All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office

The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is a United States Department of Defense office established on 2022-07-15 by the Deputy Secretary of Defense in coordination with the Director of National Intelligence, in response to the FY2022 NDAA UAP Requirements.¹ Its statutory mandate is to coordinate efforts across the Department of Defense and other federal agencies to detect, identify, and investigate Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) across all domains, including air, space, and subsurface environments.² AARO succeeded a line of predecessor offices: the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) was reorganised and expanded into AARO to include investigations of objects operating underwater,³ while the AOIMSG — which had not achieved initial operating capability — was renamed AARO and given an expanded mission set under the same legislation.⁴ AARO was described upon its announcement in 2022-07 as a permanent UAP office required to report to Congress.⁵ Its budget remains classified, a fact that has drawn criticism regarding the adequacy of congressional oversight.⁶

Sean Kirkpatrick served as AARO’s inaugural director, taking up the role in 2022-07.⁷ Prior to assuming the directorship, Kirkpatrick held a classified discussion in 2022-04 with intelligence officer David Grusch, who at the time served as his agency’s co-lead in UAP and transmedium object analysis, reporting to the UAP Task Force and later to AARO itself.⁸ Kirkpatrick subsequently testified before Congress that AARO had found no credible evidence of extraterrestrial activity or off-world technology.⁹ Grusch contested this characterisation, testifying in 2023-07-26 that the statement was not accurate and that approximately 30 individuals had come forward to the office.¹⁰ Senator Marco Rubio separately expressed concern that the Department of Defense had not been sharing information on hundreds of UAP cases with the investigators and scientists at AARO.¹¹ Former intelligence official Christopher Mellon additionally stated that a number of potential sources did not trust the office’s leadership.¹² Initial AARO analysis identified 171 uncharacterised UAP reports that appeared to demonstrate unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities.¹³

In 2024-02, AARO published the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) HR2 Volume I (2024), a Historical Record Report (HR2) mandated under Section 6802(j) of the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act.^14,15 Volume I examined the full record of United States Government (USG) involvement with UAP from 1945 to 2023-10-31, reviewing approximately two dozen separate investigative efforts.¹⁶ As part of this work, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) HR2 Program of Analysis established six complementary lines of effort conducted in parallel,¹⁷ drawing on classified and unclassified archives from partner agencies including the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Agency.^18,19 AARO also conducted approximately 30 interviews with individuals claiming insight into alleged USG involvement with off-world technology or UAP disruptions to US nuclear facilities.¹⁷

The HR2 Volume I set out AARO’s central investigative conclusions across a range of specific allegations. AARO found no empirical evidence that the USG or private companies had engaged in reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial technology,²⁰ and no evidence of any authentic UAP-related non-disclosure agreements threatening death or violence for disclosure of UAP-specific information.²¹ Regarding the UAP Nondisclosure Agreements Matter, AARO sent formal requests to the Department of Defense, intelligence community elements, and the Department of Homeland Security to surface any such agreements, and none were discovered.²² With respect to the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) Interviewee UAP Metal Sample — material an interviewee alleged derived from a crashed off-world spacecraft — AARO and a leading science laboratory concluded the sample was a terrestrial metallic alloy, possibly of US Air Force origin.²³ AARO also assessed an alleged 1961 Special National Intelligence Estimate on UFOs, purporting to confirm extraterrestrial UAP, to be inauthentic following consultation with the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence and the National Security Agency Scientific Advisory Board.²⁴

AARO’s findings addressed several matters pertaining to alleged covert programmes. With respect to the IC Controlled Access Program UAP Expansion, AARO confirmed that one intelligence community Controlled Access Program (CAP) had been unnecessarily expanded in 2021 to include a UAP reverse-engineering mission without sufficient justification; it was subsequently disestablished due to inactivity and lack of merit, and the appropriate congressional committees were notified.²⁵ Regarding KONA BLUE, AARO found this was a proposed Prospective Special Access Program put to the Department of Homeland Security by individuals who believed the USG was concealing off-world technology, rather than an operational cover-up programme.²⁶ More broadly, AARO determined that modern allegations concerning Non-Human Craft Recovery Programs and UAP Reverse Engineering Legacy Programs largely originated from a consistent group of individuals connected to the cancelled Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) and its successor, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), and their associated private sector paranormal research efforts.²⁷

AARO’s overarching assessment, published in the HR2 Volume I, was that no UAP investigatory effort since 1945 — whether foreign, domestic, governmental, private, or academic — had uncovered verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings or craft.²⁸ The office attributed much of the persistent narrative around USG concealment of off-world technology to circular reporting among a connected group of proponents, confirmation bias, the classification of legitimate sensitive programmes that were misidentified as UAP-related, and the broader influence of popular culture.²⁷ AARO also assessed that secrecy surrounding prior USG investigations had inadvertently fuelled public speculation that the government was concealing knowledge of extraterrestrial activity, when in fact such secrecy was intended to protect sensitive military and intelligence capabilities.²⁸ AARO concluded that, while a small percentage of cases retained potentially anomalous characteristics, the evidence indicated that most UAP sightings were attributable to misidentification of ordinary objects, atmospheric phenomena, and advancing technologies, and that improved data quality would likely resolve the majority of outstanding cases.^29,30