement that there is already something there worth finding.
The NDAA FY2023 explicitly includes “submerged objects or devices” within the legal definition of UAP subject to investigation. Congress has already authorised it. A retired four-star with NOAA command authority is calling for it. The only question is whether anyone will actually do it — or whether that data, like the aerial UAP sensor data, will remain classified in programmes that don’t report to Congress.
Source: Liberation Times interview with Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, April 2024. Sol Foundation white paper on undersea UAP.