ufo wiki

All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)

9 min read

All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is the U.S. Department of Defense body responsible for investigating unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). Established in 2022, AARO achieved full operational capacity in 2024.

Mission and Operations

  • Investigates UAP reports from military and other government sources
  • Manages a caseload exceeding 2,400 cases as of early March 2026, with roughly 171 remaining officially unexplained (src-ufo-sightings-surge-2025)
  • Approximately 50% of cases lack sufficient data for analysis and remain in the Active Archive (src-uap-trump-disclosure-2026)
  • Maintains that no evidence of extraterrestrial involvement has been found in any investigated case
  • In May 2025, developed a new case-management architecture integrating inputs from the faa, civil aviation operators, and military sensors, reframing reports as safety-of-flight concerns (src-uap-landscape-2025)

Key Challenges

ChallengeDetail
StaffingDeputy director position remains vacant as of February 2026
Reporting2025 annual report not published despite statutory requirement
Data qualityHalf of all cases lack sufficient data for meaningful investigation
OverclassificationFY2026 NDAA requires AARO to account for classification practices (ndaa-uap-provisions)

Research Initiatives

In August 2025, AARO held an invite-only workshop with ~40 participants from government, academic, and independent research backgrounds to standardize UAP narrative data collection (src-uap-aaro-research-workshop-2025). The workshop produced a whitepaper with five cross-cutting conclusions on standards development, data integration, credibility assessment, AI/ML implementation, and community engagement.

Congressional Oversight

  • The FY2026 NDAA mandates AARO brief Congress on all UAP intercepts by norad and usnorthcom since 2004
  • Must account for all UAP-related security classification guides
  • Subject to streamlined reporting requirements

Relationship to Disclosure

AARO is central to the uap-disclosure effort but has drawn criticism from transparency advocates and lawmakers for:

  • Operational silence about ongoing projects
  • Failure to meet statutory reporting obligations
  • Maintaining a position of no ET evidence despite congressional skepticism

Leadership

Operational Milestones

Proposed Termination (H.R. 8197)

In April 2026, tim-burchett introduced H.R. 8197 to terminate AARO within 60 days and legally prohibit creating any replacement centralized office. The bill reflects deep congressional frustration with AARO’s transparency record, including failure to publish a 2025 annual report and nearly a year without media briefings. chris-mellon described AARO’s historical report as “the most error-ridden government document he had encountered in decades.” (src-aaro-shutdown-bill-2026)

FY27 Posture — Hegseth Endorsement (April 29, 2026)

In Secretary of War pete-hegseth’s April 29, 2026 FY27 posture testimony to the house-armed-services-committee, AARO is formally named “the focal point for the government’s efforts to detect, track, identify, and mitigate UAP,” with a public commitment to “regularly release UAP documents of public interest” and brief Congress “at all levels of classification.” It is the first written-testimony-level affirmation of AARO’s UAP role by the Secretary of War since the February 2026 uap-disclosure directive (src-hegseth-fy27-posture-testimony-2026-04). The testimony also distinguishes UAP-related “anomalous” work from the parallel anomalous-health-incidents (Havana Syndrome) line — both organizational lines now run through OUSW(R&E).

UAP Governance Board (June 2026)

In June 2026, ODNI, the FBI, and the department-of-war co-established the UAP Governance Board — a new interagency oversight body first meeting June 15–16, 2026. The board’s charter explicitly names AARO as the primary beneficiary of the governance structure and the uap-science-advisory-council as an external advisory group reporting to it. This positions AARO as the operational recipient of all science council findings and Governance Board decisions. (src-uap-governance-board-2026-06, src-defensescoop-uap-science-council-2026-06)

March-April 2026 Disclosure Execution

Per src-war-department-uap-release-2026-04, a Department of War official confirmed AARO is “working in close coordination with the White House and across federal agencies” to release never-before-seen UAP material and is transferring UAP records to the National Archives. Per src-trump-uap-files-delay-2026-03, interagency meetings have begun under the Feb 2026 directive. Rep. anna-paulina-luna’s 31 March 2026 letter to SecWar Hegseth requested 46+ UAP videos by April 14; the deadline passed without substantive response (src-pentagon-uap-deadline-missed-2026-04). On April 17 Trump publicly committed to releases beginning “very, very soon” at the turning-point-usa Action Conference, with deputy press secretary anna-kelly re-confirming the department-of-war tasking on the record (src-trump-tpusa-ufo-tease-2026-04). avi-loeb cautions that the most scientifically interesting recent classified-sensor data is likely to be withheld (src-loeb-wh-uap-videos-skeptic-2026-04). On May 3, 2026, a Pentagon statement reported by Fortune/AP confirmed AARO is “working with the White House to release never-before-seen UAP information”; a second AARO public report covering more recent sightings is expected soon (src-trump-pentagon-uap-files-2026-05).

