Disclosure eventLockheed Skunk Works UAP-retrieval naming (2023–2024)
aka Sheehan Lockheed claims · Skunk Works UAP allegations
Beginning in 2023 attorney Daniel Sheehan publicly named Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs division — the Skunk Works — as a private contractor allegedly housing recovered non-human craft and conducting reverse-engineering work; Lockheed has issued only no-comment responses.
What's documented
Daniel P. Sheehan — Harvard Law graduate, former Jesuit-trained attorney of record in the Pentagon Papers and Karen Silkwood cases, and since the late 1970s a public advocate for U.S. government disclosure on UAP — has stated in lectures and interviews throughout 2023 and 2024 that, based on what he says are firsthand briefings from members of the U.S. intelligence community, Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs division (commonly known as the Skunk Works, Palmdale, CA) is a primary recipient of recovered non-human-origin material under a long-running unacknowledged special access program. Sheehan first named Lockheed publicly in a June 2023 interview on the podcast Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal, and has repeated the claim in subsequent public talks at the Citizens’ Hearing on UAP Disclosure (October 2023) and elsewhere.
Sheehan’s stated basis is twofold: (a) work product from his decades of involvement with witness intake at the New Paradigm Institute and, earlier, the Disclosure Project; and (b) his role as legal advisor to Maj. David Grusch during Grusch’s 2022–23 whistleblower process. Grusch himself, under oath at the 26 July 2023 House Oversight hearing, declined to name private contractors on the public record but stated that he had provided such names to the Intelligence Community Inspector General and to the relevant congressional intelligence committees in classified session.
Lockheed Martin’s response to inquiries from major outlets — including The Debrief, Politico, and The Wall Street Journal — has consistently been no-comment or a categorical denial without specifics. A Lockheed spokesperson, asked directly by The Debrief in July 2023 whether the company held any recovered non-human material, replied only that the company “does not comment on matters of speculation.” No Lockheed executive has spoken on the record. The Skunk Works’ classified work is genuinely classified; the absence of confirmation is not, by itself, evidence either way.
What the public record establishes: Sheehan has named the company publicly; he has named no individuals within it; Lockheed has declined to engage on the specifics; no contemporary U.S.-government filing or audit publicly confirms the claim. The naming is on the record. The substantiation is not.
Notable & intriguing
-
Daniel Sheehan first publicly named Lockheed Martin Skunk Works as a UAP-retrieval contractor in a June 2023 interview with Curt Jaimungal on the podcast *Theories of Everything*; the claim was subsequently repeated at the October 2023 Citizens' Hearing on UAP Disclosure.
Daniel Sheehan, *Theories of Everything* podcast (Curt Jaimungal), 17 June 2023; Citizens' Hearing on UAP Disclosure, Washington, D.C., 23 October 2023
-
Lockheed Martin's media response, when contacted by *The Debrief* and *Politico* regarding the Sheehan claims in July 2023, was that the corporation "does not comment on matters of speculation" — a phrasing repeated verbatim across multiple inquiries.
Lockheed Martin Corporate Communications, statement to *The Debrief*, 12 July 2023; *Politico* national security desk, July 2023
-
Sheehan has served as legal advisor to multiple UAP-related whistleblowers including, by his own statement and by Grusch's, advisory work in connection with Maj. David Grusch's 2022 Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act filing.
Daniel Sheehan, statements at the Sol Foundation Symposium, Stanford University, November 2023