File 039 · 2024 · UAP

AARO's historical report on UFO claims

The Pentagon's UAP office reviewed decades of government records and interviews and reported in 2024 that it found no evidence of alien technology being held or reverse-engineered by the US.

Background

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, known as AARO, was created in 2022 to examine reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena. Congress asked it to review the US government's historical involvement with UAP. The first volume of its Historical Record Report was released in March 2024, with a cover date of February 2024. It described a review of government records back to 1945 and interviews with people who claimed to have knowledge of secret programs.

The report was a direct response to claims, made in public and in Congress, that the US government had recovered craft and non-human remains and was running a hidden program to reverse-engineer them. A second volume was announced to cover information acquired after late 2023.

What the record shows

• AARO reported that it found no empirical evidence that the US government or private companies have reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology.
• It said that programs named by interviewees either did not exist or were real, sensitive programs that the interviewees misidentified; one program was expanded in 2021 to cover UAP, but never recovered or reverse-engineered any spacecraft.
• It attributed much of the persistent story to circular reporting among a small group of people who already believed it.
• It said the aggregate findings of all government investigations to date had not found a case of UAP representing off-world technology, and that most historical sightings result from misidentification of ordinary objects.
• AARO said it had no impediments to getting information at any level of classification.

Timeline

• 1947–69 Air Force UFO investigations, ending with Project Blue Book.
• 2022 AARO is established in the Department of Defense.
• 2023 Congressional hearing on UAP; AARO receives requests to investigate the claims.
• Jul 2023 AARO says that it has not been able to verify claims of recovered craft made in the hearing.
• Mar 2024 AARO releases Volume 1 of its Historical Record Report.

Checking the claims

The claim: the government is hiding a program with alien technology. What AARO says: it looked for it, with access to classified records, and did not find it. This is a negative finding, which can never prove that something does not exist, but it is a documented result from an office with the power to look.

The report is disputed by people who say that the most secret programs may be hidden from AARO itself, that the office's mandate and staff are limited and that its conclusions are cautious. AARO's answer is that interviewees named specific programs and that those programs were checked. The disagreement shows what kind of evidence would settle the question: a document, a physical object or a witness who can be checked.

Claimed, but not shown

The report does not prove that nothing unexplained exists. It says no evidence was found of alien technology or of a hidden program to reverse-engineer it.

Verdict

Sources

• All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), Volume 1 (2024)
• Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (June 2021)
• US Air Force, Project Blue Book records, National Archives

Connected files (red threads)

• AATIP and the Navy UFO videos — AARO later reviewed historical claims
• The 2023 UAP hearing in Congress — AARO examined the claims made in the hearing
• Project Blue Book — AARO's review starts from the Air Force era
• Roswell — The crash-retrieval story begins at Roswell
• Majestic 12: the forged documents — Forged documents are part of the history AARO reviewed

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