AARO Explained: What the Office Is, Its Reports by Date, and What Its Review Examined

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What is AARO, and when was it created?

The Department of Defense announced the establishment of AARO on July 20, 2022. It succeeded earlier government efforts, going back to the Air Force's Project Blue Book and, most recently, the UAP Task Force and a short lived successor office, and it was given a wider remit: anomalies in the air, at sea, on land and in space, which is what "all-domain" in its name refers to.

Congress built the structure around it by statute. Successive National Defense Authorization Acts required a standing office, a reporting system for military personnel, and regular reports to Congress, including unclassified public versions. That statutory basis is the main difference between AARO and the ad hoc efforts that came before it. Earlier programs could be, and were, stood up and closed quietly. An office written into defense law has to report whether it wants to or not, which is why its publication dates, below, form a usable public record.

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, a physicist with a long career in defense science and intelligence, was its first director. He led the office from its creation until his departure at the end of 2023. Tim Phillips then served as acting director, and he's the official who briefed reporters on the historical record report in March 2024. The Department of Defense announced Dr. Jon Kosloski as director on August 26, 2024. Those names and dates are the documented leadership record. Commentary about either director, favorable or hostile, is plentiful elsewhere and is not evidence, so it is not carried here.

What reports has AARO published, by date?

The annual reports follow a repeating structure that makes them comparable year to year: how many reports the office received, where they came from, how many were resolved and into what categories, and what sensor or reporting problems the office identified. One documented example, drawn from the fiscal 2025 report and covered in full in our Starlink satellite train briefing: AARO reported that a new three dimensional modeling capability had enabled its analysts to resolve 238 reported UAP as satellite flaring. That is the kind of concrete, checkable line these reports contain at their best, and it is why this site reads them as documents rather than as press events. For how AARO's counts compare with civilian databases, see our briefing on how many UFO sightings are reported and explained.

What did AARO's historical record review examine?

The Historical Record Report, Volume 1, published in March 2024, was a congressionally directed review of the historical record: what the U.S. government itself had done, known and investigated about UAP from 1945 onward. AARO stated that it reviewed official records, interviewed named and unnamed witnesses and former officials, and examined the recurring claims that the government had recovered craft or materials or run secret programs outside congressional oversight.

AARO's stated conclusion, in its own report, was that it found no empirical evidence that any U.S. government investigation, academic program or official review had confirmed extraterrestrial technology, and no evidence that any recovered material examined was extraterrestrial in origin. It attributed many persistent claims, in its assessment, to misidentified classified programs, circular reporting among a small group of sources, and genuine reporting errors. Readers should attribute that conclusion to AARO's report, as this briefing does. It is the office's finding, stated in its document. Witnesses and researchers have disputed parts of it publicly, and those disputes are also on the record, in hearing transcripts and published responses. A finding and a dispute about a finding are both documents. Neither one becomes stronger by being summarized loosely.

What did the historical review not examine?

The limits are in the document's own terms, and they matter as much as the conclusions.

The review covered the U.S. government record. It was not a review of civilian cases worldwide, of foreign government files, or of the open sky. Cases with no U.S. government involvement sit outside its scope by design, including, for example, the 1990 Calvine photograph file held in British records, which we cover separately in the Calvine photograph briefing.

The review was also a record review, not a sensor program. It examined what the government had documented and what people told its reviewers. It did not, and could not, re-fly historical encounters. For cases where the underlying data is military sensor footage, AARO's separate case resolution work is the relevant product, one case at a time, and the UAP Case File Digest records each new resolution report as it is published.

Finally, a Volume 1 implies a sequence. As of November 11, 2026, AARO's products page still lists the fiscal 2025 annual report as its newest item, no Volume 2 of the historical review is listed, and the case resolution page still shows eight reports. When further volumes or reports appear, they will be added to the table above by publication date, from the AARO products page itself.

How does AARO fit with the rest of the UAP Press record?

Think of three separate streams, because they are separate. AARO reports are one stream: annual reports, case resolutions and the historical review, all from aaro.mil. The PURSUE file releases are a second stream: tranches of declassified records posted at war.gov/ufo in 2026, logged in our Pentagon UFO files briefing, with older declassified records gathered in our guide to declassified UFO documents. Congressional hearings are a third stream, listed by date in our UAP hearings timeline. Claims travel between the streams constantly in public discussion. The documents do not. Keeping the streams separate is most of what accurate coverage of this subject consists of, and the Digest exists to track all three, dated, in one place, with paired explainers on the UAP Press YouTube channel when a document needs walking through on screen.

Last checked: November 11, 2026, against AARO's Congressional/Press Products and case resolution pages.

Sources

• All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office: Official site
• All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office: Congressional/Press Products
• All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office: UAP Case Resolution Reports
• AARO: Fiscal Year 2024 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP
• All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office: Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Volume 1 (2024)
• All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office: FY2025 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP
• All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office: Official UAP Imagery
• U.S. Department of Defense: DOD report discounts sightings of extraterrestrial technology (March 2024)
• U.S. Department of War: UFO files release page