The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, known as AARO, was established in 2022 to centralize the investigation and resolution of reports of unidentified aerial phenomena across the U.S. military and intelligence community. It replaced and expanded on the previous UAP Task Force. Congress has required AARO to submit annual reports, and two have been released publicly.
The reports are not what most people on either side of this debate expect.
What the reports contain
AARO’s first annual report, released in January 2023, covered 366 newly identified UAP reports through August 2022. Of those, 163 were characterized as balloons or balloon-like objects. Approximately 50 showed what AARO called unusual flight characteristics, meaning behavior that was difficult to explain using known aerodynamics, though the agency noted that sensor artifacts and collection anomalies were likely explanations for many of those.
The second report, released in 2024, covered a larger dataset and introduced a historical review component. AARO examined UAP reports dating back decades and found no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial material or technology in any case. It did identify multiple cases where programs that were originally misidentified as UAP were actually classified U.S. or allied programs.
What the reports do not say
The reports do not say there is nothing to investigate. They consistently note that a significant fraction of cases remain unresolved due to poor sensor data, incomplete reporting chains, or the difficulty of characterizing objects that behaved unusually and were only observed briefly.
The reports do not say the witnesses are lying or incompetent. Military pilots and sensor operators who file UAP reports are generally experienced observers, and AARO takes their reports seriously as data points even when the conclusions are mundane.
What the skeptical baseline actually is
The scientifically conservative position on UAP is not that nothing unusual is ever observed. It is that unusual observations, even by trained observers with sophisticated sensors, have many mundane explanations before extraordinary ones become likely. Atmospheric phenomena, classified programs, adversary technology, sensor artifacts, and perceptual errors all deserve to be exhausted before considering less well-supported explanations.
AARO is attempting to do exactly that work. The process is slow, the data is imperfect, and the results are often unsatisfying. That is how careful investigation actually looks.
The reports are worth reading directly rather than relying on summaries from sources who have already decided what they want the answer to be.