Arthur Ernest Exon was a U.S. Air Force brigadier general, a decorated World War II fighter pilot and, from 1964 to 1966, commander of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Born in Geddes, South Dakota, in 1916, he trained as a teacher and was a junior high school principal in Fairfax before entering the Army in January 1942. He flew 135 combat missions over North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Corsica and southern France, was shot down over enemy territory in April 1944 and was held at Stalag Luft III until June 1945. He received the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism in aerial combat.

After the war Exon took a two-year industrial administration course at the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright Field, then served at Air Materiel Command headquarters as chief of its maintenance data section. Assignments followed at Olmsted Air Force Base in Pennsylvania, with the Far East Logistics Force in Japan, at the Air War College and for five years at the Pentagon in procurement and materiel posts. In 1960 he became chief of ballistic missiles in the operations directorate at Air Force headquarters in Europe, responsible for establishing the Jupiter missile system in Italy and Turkey. He commanded Wright-Patterson from August 1964 to January 1966, led a Defense Contract Administration Services region in Los Angeles and retired in 1969. He passed away in 2005.

Exon entered the Roswell record through interviews with researchers Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt in 1990. In July 1947 he was a lieutenant colonel and student at the Institute of Technology at Wright Field. He told them he had heard that material from New Mexico was brought to the base's evaluation laboratories and that "the boys who tested it said it was very unusual," adding that the metal "was unknown to anyone I talked to." He also described flying over sites in New Mexico long after July 1947 and spoke of an oversight group he called "the Unholy Thirteen." Randle and Schmitt published his remarks in their 1991 book UFO Crash at Roswell.

How much Exon knew directly became a point of dispute. In a handwritten letter to Randle dated November 24, 1991, Exon wrote that he believed he had been quoted accurately but that the authors' writing gave more credence and impression of personal and direct knowledge than his recordings indicated, and reminded them that he had no firsthand knowledge. Critics including Karl Pflock and Kal Korff argued that the book presented secondhand information as firsthand, while Randle has maintained that the quotes are accurate. The Air Force's 1994 report attributed the Roswell debris to a balloon train from the classified Project Mogul.

Exon's name returned to wide circulation in June 2026, when author Whitley Strieber told Ross Coulthart on NewsNation that Exon had told him part of the secrecy about nonhuman visitors reflected a fear that public awareness itself could open the door to contact. A combat pilot, missile planner and base commander who distinguished what he had heard from what he had seen, Exon remains one of the most senior officers whose words are cited in the Roswell case.