The mission of the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is to minimize technological and intelligence surprises through detection, identification, and mitigation of unidentified anomalous phenomena near national security areas, in coordination with the intelligence community.

UAP are all objects in the sky, sea or space that defy scientific explanation.

Today, AARO Director Jon Kosloski discussed UAP’s 2024 Consolidated Annual Report, which covers the period from May 1, 2023 to June 1, 2024. That report was submitted to congressional staff earlier this week.

This report covers UAP from May 1, 2023 to June 1, 2024 and all UAP reports from previous periods that were not included in a previous report. AARO received 757 UAP reports during this period, of which 485 reported UAP incidents that occurred during the reporting period.

The remaining 272 reports include UAP incidents that occurred between 2021 and 2022, but were not reported to AARO until this reporting period and therefore were not included in previous annual UAP reports.

“AARO has successfully solved hundreds of cases in its holdings involving everyday objects such as balloons, birds, drones, satellites and aircraft,” Kosloski said.

“Only a very small percentage of reports to AARO are potentially abnormal, but these are the cases that require significant time, resources and focused scientific investigation by AARO and its partners,” Kosloski said.

“It is also important to underline that AARO has thus far found no verifiable evidence of aliens, activity or technology. None of the cases resolved by AARO have pointed to advanced capabilities or breakthrough technologies,” he pointed out.

More than 900 reports lack sufficient scientific data for analysis and are kept in an active archive. These cases may be reopened and resolved if additional information emerges to support the analysis, he said.

AARO continues to see a density of UAP reports near U.S. military assets and sensors. However, this density has been somewhat reduced by an increase in commercial pilot reporting in the continental United States, he said.

There has been an education campaign to reduce reporting stigma and to help pilots identify declared objects to reduce false-positive observations, he added.

“Unidentified objects in any domain pose a potential threat to safety and security. Reports of UAP, especially near national security locations, should be treated seriously and investigated with scientific rigor by the US government,” he said .

AARO is working to expand UAP reporting to more interagencies, such as the Federal Aviation Administration, Kosloski said.

AARO also hopes to work with allies and the American public on UAP involvement in the near term and expand the scope of its work to include non-national security locations in the US, he said.

Another aim of AARO is to accelerate the declassification process of UAP reports. As such, more declassification experts are being hired.

In the meantime, AARO continues to review the U.S. historical record regarding UAP and will release a second volume of its Congressionally directed Historical Record Report. “We welcome any former or current government civilians, contractors or military personnel with relevant information to contact us at www.aaro.mil,” he said.

AARO has taken meaningful steps to improve data collection and retention, strengthen sensor development, effectively review UAP reports and reduce the stigma of reporting a UAP event, he said.

“Over the coming year, AARO will prioritize building partnerships, promoting greater transparency and scaling the office’s operations,” Kosloski said.

“For every UAP report, operational or historical, AARO will follow the science and data wherever they lead, and we are committed to sharing as much information as possible at the unclassified level to inform the public about our activities and findings ” he said.

Some background on the UAP naming convention: In 1952, the Air Force coined the term unidentified flying objects, or UFO, which most people outside of government agencies still use.

In 2022, UAP stood for unidentified aerial phenomena. However, that term did not include underwater objects, so the new term with the same abbreviation now stands for unidentified anomalous phenomena.