FY2025 Annual Report (Released July 21, 2026)

AARO’s FY2025 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP (14 pages, covering June 2, 2024 – May 30, 2025) logged 319 new UAP reports (284 from the period, 25 backlogged from 2010–2024), resolving 114 to prosaic causes and holding 1,870 total cases as of May 30, 2025. Domain breakdown: 274 air, 44 space, and exactly 1 maritime — a U.S. Navy account of roughly 100 airborne UAP and two likely-uncrewed surface systems off the coast of Virginia, under active AARO investigation (see virginia-coast-uap-swarm-2025). Two cases described UAP-attributed electronic/avionic interference near an operational aircraft. A new 3D-modeling/simulation capability resolved 238 reports as satellite flaring, and AARO is developing a formalized process for handling any UAP-derived materials that come into government possession. As in prior reports, no case indicates advanced foreign-adversary capability or breakthrough technology. (src-aaro-fy2025-annual-report-2026-07)

Additional figures from The Debrief’s companion coverage (src-debrief-aaro-fy2025-report-2026-07): total resolved cases reached 370 (114 new + 256 prior carryover), all attributed to conventional causes. AARO logged 50 UAS incidents near nuclear infrastructure — a 178% jump from 18 in FY2024 — all resolved as hobbyist/commercial drones (see nuclear-uap-correlation). AARO also received 262 whistleblower submissions on alleged government UAP programs; 255 were ruled out of scope and 7 flagged for follow-up interviews. Morphology breakdown: ~40% spherical, ~33% lights, ~25% unclear/insufficient data. The report was published roughly eight months past its statutory 180-day deadline.

NDA-Waiver Intake Channel (July 2026)

Per donald-trump’s July 21, 2026 directive, AARO (alongside pursue) is now a designated intake channel where former government employees or contractors with relevant UAP information can meet cleared officials and have prior NDAs abrogated. Officials stressed this is not a declassification order — resulting information still passes through existing declassification review (src-trump-uap-nda-waiver-directive-2026-07).

Sources

PURSUE Relationship (May 2026)

The May 8, 2026 pursue launch creates an explicit resolved/unresolved division of labor in the federal UAP architecture: pursue (DoW-led) handles unresolved cases and rolling document releases; AARO retains statutory resolved-case reporting. The PURSUE portal’s only “Learn More” link routes to aaro.mil, formalizing AARO as the public landing for case-resolution work. AARO’s 2024 historical report finding (no evidence of recovered ET tech or biologics) is repeatedly cited by mainstream coverage as the institutional baseline against which PURSUE’s substantive ceiling will be judged (src-uap-files-rollout-interagency-2026-05, src-uap-files-public-conclusions-2026-05).

In Release 02 (src-newsweek-pursue-release-02-2026-05), AARO is identified as the entity that assembled the released Pentagon footage of the 2023 Lake Huron shootdown in response to lawmaker requests, and flagged a 2022 submarine-vicinity transmedium-sphere clip for further analysis. Per avi-loeb’s May 11, 2026 The Hill’s Rising interview (src-loeb-two-ufo-interpretations-2026-05), the galileo-project is in active communication with AARO — first explicit confirmation in the vault of civilian-research-team coordination with the office.

The DoW primary-source Release 02 press release (src-dow-pursue-release-02-2026-05) names AARO as the entity that identified the responsive materials for the March 6, 2026 eight-House-Rep letter requesting 51 UAP-related records — a separate and earlier congressional pressure track from Luna’s March 31 46-video letter. AARO authored the sensor-faithful “areas of contrast” descriptions for individual video records, codifying the mick-west/Metabunk-terminology register in government-spoken language.

Per a “War Department official” cited in src-defensescoop-pursue-not-disclosure-2026-05: “AARO is responsible for coordinating the declassification of identified DOW files. AARO also prepares DOW files and files provided by other agencies for posting on war.gov/ufo. AARO will continue to conduct its statutory mission of detecting, identifying, analyzing, and resolving UAP. Any encounters described in these releases that are resolved in the future will be posted on aaro.mil.” This is the first explicit on-record framing of AARO as the interagency declassification coordinator for the PURSUE pipeline.

International coordination

Per src-canada-sky-canada-project-2025-02, AARO is cited by Canadian UAP transparency advocates (MP larry-maguire, chris-rutkowski) as the model their proposed federal lead would coordinate with. Canada’s lack of a designated UAP contact is identified as the chief barrier to bilateral cooperation; geipan (France) and Japan face the parallel structural gap.

Graph View

Backlinks