UAP Task Force AARO Latest Findings: 2024-2026 Update

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The UAP task force AARO latest findings show the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has examined over 2,000 UAP reports since its creation in 2022. Most have been identified as balloons, drones, satellites, and conventional aircraft. Others remain unexplained. As of March 2026, the office has not published its 2025 annual report or the second volume of its historical review, a delay that has drawn criticism from Congress, watchdog groups, and transparency advocates. In February 2026, President Trump directed the Pentagon to begin releasing government files related to aliens and UAP. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the department is working on implementation. In March, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna recommended AARO be disbanded, and Congress added three new UAP mandates to the 2026 defense budget. The agency responsible for documenting America’s UAP reports now faces more political pressure than at any point in its three-year history.

AARO Director Jon Kosloski speaks publicly after the release of the office’s annual UAP report in November 2024, confirming the office is investigating several cases he cannot explain and that UAP reports continue to come in.

TL;DR: The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has examined over 2,000 UAP reports since July 2022. Its most recent published annual report (November 2024) covered 757 new reports from May 2023 through June 2024, with hundreds resolved as commonplace objects and over 900 lacking sufficient data for analysis. Director Jon Kosloski stated his team is investigating several “true anomalies” that remain unexplained. As of March 31, 2026, AARO has not published its 2025 annual report. In February 2026, President Trump ordered the Pentagon to begin releasing government files on aliens and UFOs, and Defense Secretary Hegseth confirmed the department is working on implementation. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna recommended AARO be disbanded via DOGE in March 2026. No evidence of extraterrestrial technology has been found. Sources linked below.

Timeline

June 25, 2021: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence releases the UAP Task Force preliminary assessment, the first official government disclosure of UAP data. The report covers 144 cases from U.S. military personnel between 2004 and 2021. Only one is identified with high confidence. The remaining 143 are unexplained.

July 20, 2022: Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks formally establishes the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office under the FY 2022 National Defense Authorization Act. Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, a physicist and former Pentagon intelligence official, is appointed as the first director.

March 2024: AARO’s Gremlin sensor system completes its first successful test event, demonstrating the ability to detect, track, and characterize UAP in real time.

August 2024: Dr. Jon Kosloski, a former NSA researcher with over two decades of experience in optics, computing, and crypto-mathematics, assumes the role of AARO director after Kirkpatrick’s departure.

November 14, 2024: AARO and ODNI release the FY 2024 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP, covering May 2023 through June 2024. The report documents 757 new UAP reports, bringing the total caseload to 1,652. Hundreds are resolved as commonplace objects. Over 900 lack sufficient data. Kosloski tells reporters his office is investigating several “true anomaly” cases he cannot explain. The Gremlin system is confirmed deployed at an unnamed national security site.

November 19, 2024: Kosloski testifies before the Senate, providing roughly 40 minutes of testimony on AARO’s findings and operational status.

August 2025: AARO hosts a two-day, invite-only workshop with approximately 40 government, academic, and independent researchers, hosted by Associated Universities, Inc. The event focuses on standardizing UAP data collection and applying AI to pattern recognition. A 17-page whitepaper is published.

September 9, 2025: The House Oversight Committee holds a hearing on UAP transparency. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, chairing the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, questions the classification of UAP-related materials and states the UAP Caucus was denied access to classified UAP footage.

December 10, 2025: The FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act is signed, including three UAP provisions mandating NORAD intercept briefings, classification guide accountability, and expanded congressional reporting.

February 20, 2026: President Trump posts on social media that he will direct Defense Secretary Hegseth and other agency leaders to “begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, UAP and UFOs, and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters.”

February 23, 2026: Hegseth publicly discusses the Pentagon’s UAP disclosure efforts for the first time in an interview with former network correspondent Kristin Fisher during his “Arsenal of Freedom” tour in Colorado. He says DOD will work with ODNI on a “deliberative process” but does not offer a timeline.

February 25, 2026: Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough confirms to DefenseScoop that “AARO has been examining over 2,000 UAP cases” and that approximately 1,000 reports lack sufficient data and are retained in the Active Archive. This is the first public caseload update since November 2024. Gough declines to explain why the office has not briefed reporters in over a year.

March 7, 2026: CNN reports that interagency meetings have commenced to discuss how AARO, the military, and other federal departments might publicize classified photos and information tied to UAP reports, according to former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence Christopher Mellon.

March 18, 2026: The White House registers aliens.gov, according to DefenseScoop. The purpose of the domain has not been publicly stated.

March 22, 2026: Rep. Luna announces on X that she will recommend to the Department of Government Efficiency that AARO be completely disbanded and defunded. Rep. Tim Burchett and Stanford researcher Dr. Garry Nolan publicly express support.

