For over 75 years, the United States Government has striven to persuade the public that there is no evidence of non-human technology in the UFO phenomenon. Now, in 2024, we find history repeating itself, as the latest government analysis comes to the same dubious conclusion.
AARO, or the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, was tasked by Congress in 2022 with researching and documenting the government’s involvement and findings related to UAP (or UFO’s) since 1945. Volume 1 of their report has now been published, which you can read for yourself here.
Unfortunately, AARO seems to have taken the “Resolution” part if it’s name literally, and the report’s conclusion states simply that “To date, AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP represented off-world technology or the existence a classified program that had not been properly reported to Congress.” It goes on further to say that “Although many UAP reports remain unsolved, AARO assesses that if additional, quality data were available, most of these cases also could be identified and resolved as ordinary objects or phenomena.” Mainstream media dutifully reported their findings, publishing headlines like “Pentagon report finds no evidence of alien visits, hidden spacecraft”, and “Pentagon Review Finds No Evidence of Alien Cover-Up”. Once again, to the casual observer, the question seem settled, and the UFO/alien question can be put to rest and not worried about.
Except for anyone who has delved into the subject in any depth, this assessment seems preposterous. The historical section of the AARO report reads like a high school paper on UFO related government programs, superficially researched and seemingly designed to reach a pre-determined conclusion. The report provides brief descriptions of programs well known in UFO history, from projects Sign/Grudge through Blue Book and the more recent AAWSAP. In each case AARO repeats the official findings of the project, but leaves out any discussion of the well document controversies and opposing viewpoints involved.
A glaring example is AARO’s discussion of the Condon Report, a study sponsored by the Air force in 1966 to determine whether UFO’s merited serious scientific study. AARO restates the report conclusion’s exact words, that “nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge”, and that “further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified.” A deeper study of the Condon Report presents a very different story. The leaders of the project, Edward Condon and Robert Low, had made up their minds about the subject before the study even began, and were clearly hostile to the UFO/ET hypothesis. Meanwhile, the project staff doing the actual research became more and more convinced of the reality of the phenomenon, and a conflict resulted which eventually resulted in firings and resignations of the pro-UFO contingent. When the final report was issued, Condon’s dismissive comments were highlighted, even though buried within the 950 pages was evidence that pointed to the exact opposite conclusion. The tragedy of the Condon report is that the media and scientific establishment took Condon at his word. The report was used to justify the shuttering of Project Blue Book, and any serious government or institutional study of the UFO phenomenon was effectively shut down for the next 40 years. AARO briefly mentions criticism by J. Allen Hynek, but quickly follows that up with the National Academy of Scientist’s endorsement of the report, although contemporary researchers such as NICAP’s Donald Keyhoe believed their review was extremely superficial, and that NAS was simply relieved to be rid of the subject. So why would AARO, an organization tasked with getting to the truth of the matter, ignore all of the well documents counterpoints to the Condon Report’s conclusion?
AARO makes no mention of the incredible testimony that Air Force pilots David Fravor and Ryan Graves provided to congress under oath, where they described objects making maneuvers they both assessed could not have been achieved by human technology, and which Graves stated posed an imminent safety hazard to pilots. Rather, AARO’s blanket statements seems to imply that with better data these would be found to have prosaic explanations. For anyone who listened to the testimony first hand, this strains credulity. Read Ryan Graves response on X.
One question that AARO leaves unaddressed is the incursions of UFO’s at nuclear missile sites in Montana and North Dakota, the most dramatic of which occurred in 1967. The phenomenon of UFO’s interfering with nuclear facilities is extremely well documented in Robert Hastings definitive work, UFO s & Nukes. AARO states that their analysis of these events will be dealt with in volume 2 of their report, which is still forthcoming. This will be a difficult subject to dismiss, and we will be very interested to see how they treat it.
In conclusion, the AARO report is another missed opportunity to bring honesty to a subject that has profound implications for mankind. It seems to be an attempt to put the cat back into the bag, and to push the subject of UFO’s back into the darkness. It is also the latest example of how the expectation that an institution can honestly investigate itself is misplaced.
For more rebuttals of AARO and its report, see the following articles and videos:
Finally, a much more comprehensive and honest study of the government’s involvement in and coverup of the UFO phenomenon can be found in Richard Dolan’s UFO’s and the National Security State, which we highly recommend.