Harvard astrophysicist and frequent Newsmax contributor Avi Loeb will lead a new UAP Science Advisory Council assembled at the request of the White House, the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, and the broader intelligence community, the scientific arm of President Trump's push to declassify federal files on unidentified anomalous phenomena.

The council will report to a higher-level UAP Governance Board that met for the first time the week of June 15. An ODNI official said the agency established the board with the FBI and Defense Department "to provide guidance, recommendations, and coordination at the interagency level, bringing together military, law enforcement, the intelligence community, and other civilian agencies."

The program carries no budget and will work only with declassified material.

Loeb's mandate is to advise the government on how to resolve the nature of UAP.

The roster spans physics, oceanography, AI, statistics, biology, anthropology, and psychology, and includes retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, the former acting NOAA administrator; Stanford immunologist Garry Nolan; SUNY Albany physicists Kevin Knuth and Matthew Szydagis; and skeptic Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic magazine, whose inclusion has drawn pushback from some disclosure advocates.

"I am very pleased and not surprised as I have been calling on the Executive branch to prioritize UAP for years," Gallaudet said.

The panel's focus includes a June 5 AARO report, signed by Director Jon Kosloski and released June 12, documenting phenomena observed by law enforcement over two days in October 2023 near Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, including an orange "mother" orb that appeared to launch smaller red orbs.

Roughly 40% of the reported events lacked a reasonable explanation.

"The simplest explanation would be to say that these orbs might be drones that are capable of producing smaller drones," Loeb told the New York Post. "But [AARO] is saying that 40 percent of the phenomena that were observed cannot be explained by technologies the US possesses or that we know about from adversary nations."

Loeb cast the panel as outside scientific support for an agency apparatus he says lacks in-house capacity.

"The government is not a scientific organization. They don't have first-class scientists. So we can help them figure things out," he told the Post, adding the council will tell agencies "what needs to be collected in the future" if existing data falls short.

He said the panel would track evidence over attention: "We should keep our eyes on the orbs, not on the audience."

In a June 13 Newsmax interview, Loeb said the latest files highlight a national security concern and confirmed he was assembling the council.

He has been a recurring guest on Newsmax, including February and April appearances tied to Trump's directive on UAP records.

Loeb told NewsNation's "Elizabeth Vargas Reports" the new structure marks a shift in federal posture. "There is a completely different mindset following President Trump's directive," he said. "We are trying to figure it out together, in cooperation, and I hope that all the suspicion against government hiding things will be forgotten once we get to the bottom of this."

The council is set to surface publicly again at the Disclosure Forum in Washington on June 25.