AARO

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is the U.S. Department of War's permanent office for detecting, tracking, and resolving unidentified anomalous phenomena across air, sea, space, and transmedium domains. Created by statute in 2022, it is the institutional center of official UAP work and the counterpart to the PURSUE records releases.

The Gillibrand-Rubio amendment to the FY2022 National Defense Authorization Act mandated an all-domain office with science and intelligence plans, replacing the short-lived AOIMSG. AARO stood up in July 2022 under physicist Sean Kirkpatrick; Jon Kosloski succeeded him in August 2024.

AARO ingests reports from military and government channels (over 1,800 cases in its holdings by the mid-2020s), resolves what data allows (most to balloons, drones, birds, and clutter), maintains a secure whistleblower intake mandated by Congress, deploys purpose-built sensor kits (Gremlin), publishes annual reports and case resolutions, and runs the public UAP records portal that underpins the 2026 PURSUE releases. Its March 2024 Historical Record Report, Volume 1, reviewed decades of alleged hidden programs and concluded it found no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial technology or concealed reverse engineering efforts, attributing such beliefs partly to circular storytelling among a small community.

Kirkpatrick (2022-2023) and Kosloski (2024-present). Deputy directors and staff remain largely unnamed publicly.

Active, funded, and reporting to Congress, with its resolved-case pipeline running alongside the Department of War's unresolved-records releases at war.gov/UFO.

Disclosure advocates charge that AARO's historical review ignored key witnesses, that its negative findings outpace its investigations, and that an office inside the Pentagon cannot audit the Pentagon. AARO's directors respond that every actionable lead was pursued and none verified. Skeptics generally credit AARO's case-resolution work while noting even it keeps a small set of unresolved anomalies. The office sits, by design and by fate, at the exact center of the argument.