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Whenever a new UFO video goes viral, one acronym pops up in the headlines: AARO. But what is this Pentagon office, who runs it, and has it found anything? This explainer sticks to what the official record and reputable reporting actually say, and keeps the verified findings clearly separate from the open questions and the speculation.
What Is AARO?
AARO stands for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. It was created in July 2022 within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, following a mandate from Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act. Its job is to detect, identify and resolve unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) - the government term that has largely replaced "UFO" - across the air, sea, land and space domains, especially where they might pose a risk to US national security or flight safety.
AARO did not appear out of nowhere. It follows a chain of earlier efforts: the Defense Intelligence Agency's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which ran from 2007 to 2012; the Navy-led UAP Task Force of 2020-2021, whose 2021 preliminary report could not explain all but one of 144 sightings; and the short-lived Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG). AARO took over those duties and widened the scope beyond just the sky.
Its first director, Sean Kirkpatrick, left at the end of 2023. Jon T. Kosloski was named director in August 2024.
What AARO Actually Does
Day to day, AARO works more like an analysis shop than an X-Files unit. Its main activities include:
- Collecting reports. Sightings come in from military pilots, ships, sensors and other government sources. In 2023 AARO also opened a secure web form for current and former government employees, service members and contractors who believe they have firsthand knowledge of past UAP events or programs.
- Analysing cases. According to its latest annual report, AARO applies all-source intelligence techniques and three-dimensional modelling to figure out what was seen. Cases with too little data go into an "active archive" that can be reopened if new information arrives.
- Reporting to Congress. Law requires annual unclassified reports, with classified annexes, summarising new cases and trends.
- Reviewing history. AARO was tasked with examining US government involvement with UAP going back to 1945, including persistent claims of secret crash-retrieval programs.
What the Reports Have Found So Far
In March 2024 AARO published Volume I of its historical record report. It concluded that it found no empirical evidence that any US government investigation, research or program had confirmed extraterrestrial technology, and no evidence of hidden programs reverse-engineering alien craft. The report did disclose a rejected 1990s-era proposal nicknamed "Kona Blue", designed to handle any recovered non-human technology - a plan that was never approved.
The most recent annual report, covering June 2024 to May 2025, was released in July 2026, months after its expected date. Highlights:
- AARO received 319 new reports in the period and held 1,870 cases in total.
- 114 of the new cases were resolved, mostly as ordinary objects such as balloons, birds, drones and satellites. Many space-domain reports were assessed as sunlight glinting off satellites.
- Officials said none of the resolved cases showed advanced foreign capabilities or breakthrough technologies, and the report found no evidence that the government or private companies had recovered UAP materials.
Verified Facts vs Open Questions
It is worth being precise about what is and is not settled. Verified: the large majority of resolved cases have mundane explanations, and AARO's published reviews have not found evidence of alien technology. Still open: a large share of cases remain unresolved simply because the data are too thin - a blurry video or a short eyewitness account is often not enough to identify anything. Some narrative reports describe flight behaviour beyond known technology, but without supporting technical data AARO treats these as a potential concern only if validated. As of October 2026, AARO also says it is still investigating a Navy report of roughly 100 airborne objects off the Virginia coast.
Speculation and claims: some former officials and whistleblowers say the government is hiding crash-retrieval programs. Those claims have featured in congressional hearings, but they have not been backed by publicly released evidence, and AARO's historical review did not substantiate them. Unresolved does not mean extraterrestrial - it means unexplained with the information available. For more on recent document releases, see our roundup of the Pentagon UFO files so far.
Conclusion
AARO is the Pentagon's clearing house for strange sightings: it collects reports, analyses them with intelligence tools, publishes annual summaries and reviews decades of history. So far its public findings point to balloons, drones, satellites and data gaps rather than visitors from elsewhere - but it also acknowledges a stubborn set of cases it cannot yet explain. If you follow the UAP story, AARO's reports are the best primary source to read before believing any viral headline.