The 2024 Annual Report

AARO’s most recently published annual report, the FY 2024 Consolidated Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, released on November 14, 2024, covers the period from May 1, 2023 to June 1, 2024. During that window, AARO received 757 new UAP reports from military personnel, government employees, and other sources. An additional 272 older reports from 2021 and 2022 that had not been previously submitted brought the total reviewed caseload to 1,652.

The report, available on the ODNI website, breaks down findings into three categories.

The first category covers resolved cases. According to the report, AARO has successfully resolved hundreds of cases as commonplace objects: balloons, birds, drones, satellites, and conventional aircraft. Some resolved cases turned out to be SpaceX Starlink satellite flares, identified after AARO cross-referenced sighting locations, times, and viewing directions across multiple reports.

The second category covers unresolved cases with insufficient data. Over 900 reports fall into this group. These are cases where the reporting source did not provide enough information, sensor data, or corroborating evidence for scientific analysis. AARO retains these in an active archive and may reopen them if new information emerges. This category illustrates a recurring challenge in UAP research: witness accounts without supporting sensor data cannot be scientifically evaluated.

The third category is what Kosloski called “the truly anomalous.” These are cases with sufficient data for which AARO has not yet identified a conventional explanation. The report describes them as “true anomalies” but does not provide specific case details in the unclassified version.

The report’s national security section notes that “U.S. military aircrews provided two reports that identified flight safety concerns, and three reports described pilots being trailed or shadowed by UAP.” The report also states that AARO has found no verified indications that any foreign adversary has achieved a breakthrough capability related to the reported phenomena.

The Missing 2025 Report

Under federal law, AARO is required to publish an annual report on UAP activity. The FY 2024 report was the third in the series, following reports released in 2022 and 2023. As of March 31, 2026, the FY 2025 annual report has not been published.

The delay has drawn criticism from multiple directions. Christopher Mellon, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, stated in February 2026 that AARO has “released neither the second volume of a congressionally mandated report on government involvement with UAP nor the required 2025 annual report.” Jordan Flowers, executive director of the Disclosure Foundation, called AARO’s annual and historical reports “long-overdue” and said “this isn’t a fact pattern that has earned the public’s trust.”

Pentagon spokesperson Gough declined to explain the delay, saying only: “We have nothing to announce at this time.”

The absence of the 2025 report means the most recent official government data on UAP activity covers only through June 2024, nearly two years ago. During that gap, AARO’s caseload has grown from 1,652 to over 2,000 reports, but no official accounting of the new cases has been made public.

Cases Under Active Investigation

During his November 14, 2024 press briefing, Kosloski made several statements that drew significant attention from UAP researchers and mainstream media.

“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,” Kosloski told reporters, according to DefenseScoop.

In a full transcript of the media roundtable published by The Black Vault, Kosloski elaborated: “UAP are real. We’ve received 1,600 cases. A large number of those are unresolved, which means we don’t know exactly what they are. Until we know what they are or who they belong to, we can’t attribute intent.”

Kosloski did not describe specific cases or their characteristics in detail. He stated that AARO’s methodology follows a “standard scientific analysis framework” and that conclusions are not drawn without sufficient data. He also noted that some cases involve military platforms and restricted airspace, which adds a national security dimension separate from the question of whether the phenomena are anomalous.

The February 2026 Pentagon disclosure that AARO’s caseload now exceeds 2,000 means approximately 400 additional reports have been received since Kosloski’s last public update. No details about these newer cases have been provided.

AARO Imagery Repository

In a significant transparency step, AARO has published a dedicated repository of official UAP imagery. The page hosts declassified video footage from U.S. military sensor platforms, each accompanied by AARO’s scientific assessment. New videos were added as recently as January 2026.

The repository includes cases spanning a decade. Notable entries include the April 2013 Puerto Rico infrared video from a U.S. Customs aircraft (resolved as two ordinary objects traveling near each other), the 2015 “Go Fast” Navy F/A-18 FLIR video, and infrared footage from Iraq, the Mediterranean, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Several 2022–2024 cases remain unresolved, described as physical objects with ordinary appearance and behavior, but with insufficient data for full attribution.

The repository fulfills a congressional direction for transparency by releasing declassified military videos with clear scientific explanations. Most resolved cases involve balloons, birds, and conventional aircraft.

Gremlin: AARO’s Sensor System

One of AARO’s most concrete operational contributions is the Gremlin system, a mobile sensor suite designed to detect, track, and characterize UAP in real time. According to Space.com, Gremlin completed its first successful test event in March 2024, demonstrating the ability to collect multi-modal sensor data, including electro-optical, infrared, and radar, simultaneously.

