NDAA 2022: Creation of AARO
- Type: legal ruling (federal legislation)
- Author: US Congress
- Date: 2022-07 (AARO established); codified at 50 U.S.C. 3373
- Credibility: primary (federal law)
Summary
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 (50 U.S.C. 3373) directed the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence to establish an office to carry out the duties of the UAPTF. In July 2022, the Department of Defense created the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was instrumental in the office’s creation.
AARO Structure and Mission
- Director reports to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
- First director: physicist Sean Kirkpatrick.
- Current director (as of August 2024): Jon T. Kosloski.
- Mission: detect, analyze, and catalog UAPs that could pose a threat to US national security.
- Empowered to review records as far back as 1945.
- Required to examine whether federal government or contractor UFO programs existed that may have shielded information from the White House or Congress.
- Required to file quarterly classified reports with Congress (per 50 U.S.C. 3373a).
- Required to launch a public-facing website for witness reports (launched August 31, 2023, delayed by “Pentagon red tape” per Politico).
Key Outputs
- By August 2022, had received 510 UAP reports.
- By April 2023, 801 total UAP reports.
- Opened hundreds of investigations; roughly half resolved with mundane explanations (balloons, drones, weather phenomena), half remaining unexplained due to insufficient data.
- In November 2024, director Jon Kosloski stated: “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 them either.” He described analyzing several “true anomalies.”