AARO Historical Record Report

AARO Historical Record Report

Type	Document
Also known as	AARO historical report

The AARO Historical Record Report, formally the Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), is a review by the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) of U.S. government involvement with UAP since 1945. Congress required it. Volume I was cleared for publication on 6 March 2024 and released on Friday 8 March 2024. It found no evidence that any U.S. investigation had ever confirmed a UAP as extraterrestrial technology, and "no empirical evidence" that the government or private companies had reverse-engineered alien technology. Most claims of hidden programs, it said, came from "circular reporting" among a small group of believers. A promised second volume had still not appeared by February 2026.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

Background

AARO was set up in 2022, after the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force of 2020–2021.^[5] The report met a congressional requirement to review the history of UAP investigations.^[1] It also answered claims made in 2023 by David Grusch, a former military intelligence officer who had worked at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Grusch told Congress in a July 2023 hearing that the United States was withholding information on UAP and had recovered non-human craft and biological material. The Hill noted that he had not offered evidence for these claims.^[1][2]

For Volume I, AARO reviewed classified and unclassified government records going back to 1945 and interviewed 30 people. The volume covers the period up to October 2023. A second volume was to cover interviews and research from the following November to April.^[1] The Washington Post, as quoted in the Wikipedia account, said it covered all official U.S. investigations from 1945 to the present, including Projects Saucer, Sign, Grudge, Twinkle and Blue Book, and more recently AAWSAP, AATIP, the task force and AARO itself.^[5]

Main findings

The executive summary, as quoted on Metabunk by Mick West, makes these broad findings:^[3]

• No confirmed extraterrestrial sighting. No U.S. government investigation, academic research or official review panel had confirmed that any UAP was extraterrestrial technology. All investigations, at every level of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects or misidentifications. Foreign government investigations had reached the same conclusions.
• Poor data. Many cases remain unsolved, but AARO assessed that with more and better data most could be resolved. It found "a direct correlation between the amount and quality of available information on a case with the ability to conclusively resolve it." Funding and staffing for past programs had been "irregular and sporadic."
• No reverse engineering. AARO found "no empirical evidence" that the government or private companies had been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology. Claims about specific people, places, tests and documents were "inaccurate," and AARO said it had disproved most of the interviewees' claims. Some were still under evaluation for Volume II.
• Real programs misread. AARO said it located every program, official, company and document named by interviewees, and was given "full, unrestricted access." Many were authentic classified programs that interviewees had wrongly tied to aliens. None of the interviewees had firsthand access to them, and all the real programs had been properly reported to Congress.

Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder summed up: "To date, AARO has found no verifiable evidence for claims that the U.S. government and private companies have access to or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology."^[1] The report warned that people who had linked real national security programs to UAP had "incomplete or unauthorized access," and that discussing those programs outside secure facilities risked exposing national security information.^[1][3]

Specific claims examined

The report gave "high confidence" conclusions on a list of claims:^[3]

• Non-disclosure agreements. No authentic UAP-related non-disclosure agreement, or threat of death or violence for disclosure, was found.
• A CIA official. A named former CIA official was not involved in moving extraterrestrial technology and had signed a memo rejecting the claim.
• A 1961 intelligence estimate. An alleged 1961 Special National Intelligence Estimate leaked online, suggesting UFOs were extraterrestrial, was judged inauthentic.
• "Aliens" at a test. A person who said he overheard talk of aliens watching a technology test at a military base had misunderstood the conversation.
• Touching a craft. A claim that a named former officer had touched an extraterrestrial craft was denied on the record. The officer recalled touching an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter, which might have been misconstrued.
• Testing of off-world technology. A witness who believed he saw alien technology tested almost certainly saw an authentic, unrelated technology test that matched in time, place and description.
• A disclosure study. A study of the social effects of disclosing that UAP are extraterrestrial was carried out by a Virginia research institute between 2004 and 2007, but it was not requested by the White House as claimed.
• Named companies. Executives and chief technology officers of companies named by interviewees met AARO's director and denied on the record ever possessing or reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.
• A metal sample. A sample said to come from a crashed spacecraft, obtained from a private UAP organisation and the U.S. Army, was a manufactured terrestrial alloy, mainly magnesium, zinc and bismuth with traces of lead, with no exceptional properties.

AARO concluded that all the hidden programs described to it either did not exist, were misidentified real programs unrelated to UAP, or traced back to one "unwarranted and disestablished program." In 2021 an intelligence community controlled-access program had been expanded, without sufficient justification, to cover UAP reverse engineering. It never received any UAP or spacecraft and was shut down for lack of merit.^[3]

Kona Blue

The report revealed for the first time a proposed special access program called Kona Blue, put to the Department of Homeland Security by people convinced the government was hiding off-world technology. DHS never approved it, and its supporters never produced empirical evidence.^[1][3][5] AARO said modern claims of hidden craft came largely from "a consistent group of individuals" active in UAP work since at least 2009. Many of them had been involved in a cancelled Defense Intelligence Agency program and in the failed attempt to revive it at DHS as Kona Blue.^[3]

Historical context

AARO split its history at 2009, when AAWSAP and AATIP began, about 40 years after Project Blue Book closed in 1969. It said both eras shared a fast-changing security environment, fear of technological surprise, heavy secrecy, public interest and poor data. The modern era differed in lower public trust in government, a mass of popular culture about UAP, unauthorised disclosures of classified programs mistaken for UAP, and social media that spread circular reporting and misinformation.^[3]

The report assessed that some sightings since the 1940s were of "never-before-seen experimental and operational space, rocket and air systems, including stealth technologies and the proliferation of drone platforms." It said it was "understandable how observers unfamiliar with these programs could mistake sightings of these new technologies as something extraordinary, even other-worldly." Examples it cited included Project Mogul, the balloon program behind the Roswell debris; the Gambit spy satellites, whose film capsules were caught by aircraft as they parachuted down; and secret aircraft such as the U-2, SR-71 and B-2. It also noted the secrecy around the Manhattan Project and its "secret cities."^[2][3]

Reactions

Former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick, writing in Scientific American the day before the release, said critics who called AARO part of a cover-up had "not provided any verifiable evidence of this." He said some of the most outspoken would not share the data they claimed to have.^[2] Former deputy assistant secretary of defense Christopher Mellon told Space.com the report would not satisfy critics, partly because many witnesses did not trust AARO and would not speak to it. He objected to coverage that treated "no recovered alien technology" as if it meant there was no evidence of craft beyond present science, noting that "hundreds of credible military reports remain unexplained."^[2] Space.com noted that NASA's UAP study team had reached a similar conclusion in September 2023.^[2]

Volume II

Volume II was meant to cover interviews and research carried out from November to April after the first volume's cut-off, and to address remaining claims.^[1][3] In February 2026 Mellon told DefenseScoop that AARO had still not released it, nor the required 2025 annual report.^[4]

Notes on the earlier version of this article

• Period of mistaken sightings. The earlier version said AARO noted that early-20th-century witnesses were often unfamiliar with new technologies such as rockets. The Hill refers to inaccurate sightings in the 20th century generally, and the report itself points especially to the 1940s to 1960s.^[1][3]
• The F-117 case. The earlier version said a former officer believed a craft was extraterrestrial when it was an F-117. The report says an interviewee attributed the claim to a named officer, who denied it and recalled touching an F-117.^[3]

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.