The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is the federal executive department responsible for the US armed forces. Since the 1940s, DoD has relied on its constituent military Services and Components to detect, report, collect, analyse and identify Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), rather than maintaining any single, permanent office for the task.1 In 1966, several universities declined a UFO study commissioned by the department before the University of Colorado accepted the assignment.2
In the mid-2000s, members of the United States Congress initiated and funded the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) to study UAP, under the direction of the Defense Intelligence Agency.3 Harold E. Puthoff, a theoretical physicist who had earlier led Central Intelligence Agency and DoD research into remote viewing, was among those involved.4 In 2008, Luis Elizondo was asked to join the resulting Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) at the Pentagon.5 Unlike AAWSAP, AATIP was never an official DoD programme; once AAWSAP was cancelled, the AATIP name continued to be used by individuals associated with an informal, unofficial UAP community of interest inside the department.6 On 2009-06-24, Harry Reid wrote to the Deputy Secretary of Defense asking that AAWSAP/AATIP be designated a DoD Special Access Program (SAP), according to AARO’s Historical Record Report.7 The Deputy Secretary declined, on advice from the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence that the designation was not justified, the report states.8 AAWSAP/AATIP was terminated in 2012 on completion of its deliverables, amid Defense Intelligence Agency and DoD concerns about the project.9
Within DoD’s roughly $600 billion annual budgets, the $22 million spent on AATIP was almost impossible to find.10 For years, AATIP investigated reports of UFOs, according to DoD officials, interviews with programme participants, and records obtained by The New York Times.11 George Knapp testified to Congress that Elizondo kept the investigation going for several years until his frustration with a lack of interest from DoD leadership became too much to bear.12 In a memorandum dated 2017-10-04, Elizondo cited his concerns over inaction within DoD on anomalous aerospace threats as the reason for his resignation.13 He later said he had resigned in protest at excessive secrecy and internal opposition to the UAP issue inside government.14 Shortly before quitting, he had arranged for the Pentagon to release cockpit-camera footage from F/A-18 fighter jets.15 He joined To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science (TTSA) in October 2017, several days after resigning,16 alongside Puthoff and Christopher K. Mellon, another former DoD official who had served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.17 Mellon had held that kind of role within DoD across both the Clinton and Bush administrations.18 Tom DeLonge said the venture’s team also included a senior Central Intelligence Agency officer and an experimental physicist from DoD.19
After Elizondo began publicly describing his AATIP role, the Pentagon disputed it. According to The Black Vault, the Pentagon said Elizondo had no responsibilities with regard to AATIP while assigned to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI), up until his resignation, effective 2017-10-04.20 The department separately issued statements to The Black Vault specifically addressing a 2009 memo from Reid that some supporters had offered as proof of Elizondo’s leadership of AATIP.21 The existence of that memo did not alter the Pentagon’s original position on Elizondo’s claims about AATIP leadership.22
Congressional pressure built through 2020: the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence ordered the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense to deliver a report on UAP sightings within a month,23 and in December 2020 Senator Marco Rubio, then head of that committee, asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Pentagon to present Congress with an unclassified UAP report within a month.24 On 2020-04-27, DoD authorised the release of three unclassified United States Navy (USN) videos.25 A department review found that the release did not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems,26 did not impinge on subsequent investigations of military airspace incursions by UAP,27 and was intended to clear up public misconceptions about whether the circulating footage was real.28 DoD-derived footage had already reached the public two years earlier, when TTSA posted what it dubbed the Go-Fast Video in March 2018.29 An earlier body, the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG), had helped initiate synchronisation of DoD and wider government efforts to detect, identify and attribute objects of interest in “Special Use Airspace”, according to AARO’s Historical Record Report.30 The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 then established the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to conduct or coordinate DoD-wide and interagency efforts to detect, identify and investigate UAP.31 In May 2023, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s own independent UAP study team held its first public meeting, which included perspectives from NASA senior leaders as well as from DoD and intelligence agencies.32 A 2023 evaluation by the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General found that DoD had not used a coordinated approach to detect, report, collect, analyse and identify UAP,33 that DoD components had largely excluded geographic combatant commands from developing UAP policies and procedures,34 and that the department had issued no overarching UAP policy, leaving it without assurance that national security and flight-safety threats from UAP had been identified and mitigated.35 The Inspector General recommended that the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, working with the AARO Director, issue a department-wide policy.36 AARO’s Historical Record Report says it was produced in response to a requirement in Section 6802(j) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 (FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)).37 It described a secure process created with senior DoD, Intelligence Community (IC) and other security officials to research and investigate alleged hidden reverse-engineering programmes,38 and stated that, under Section 1673 of the same act, AARO sent guidance and requests to DoD, IC elements, the Department of Energy and the Department of Homeland Security to review and disclose any UAP-related non-disclosure agreements.39
In 2023, former intelligence officer David Charles Grusch testified to Congress and to the DoD Inspector General, alleging a UAP retrieval-and-reverse-engineering programme concealed from oversight. Grusch testified that his statements reflected his own personal views, not DoD’s, and that the department’s Prepublication and Security Review vets submissions only from a security standpoint.40 He was identified in the hearing record as a former National Reconnaissance Office representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) at DoD.41 Marik von Rennenkampff reported that, in a statement to NewsNation, DoD denied that AARO had uncovered the sort of activity Grusch alleged.42 DoD itself stated that AARO had not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that programmes involving the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials had existed in the past or existed currently.43 In October 2024, reporting on an alleged leaked programme described as “Immaculate Constellation” stated that DoD confirmed unidentified drones had flown over Langley Air Force Base.44 DoD has not stated publicly what officials believe the drones observed there in December 2023 actually were.45 Michael Shellenberger reported that the whistleblower account behind “Immaculate Constellation” claims DoD is illegally withholding information about a secret UAP programme from Congress.46