UNCLASSIFIED
SUMMARY AND WAY AHEAD
UAP continue to represent a hazard to flight safety and pose a possible adversary collection threat. Since the publication of the ODNI preliminary assessment in June 2021, UAP reporting has increased, partially due to a concentrated effort to destigmatize the topic of UAP and instead recognize the potential risks that it poses as both a safety of flight hazard and potential adversarial activity. Whereas there were previously 144 UAP reports covered during the 17 years of UAP reporting included in the ODNI preliminary assessment on UAP, there have been 247 more UAP reports during the 17 months since. Combined with another 119 reports either discovered or reported late that fell within the original 17 year period but were not included in the preliminary assessment, a total of 510 UAP reports are currently catalogued.
AARO has been established as the DoD focal point for UAP. In an effort to gain fidelity on the nature of UAP and the possible risk UAP represent, Congress required the establishment of a central office for all UAP matters in the FY 2022 NDAA. That office formally became operational as the AARO, under the USD(I&S), in July 2022. AARO is the single focal point for all DoD UAP efforts, leading a whole-of-government approach to coordinate UAP collection, reporting, and analysis efforts throughout DoD, the IC, and beyond, to include other government agencies not in the IC, as well as foreign allies and partners of the United States.
Coordinated efforts between DoD, the IC, and other government agencies to collect and report UAP events have resulted in increased data sets, spanning multiple security domains. AARO, in coordination with the IC, is focused on identifying solutions to manage and alleviate the resulting data problem, including the intake, indexing, visualization, and analysis of that data across multiple security domains. We are confident that continued multi-agency cooperative UAP prosecution activities will likely result in greater awareness of objects in and across the air, space, and maritime domains, as well as the nature and origin of UAP in the future. The establishment of AARO and application of AARO's new analytic process to this detailed reporting will increase resolution of UAP events.
7
UNCLASSIFIED
