Established in 2022, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is the U.S. government's primary body for detecting, identifying, and analyzing unidentified anomalous phenomena - here is how it works and what it has found.
For decades, reports of unidentified objects filed by U.S. military personnel had no single, permanent home. They bounced between agencies, were handled inconsistently, and were rarely discussed in public. That changed in the summer of 2022. In July 2022, the Department of Defense created the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office - AARO - to carry out what had previously been the duties of a short-lived predecessor body. It is now the leading federal organization for investigating what the government officially calls unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP.
AARO is an office within the United States Office of the Secretary of Defense that investigates unidentified flying objects and other phenomena in the air, sea, and/or space and/or on land. Its reach is deliberately broad. According to the founding directive, the mission of AARO is to “synchronize efforts across the Department and with other federal departments and agencies to detect, identify, and attribute objects of interest in, on, or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace, and other areas of interest.” That scope includes anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged, and transmedium objects.
AARO operates under the Office of the Secretary of Defense and is led by a director who reports directly to senior defense officials and the Deputy Defense Secretary. Its current director is Jon T. Kosloski, a longtime national security expert in quantum optics and other novel technology areas, who assumed the role in August 2024 after detailing from the National Security Agency.
AARO did not emerge from nowhere. Established in 2022, AARO was preceded by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), a 2020 to 2021 program within the Office of Naval Intelligence used to “standardize collection and reporting” of UFO sightings. Congress had grown increasingly interested in the subject, and the National Defense Authorization Acts for fiscal years 2022 and 2023 directed the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence to put a more robust office in place. The AARO was established through the annual defense policy bill approved by Congress in 2021 and is considered the leading federal agency for UAP efforts.
AARO organized itself around four functions: analysis, operations, science and technology, and strategic communications. The office is also required by law to report to Congress regularly. Consistent with congressional direction, AARO provides quarterly reports, semiannual briefings, and an annual report to Congress in coordination with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The volume of incoming cases has grown steadily. According to AARO Director Kosloski, AARO has received over 1,600 UAP reports to date.
In one reporting period alone - May 1, 2023 to June 1, 2024 - AARO received 757 UAP reports; 485 of these featured incidents that occurred during the reporting period, while the remaining 272 involved incidents from 2021 and 2022 that had not been previously reported to AARO.
The large majority of cases that yield enough usable data are resolved as ordinary objects. According to AARO, 118 cases were resolved during that reporting period, all of which resolved to prosaic objects such as various types of balloons, birds, and unmanned aerial systems. Cases confirmed as commonplace are then handed to other relevant agencies, while AARO focuses on “the truly anomalous where we don’t understand the activity,” in Kosloski’s words.
A significant portion of the caseload remains open not because the objects defy explanation, but because the sensor data is insufficient. AARO has said it has “successfully resolved hundreds of cases in its holdings to commonplace objects such as balloons, birds, drones, satellites and aircraft,” while over 900 reports “lack sufficient scientific data for analysis and are retained in our active archive.”
Beyond its day-to-day caseload, Congress also directed AARO to look backward. In completing a historical report, AARO reviewed all official U.S. government investigatory efforts since 1945, researched classified and unclassified archives, conducted approximately 30 interviews, and partnered with Intelligence Community and Department of Defense officials.
In March 2024, AARO released a report titled “Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Volume I,” which found “no empirical evidence” of alien technology. That finding was reinforced in more recent reporting periods. Several times during a November 2024 press briefing, Kosloski underscored that AARO has “discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology” - or confirmations that any UAP activities are attributable to foreign adversaries.
That said, officials have stopped well short of claiming every case is explained. Kosloski told reporters: “There are interesting cases that I - with my physics and engineering background and time in the intelligence community - I do not understand and I don’t know anybody else who understands.”
AARO has made public engagement part of its stated mission. The Pentagon has said its public-facing website will provide information including photos and videos on resolved UAP cases as they are declassified, and will also allow service members, federal employees, or contractors “with direct knowledge” of government programs or activities related to UAP to submit reports for review.
On the technical side, the office is also developing new collection capabilities. AARO’s prototype sensor system for detecting, tracking, and characterizing UAP - known as Gremlin - is conducting a 90-day pattern-of-life collection at a national security site.
AARO represents a significant institutional shift: the U.S. government now has a permanent, multi-domain office applying both scientific methods and intelligence tradecraft to a subject that was once largely dismissed. The mission of AARO can be summarized as synchronizing government efforts to detect, identify, attribute, and analyze unidentified objects of interest in a standardized way, and to mitigate any possible threats. Whether individual cases turn out to involve sensor glitches, adversary drones, atmospheric phenomena, or something not yet categorized, the office’s job is to find out - and to tell Congress and the public what it learns, within the limits of what can be declassified.
For now, according to AARO’s own public record, the answers in the great majority of cases have been prosaic. A handful remain genuinely unresolved. The office says it intends to keep looking.
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