All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office

Task force of the US Department of Defense

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is an office within the US Department of Defense's Office of the Secretary of Defense, established on July 20, 2022, to investigate unidentified flying objects and other anomalous phenomena observed in the air, at sea, in space, or on land — collectively termed "unidentified aerial phenomena" or "unidentified anomalous phenomena" (UAP). The office succeeded the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG) and absorbed the resources of the earlier Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), which in turn continued work begun under the 2007–2012 Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). Its first director was physicist Sean Kirkpatrick; the current director is Jon T. Kosloski, who reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. AARO operates under authority of NDAA 2022 (Template:UnitedStatesCode) and is required to review US government records on unidentified craft back to 1945. Critics including David Grusch, Matthew Brown, and Ross Coulthart have alleged that AARO lacks the access and clearances necessary to reach compartmented programs, and that its findings have understated what is known inside the US intelligence community.

Origins

AATIP (2007–2012)

In 2007, the United States Defense Intelligence Agency set up an unclassified but low-profile program titled the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) in response to reports of unidentified craft by the US military. The program's funding was terminated in 2012, after which the Navy and Intelligence Services continued the work informally.

UAPTF (2017–2022)

In December 2017, the United States Department of Defense disclosed the continued existence of a defense program collecting data on military UFO sightings, despite AATIP's official disbandment in 2012. Like its predecessor, the UAP Task Force was managed by the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in collaboration with the Office of Naval Intelligence.

After a June 2020 hearing of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Marco Rubio requested the release of video footage of unexplained aerial vehicles collected by the United States Navy, including the Pentagon UFO videos. On June 24, 2020, the committee voted to require the United States Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense to publicly track and analyze data collected on unexplained aerial vehicles. The program was officially approved on August 4, 2020, by Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist and announced on August 14, 2020: "The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security." Brennan McKernan was named director of the UAPTF.

Findings of the UAPTF

"FLIR" video, Nov 2004

"GIMBAL" video, Jan 2015

"GOFAST" video, Jan 2015

On April 12, 2021, the Pentagon disclosed the authenticity of pictures and videos gathered by the Task Force purportedly showing "what appears to be pyramid-shaped objects" hovering above USS Russell in 2019, off the coast of California, with spokeswoman Susan Gough saying "I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by US Navy personnel. The UAPTF has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations." The following month, Gough further confirmed a second video had been recorded by Navy personnel and was under review by the Task Force. The video, recorded on July 15, 2019, in the combat information center of USS Omaha, purportedly showed a spherical object flying over the ocean through an infrared camera at night, moving across the screen before stopping and descending below the water.

Science writer Mick West argued that the pyramid images in the video were most likely an airplane, Jupiter, and stars distorted by out-of-focus lens — an effect called bokeh — which he demonstrated by recreating similar pyramid images on video.

On June 25, 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on UAPs, commonly known as the Pentagon UFO Report. The report found that the UAPTF was unable to identify 143 of 144 objects spotted between 2004 and 2021; of those, 18 featured unusual movement patterns or flight characteristics, with more analysis required to determine whether they represented breakthrough technology. It did not link the sightings to extraterrestrial life, with officials saying, "We have no clear indications that there is any nonterrestrial explanation for them — but we will go wherever the data takes us."

In December 2022, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie said that "[w]e have not seen anything that would lead us [...] to believe that any of the objects we have seen are of alien origin," and that many of the reported objects may be "balloons and things like UAVs that are operated for purposes other than surveillance or intelligence collection." Director of national intelligence Avril Haines took a more open stance on the 143 unresolved military encounters: "There's always the question of 'is there something else that we simply do not understand, that might come extraterrestrially'." Administrator of NASA Bill Nelson, after speaking with naval aviators who observed one of the unknown craft, said he was convinced the pilots "saw something, and their radars locked onto it," and asked "Who am I to say that planet Earth is the only location of a life form that is civilized and organized like ours?"

Establishment and leadership (2022–present)

The successor to the UAPTF was established on November 23, 2021, as the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG). Oversight of AOIMSG lay with the Airborne Object Identification and Management Executive Council (AOIMEXEC), co-chaired by the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security (USD(I&S)) and the Director of Operations, Joint Staff. Template:UnitedStatesCode (NDAA 2022 and NDAA 2023) directed the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence to establish a single office to carry out the UAPTF duties. In July 2022, the DoD announced the successors to AOIMSG and AOIMEXEC as AARO and its executive council AAROEXEC, respectively; the UAPTF was disestablished, with its resources transferred to AARO. Template:UnitedStatesCode (IAA 2022) required quarterly classified reporting to Congress beginning no later than June 2022.

