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.

  • p. 9 …The program was never approved by DHS and its supporters never provided empirical evidence to support…
  • p. 10 …AARO assesses that some portion of sightings since the 1940s have represented misidentification of never-before…
  • p. 19 …holdings, 701 were categorized as unidentified and never solved.3839 CIA Evaluation of UFOs (1964) Background…
  • p. 22 …Unlike AAWSAP, AATIP was never an official DoD program. However, after AAWSAP was cancelled, the AATIP…
  • p. 23 …These scientific papers were never thoroughly peer reviewed. • AARO has yet to uncover any other substantive…
  • p. 26 …an advisory committee that advised the government, never reached any significant conclusions.80 • Canada’s Project…
  • p. 27 …it lacked any proof, and it was never published. The first Director of05Page determined to be…
  • p. 35 …The SAP was never approved or stood up, and no data or material was transferred to…
  • p. 36 …AARO notes that Persons 1 and 4 never formally sat down with AARO to provide official…
  • p. 44 …the mid-to-late 1990s.191 It never entered production, but the research conducted on Dark…
59
152 Robert A. McDonald and Sharon K. Moreno, Raising the Periscope: Grab and Poppy:
America’s Early ELINT Satellites (NRO History Office, 2005).
https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/history/csnr/programs/docs/prog-hist-03.pdf
153 Robert A. McDonald and Sharon K. Moreno, Raising the Periscope: Grab and Poppy:
America’s Early ELINT Satellites (NRO History Office, 2005).
https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/history/csnr/programs/docs/prog-hist-03.pdf; U.S.
Naval Research Laboratory, https://www.nrl.navy.mil/Media/News/Article/3074375/grab-i-first-
operational-intelligence-satellite/
154 Ibid.
155 National Air and Space Museum, https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/what-was-
gemini-program
156 National Aeronautics and Space Administration, https://www.nasa.gov/gemini/; National Air
and Space Museum, https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/what-was-gemini-program
157 National Archives and Records Administration, Kennedy Library,
https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/historic-speeches/address-to-joint-session-of-
congress-may-25-1961
158 National Air and Space Museum, https://airandspace.si.edu/explore/topics/space/apollo-
program; National Aeronautics and Space Administration, https://www.nasa.gov/learning-
resources/for-kids-and-students/what-was-the-apollo-program-grades-5-8/; National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, https://www.nasa.gov/specials/apollo50th/missions.html
159 Robert A. McDonald and Sharon K. Moreno, Raising the Periscope: Grab and Poppy:
America’s Early ELINT Satellites (NRO History Office, 2005),
https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/history/csnr/programs/docs/prog-hist-03.pdf
160 Bruce Berkowitz, “A Brief History of the NRO” (NRO Center for the Study of National
https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/history/csnr/programs/NRO_Brief_History.pdf
161 Ibid.
162 National Reconnaissance Office,
https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/history/csnr/gambhex/Docs/GAM_1_Fact_sheet.pdf05Page 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 under it. 63 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.