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The Pentagon’s new investigative UFO office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), has received hundreds of new reports since beginning operation.
Established in July by the U.S. Department of Defense, the AARO was established to “synchronize efforts across the government regarding anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects.”
Since that announcement on Twitter, so far the AARO has posted a grand total of zero tweets.
However, AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick now finally admits that the office has received “several hundreds” of new reports on UFOs.
This is significant in that, as the Associated Press reports, “between 2004 and 2021, there were 144 such encounters, 80 of which were captured on multiple sensors.”
That number was given by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in June 2021, but since then, Kirkpatrick says, “we’ve had lots more reporting.”
One reason for the hundreds of additional reports coming in may be the outreach the department has done to destigmatize reporting potential encounters. Each service has also established its own reporting processes, Kirkpatrick said.
Beyond unidentifiable objects, there’s a lot of new technology — such as future stealth bombers and stealth fighters, drones and hypersonic missiles being fielded by both the U.S. and China — that could be mistaken for a UFO. Kirkpatrick said the new office has been coordinating with the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community to get the signatures of U.S. technology in order to rule out those aircraft or drones.
“We are setting up very clear mechanisms with our blue programs, both our DOD and IC programs, to deconflict any observations that come in with blue activities, and ensure that we weed those out and identify those fairly early on,” Kirkpatrick said.
An updated report from the Director of National Intelligence is expected to be released by the end of the year. In that report, officials say they will provide specific figures on new UFO reports the office has received since 2021.
Meanwhile, in November, the FBI reportedly raided the homes of a popular Area 51 website operator, seizing his computers and other equipment.
It is interesting to note that this alleged raid by the FBI took place shortly after NASA established a new team of scientists that will participate in a independent study on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), as the government calls them, and shortly after the Pentagon creating the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.