Kirkpatrick, the first director, reported to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks; Hicks announced on August 30, 2023, that AARO would operate directly under her office. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand helped found the organization.

A public AARO website was launched on August 31, 2023, providing declassified information on UFO investigations. The launch, however, occurred without an email address or phone number for military and civilian UAP reports, as previously mandated by NDAA legislation.

On November 7, 2023, it was reported that Kirkpatrick would step down as director effective December 2023. Timothy A. Phillips, on assignment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, was named Deputy Director. Kirkpatrick left the directorship on December 1, 2023, with Phillips serving as acting director. On August 26, 2024, Jon T. Kosloski was named director, replacing Phillips.

Organization

Executive Council

AARO's Executive Council is designated AAROEXEC. The executive council assumed the functions previously held by AOIMEXEC and is co-chaired at the USD(I&S) level.

Remit

AARO is tasked with six focus areas:

1. Surveillance, collection, and recording
2. System capabilities and design
3. Intelligence operations and analysis
4. Mitigation and defeat
5. Governance
6. Science and technology

It continues the collection and reporting of UAP incidents across the DoD's special use airspace (SUA), together with the collection and reporting of anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged, and transmedia objects. AARO is also directed to identify and reduce gaps in operational, intelligence, and counterintelligence capability and to recommend regulatory or statutory policy changes. The establishing legislation empowers the office to review records as far back as 1945 to determine whether federal government or contractor UFO programs existed that may have shielded information from the White House or the US Congress. The office also aims to increase communication between the military and intelligence community over unidentified marine and aerial craft that could threaten U.S. forces and military bases or spy on sensitive facilities.

Resourcing

Resourcing for AARO is visible at the Program Budget Review process (PBR); USD(I&S) is to invite the participation of Principals from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Reports and investigations

AARO has opened hundreds of investigations since its founding in 2022; approximately half have been resolved with mundane explanations such as weather balloons, while the other half remain unexplained due to insufficient data. Many of the reports have come from military personnel reporting through official channels.

2022 annual report

AARO and ODNI released an 11-page unclassified report on January 12, 2023, prompted by a law requiring ODNI to submit an annual UAP report to Congress. The report covered 247 new UAP sightings going back to March 2021, plus 119 events before that date that had not been previously examined. It indicated 510 UAP reports as of August 30, 2022 — a significant increase over prior totals. The report found no evidence of aliens.

Of 366 new reports, approximately half were judged to have common explanations — uncrewed aircraft, balloons, and clutter — while 171 remained uncharacterized, some reportedly demonstrating unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities requiring further analysis. Input was sought from or supplied by NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Energy. Most sightings had been reported by U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force personnel through official channels.

NASA liaison (2023)

NASA's UAP independent study team held a public meeting in June 2023 at which further UAP footage released by AARO saw.

2024 Historical Record Report

Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Volume 1

On March 6, 2024, the DoD cleared for publication the AARO Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Volume 1, which according to The Washington Post "covered all official U.S. investigatory efforts from 1945 to the present and examined classified and unclassified government archives."

The report noted a "proliferation of television programmes, books, movies, and the vast amount of internet and social media content centred on UAP-related topics" but concluded that official investigations had not found any empirical evidence that reported sightings represented "off-world technology," any classified program not reported to Congress, hidden alien technology, or extraterrestrial artifacts.

The report detailed 20th-century UAP investigations, including Projects Saucer, Sign, Grudge, Twinkle, and Blue Book; more recent investigations included AAWSAP, AATIP, UAPTF, and AARO itself. The report revealed for the first time that elements within the US government had proposed creating a Special Access Program under the Department of Homeland Security, to be named "Kona Blue", to reverse engineer any extraterrestrial craft that came into its possession. Advocates of the proposal "were convinced that the U.S. government was hiding UAP technologies," but DHS leaders rejected the proposal as "without merit"; AARO's report similarly rejected the claims of Kona Blue's advocates.

Kosloski statements on "true anomalies"

In November 2024, director Kosloski told reporters that AARO continued to analyze a small number of cases it treated as "true anomalies," saying that "there are interesting cases that I, with my physics and engineering background and time in the [intelligence community], I do not understand. And I don't know anybody else who understands them either."

