AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office)
| AARO | |
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[ IMAGE PLACEHOLDER ]
REAL IMAGE AVAILABLE: official AARO seal — public domain, U.S. federal government insignia. Source from Wikimedia Commons (“All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office Logo”) and replace this box. | |
| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| Parent department | Department of War (formerly Department of Defense) |
| Established | 2022 |
| Status | Active |
| Leadership | |
| Notable directors | Sean Kirkpatrick (2022–23); Jon Kosloski (2024–present) |
| Notable output | Historical Record Report, Vol. I (2024) |
| Status | Active |
The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is the current official U.S. Department of War (formerly Department of Defense) office responsible for consolidating and investigating reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena across the military and intelligence community.[1]
History
AARO was established by Congress in the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, superseding the Pentagon’s earlier, more narrowly scoped UAP Task Force. Its first director, physicist Sean Kirkpatrick, led the office from its creation in July 2022 until his departure in December 2023; he was succeeded by NSA physicist Jon Kosloski in 2024.[2]
Mandate and findings
AARO is tasked with detecting, identifying, and attributing UAP reports across air, sea, space, and undersea domains, and reporting findings to Congress and the Director of National Intelligence. Its most significant public product to date, the 2024 Historical Record Report, Volume I, reviewed decades of alleged government UAP activity, including crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering claims, and concluded it found no verifiable evidence supporting such programs, a conclusion disputed by several high-profile whistleblowers including David Grusch.[3]
Reception and criticism
AARO’s work has drawn criticism from two directions: whistleblowers and their supporters in Congress have argued the office is itself part of an ongoing pattern of denial and lacks genuine access to the most highly classified compartments it would need to investigate, while some skeptics have credited AARO with bringing a more methodologically rigorous, declassification-oriented approach than prior Air Force programs such as Project Blue Book.[4]
See also
References
- ^ National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, Pub. L. 117–81.
- ^ AARO, “About/Leaders” pages, aaro.mil.
- ^ All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (2024). Historical Record Report, Vol. I.
- ^ DefenseScoop and congressional hearing coverage, 2023–2025.