Documents / Official release

Office of the Secretary of Defense: 05_AARO_Historical_Record_Report

Department of Defense. Office of the Secretary of Defense. · 2023 · 63 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is Volume I of the Historical Record Report from the Department of Defense's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), dated February 2024 and released in full in February 2025. It reviews US government UAP investigations since 1945, from Project SIGN and Blue Book through the Condon Report, AATIP and the UAP Task Force. AARO found no evidence that any sighting involved extraterrestrial technology or that anyone reverse-engineered alien craft. It says the claims come largely from circular reporting, and it names KONA BLUE as a proposed program that was never approved.

22
up” by the USG. Rather, the materials recovered near Roswell were consistent with a balloon of
the type used in the then-classified Project Mogul. No records showed any evidence that the
USG recovered aliens or extraterrestrial material.56
• The USAF subsequently published a follow-on report in 1997, The Roswell Report:
Case Closed, with additional materials and analysis which supported its conclusion
that the debris recovered near Roswell was from the U.S. Army Air Force’s balloon-
borne program.57
• The alleged “alien” bodies reported by some in the New Mexico desert were test
dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Army Air Force high-altitude balloons for
scientific research.58
• Reports of military units that allegedly recovered a flying saucer and its “crew” were
descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in the dummy recovery operations.
Claims of “alien bodies” at the Roswell Army Air Force (RAAF) hospital were most
likely the result of the conflation of two separate incidents: a 1956 KC-97 aircraft
accident in which 11 Air Force members lost their lives; and a 1959 manned balloon
mishap in which two Air Force pilots were injured.59
The GAO’s 1995 report on the results of its investigation found that that the U.S. Army
Air Force regulations in 1947 required that air accident reports be maintained permanently. Four
air accidents were reported by the Army Air Force in New Mexico during July 1947. All
involved military aircraft and occurred after July 8, 1947—the date the RAAF public information
office first reported the crash and recovery of a “flying disc” near Roswell. The military
reported no air accidents in New Mexico that month. USAF officials reported to GAO that there
was no requirement to prepare a report on the crash of a balloon in 1947.60
Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program (AAWSAP) (2009–2012)/
Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)
Background: At the direction of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), the
Defense Appropriations Acts of Fiscal Years 2008 and 2010 appropriated $22 million for the
DIA to assess long-term and over-the-horizon foreign advanced aerospace threats to the United
States. In coordination with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, DIA
established AAWSAP in 2009, which was also known AATIP. The contract for this DIA-
managed program was awarded to a private sector organization.61 [Note on program names:
The names AAWSAP and AATIP have been used interchangeably for the name of this program,
including on official documentation. Unlike AAWSAP, AATIP was never an official DoD
program. However, after AAWSAP was cancelled, the AATIP moniker was used by some
individuals associated with an informal, unofficial UAP community of interest within DoD that
researched UAP sightings from military observers as part of their ancillary job duties. This
effort was not a recognized, official program, and had no dedicated personnel or budget.]
• The primary purpose of AAWSAP/AATIP was to investigate potential next
generation aerospace technologies in 12 specific areas—such as advanced lift,05Page determined to be Unclassified
Review by Chief of Staff, AARO
IAW FY24 NDAA, Section 1841 (a)(1)(C)
Date: 02/05/2025

Cases discussed

About this file

Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 63 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.