Reactions

Mainstream and skeptical commentary

Writing for Politico, Bryan Bender quoted Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and an advisor to To the Stars, as saying "It further legitimizes the issue", adding "That in itself is extremely important. People can talk about it without fear of embarrassment." Mellon also said, "We are talking dozens of incidents in restricted military airspace over years." In July 2020, Senator Marco Rubio said he worried an adversary country had achieved "some technological leap" allowing it "to conduct this sort of activity," while also allowing there might be a conventional explanation that was "boring." Astrophysicist Adam Frank, writing in a piece originally published in Newsweek, argued that "If it's handled well, the [UAP] commission could do more than shed much-needed light on UAPs. It could also give Americans a masterclass in the most basic, most important, and unfortunately, most boring topic in science: Standards of Evidence" — noting that with respect to UAPs "there are no such standards. It's just a free-for-all."

Journalist Keith Kloor criticized the involvement of reality TV personality Travis S. Taylor. Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough confirmed to Kloor for ScienceInsider, the online news section of the AAAS, that Taylor had a leading role on the UAPTF and was informally referred to as its chief scientist. Kloor characterized Taylor as "a researcher who believes in the supernatural," and wrote, "Critics are simply astonished by what they call his antiscientific embrace of the supernatural — and the Pentagon's willingness to work with him." Skeptic and science writer Robert Sheaffer responded: "I'm starting to see why [the government's] task force was so unsuccessful in identifying its UAPs!"

Politico reported on August 10, 2023, that "AARO is required by law to launch a public-facing website where witnesses can directly report potential UFO sightings" but that the "website is tied up in Pentagon red tape."

Whistleblower allegations of institutional limitation

Several UAP whistleblowers have alleged that AARO lacks the clearances and bureaucratic authority to penetrate compartmented special access programs in which alleged non-human intelligence–related material is said to be held. In July 2023 Congressional testimony and subsequent interviews, former US Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch characterized AARO's work as earnest within its remit — "they're doing good things. They're looking at UAP reports, trying to figure out what's balloons and air trash and what's weird stuff. And of course they are doing an historical review to try to understand the U.S.'s history on this too" — but argued that "the problem is with that agency" is that "it's within the DoD and IC, not above," such that it cannot compel declassification from other cabinet-level agencies including the Department of Energy. Grusch argued that a presidential-level panel with eminent-domain powers was needed because AARO "can't compel the executive" and is confined to the DoD and intelligence community.

Investigative journalist Ross Coulthart, in a July 2023 interview with Curt Jaimungal on Theories of Everything, argued that Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough's public statements that "AARO has found no credible evidence of E.T." are not Pentagon-wide denials but narrow statements "speaking for AARO, which is not a body in the Pentagon that has the clearances to even ask the questions that need to be asked." Coulthart also emphasized that Gough's statement that AARO has "no restriction... receiving any past or present UAP related information" turns on the word "receiving" — meaning AARO is structurally passive and depends on witnesses volunteering to come forward, rather than proactively investigating. He reported that witnesses he was in contact with inside alleged crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering programs "do not think that AARO is an objective player" and distrust its leadership.

Cover of the 2024 AARO Historical Record Report, the subject of direct criticism by whistleblower Matthew Brown

Former Department of Defense and State Department analyst Matthew Brown, the Immaculate Constellation whistleblower, claimed in a May 2025 WEAPONIZED interview with Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp that while working at USD he read transcripts of Kirkpatrick briefing Senators Rubio, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand on AARO's findings — transcripts "which were supposed to be open kimono" — and alleged that "Sean Kirkpatrick absolutely distorted, downplayed and I can't prove it, but I would say outright lied to the people who have direct responsibility for him." Brown reportedly "knew I was... something else. I had inside knowledge into the deception of our government by elements of our intelligence community," with his "blood [running] cold" at a passage in which, according to his account, Rubio pressed Kirkpatrick on a "legacy program" and, in light of Kirkpatrick's "vague... but unable to escape the truth" replies, responded "well what the hell is the executive branch doing, have they been running this for 60 years without congressional oversight" (Brown's paraphrase). Brown also questioned why AARO and Congress were simultaneously inviting whistleblower testimony under amnesty "about something that doesn't exist, isn't an issue."

See also

• NASA Director of UAP Research
• Immaculate Constellation
• List of UFO whistleblowers
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena

References

Further reading

• "Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" – Unclassified intelligence assessment by DoD on the progress of the UAPTF
• "2022 Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" – Unclassified annual report by ODNI and AARO on the formation and work of AARO
• "Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)"

External links

Template:Sister project links

• No URL found. Please specify a URL here or add one to Wikidata.
• Department of Defense press release regarding the UAPTF
• Department of Defense press release regarding the AOIMSG
• Department of Defense press release regarding the AARO
• Video (92:50): U.S. Congressional Hearing on UFO/UAP (May 17, 2022) on YouTube

This article incorporates material from the Wikipedia article "All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office", as of 2024-12-24, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.