AARO Case-Resolution Briefing Slides — Senate Armed Services Committee (19 November 2024)

Brief

Presented by AARO Director Dr. Jon Kosloski, the seven-page deck opens with trend data showing 75% of closed UAP cases resolve as balloons, with 'Lights' (46%) and 'Orb/Round/Sphere' (31%) as the dominant morphology categories. The Puerto Rico 2013 USCBP infrared footage is assessed with high confidence as two separate objects drifting at wind speed that never entered the water, with apparent splitting an artifact of changing sensor angle. The Go Fast 2016 footage is similarly resolved with high confidence: an object at roughly 13,000 feet traveling ~45 mph, its apparent ocean-skimming speed a parallax illusion. The Mt. Etna 2018 UAV footage earns only moderate confidence in its balloon identification, with pixel luminosity analysis used to disprove ash-plume penetration.

Metadata

Agency

All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) / U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services

Release

2024-11-19

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

7 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED

Programs

AARO

Tags

Puerto Rico 2013, Go Fast 2016, Mt. Etna 2018, infrared video, balloon, parallax, USCBP, Navy F/A-18, UAV Mediterranean, Senate SASC briefing

Key points

• Of all closed UAP cases in the 1996–2024 dataset, 75% resolved as balloons; UAS accounted for 16% and birds for 6%.p.2
• 'Lights' (46%) and 'Orb, Round, Sphere' (31%) together account for 77% of all reported UAP morphologies across the full reporting period.p.2
• Puerto Rico 2013: AARO assessed with high confidence the footage shows two distinct objects traveling at wind speed (~3.6 m/s), not a single object splitting and entering the water.p.3
• Thermal Crossover explained the Puerto Rico objects' apparent fading in the IR; trajectory reconstruction placed both at roughly 200 meters altitude descending southwest in a straight line.p.4
• Go Fast 2016: object altitude assessed with high confidence at approximately 13,000 feet and velocity at approximately 45 mph / 39 knots — against measured headwinds of approximately 60 knots at that altitude.p.5
• Go Fast's apparent high speed was an artifact of parallax: the F/A-18 flying into the wind amplified the visual illusion of the UAP's velocity relative to the ocean surface.p.5
• Mt. Etna 2018: AARO assesses with only moderate confidence that the object was a balloon approximately 170 km from the volcano — a notably lower confidence level than the other two cases.p.6
• Pixel luminosity analysis of the object versus surrounding pixels disproved the apparent ash-plume penetration in the Mt. Etna footage.p.6

Verbatim

• AARO, in coordination with Intelligence Community (IC) and Science and Technology (S&T) partners assess with high confidence that the UAP did not demonstrate any anomalous speeds or flight characteristics.

  p.3

• Reconstruction confirmed the objects traveled at wind speed in a straight line over land during the entire observation period, never entering the water.

  p.3

• The UAP's altitude is assessed with high confidence as approximately 13,000 feet above sea level at a calculated velocity of approximately 45 mph / 39 knots.

  p.5

• With the F/A-18 flying into the wind, the UAP apparent high speed due to parallax (right) is amplified compared to the results with no wind at all (left).

  p.5

• AARO, in coordination with IC and S&T partners, assesses with moderate confidence that the object was a balloon drifting with the wind approximately 170 kilometers from the volcano.

  p.6

• AARO and its partners disproved the object flew through the ash plume by conducting an analysis of the luminosity of the object's pixels in relation to a sample range of pixels immediately around it.

  p.6

• To validate the estimated UAP speed and bearing, 3D modeling and wind calculations were used to estimate the UAP's location when the UAV operator lost sight of it. Subsequent video analysis found faint tones of the UAP where the modeling assessed it would traverse, further validating the findings.

  p.6

Most interesting

• Three of the most publicly contested UAP videos — Puerto Rico, Go Fast, and Mt. Etna — are all resolved conventionally in this deck, yet the Mt. Etna resolution carries only 'moderate confidence,' not the 'high confidence' applied to the other two cases.
• The Puerto Rico infrared footage, long cited in UAP communities as showing an object entering the ocean, is reframed entirely: the objects never touched the water, and the apparent 'water entry' was an optical artifact of changing sensor angle.
• Go Fast's namesake quality — apparent high speed near the ocean surface — evaporates under AARO's analysis: the object was at 13,000 feet moving ~45 mph into a 60-knot headwind, making it effectively stationary relative to the air mass.
• Reporting trends cover nearly 29 years (January 1, 1996 – October 10, 2024), making this one of the longest-baseline UAP trend summaries AARO has presented in an open congressional setting.
• Balloon morphologies account for 75% of resolved cases despite being a minority of reported shapes — most witnesses described Lights or Orbs, not balloons, illustrating how difficult shape identification is from ground or air observation.
• The briefing went to the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities rather than the full Senate Armed Services Committee, placing it before the most security-cleared UAP-focused subpanel in the Senate.