Gremlin represents a shift from retroactive analysis of witness reports to proactive data collection. Previous UAP investigations relied heavily on post-incident interviews and fragmented sensor data from existing military platforms that were not designed for UAP detection. Gremlin is purpose-built for this mission.

By November 2024, Kosloski confirmed that Gremlin had been deployed at an unnamed national security site for active field collection. He did not disclose whether the system had captured any UAP data during its operational deployment.

The Workshop and AI Push

In August 2025, AARO hosted a two-day, invite-only workshop at Associated Universities, Inc. in the Washington, D.C. area. Approximately 40 government, academic, and independent researchers attended. The event focused on two goals: standardizing how UAP narrative data is collected and shared, and exploring AI applications for pattern recognition across large datasets of reports. The Debrief reported that the workshop gathered experts from government, academia, and civilian research organizations.

AARO published a 17-page whitepaper summarizing the workshop’s findings. Key recommendations included establishing clear reporting standards with detailed metadata (time, location, provenance, morphology, and contextual details), and creating common templates for data collection across military branches and government agencies.

The workshop reflects a challenge that has persisted throughout AARO’s existence: UAP reports come from many sources using different formats, with varying levels of detail and sensor data. Without standardized collection and reporting, large-scale analysis remains difficult.

Trump’s Disclosure Directive and the Path Forward

In February 2026, the UAP discourse shifted from congressional hearings to presidential action. On February 20, President Trump posted on social media that he would direct Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other agency leaders to begin releasing government files on aliens and UAP. The post followed comments by former President Barack Obama on a podcast suggesting aliens are real, though he said he had not personally encountered them.

Hegseth’s response marked the first time a sitting Defense Secretary publicly discussed UAP transparency efforts in his official capacity. In a February 23 interview, Hegseth said the Pentagon would work with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on implementation. “President Trump has been just committed to disclosure on lots of levels, and he’s made it clear that he wants answers on this,” Hegseth said. He did not offer a specific timeline but described the process as “deliberative.”

A War Department official told DefenseScoop that AARO “is working in close coordination with the White House and across federal agencies to consolidate existing UAP records collections and facilitate the expeditious release of never-before-seen UAP information.”

According to CNN, interagency meetings have commenced to discuss how classified photos and information tied to UAP reports might be publicized. Christopher Mellon described these as the “primary step” initiated by Trump’s social media promise.

The White House registered the domain aliens.gov in March 2026, though its purpose has not been publicly stated. Whether the Trump administration’s approach will differ meaningfully from previous disclosure efforts remains to be seen.

Congressional Pressure

AARO faces three new mandates in the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, signed in December 2025. According to MeriTalk, the provisions require:

NORAD intercept briefings: The North American Aerospace Defense Command must provide regular updates on UAP intercepts conducted in North American airspace to congressional committees.

Classification guide accountability: AARO must account for UAP-related security classification guides that govern what information can be included in reports and investigations. This provision responds to concerns that over-classification prevents meaningful congressional oversight.

Expanded reporting: AARO must provide additional reports to Congress on UAP activity, with streamlined data-sharing processes between the military and the office.

The NDAA provisions represent a shift from reactive oversight, reviewing AARO’s reports after they are published, to proactive congressional involvement in what the office investigates and how findings are classified.

On March 22, 2026, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna announced on X that she will recommend to the Department of Government Efficiency that AARO be completely disbanded and defunded. Her recommendation drew public support from Rep. Tim Burchett and Stanford University researcher Dr. Garry Nolan. Luna, who chairs the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, has been one of AARO’s most vocal critics, previously calling its classified briefings a “nothingburger.”

Opposing Perspective

AARO’s position on whether any UAP are extraterrestrial has not changed. The office has found no verified evidence that any UAP report involves extraterrestrial technology or activity.

This conclusion is consistent across all three annual reports and Kosloski’s public statements. AARO resolves the majority of cases as commonplace objects. Cases that remain unresolved are described as lacking sufficient data, not as evidence of extraordinary phenomena.

Critics from the UAP transparency community argue that AARO’s methodology is too narrow, saying it treats conventional explanations as defaults and does not adequately investigate witness accounts that suggest anomalous behavior. They also point to the office’s failure to publish its 2025 annual report and the second volume of its historical review as evidence of institutional resistance to disclosure.

The tension between AARO’s “no evidence of extraterrestrial activity” position and the growing political pressure for disclosure defines the current moment. Congress, the White House, and advocacy groups are pushing for more transparency. AARO has responded with the imagery repository, the workshop, and public briefings, but critics say it has not met its statutory obligations on reporting timelines.

Sources

a. FOIA Documents and Official PDFs

b. Source Links

c. Related Reading

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5tGMg7EVFU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLf9ePYaiT4

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