AARO FY2024 Annual UAP Report, ODNI Copy

Brief

AARO received 757 UAP reports during the reporting period (May 1, 2023 – June 1, 2024), bringing its all-time total to 1,652 as of October 2024. Of those, 49 were fully resolved to conventional objects, balloons, birds, or UAS, and 21 were flagged for further IC and S&T analysis due to reported anomalous characteristics. The office received no reports from national GEOINT, SIGINT, or MASINT platforms and acknowledges that case resolution remains 'constrained by a lack of timely and actionable sensor data.' No evidence of extraterrestrial origin, foreign adversary breakthrough capability, or adverse health effects from UAP encounters was found.

Metadata

Agency

DoD / All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)

Release

2024-11-14

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

18 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED

Programs

GREMLIN

Tags

orb/sphere, unidentified lights, cylindrical object, UAS, balloon, nuclear site proximity, East Asian Seas, Middle East, GREMLIN, Starlink misidentification, near-miss event

Key points

• As of October 24, 2024, AARO holds 1,652 total UAP reports in its database.p.6
• 757 reports were received during the May 2023–June 2024 period; 272 of those were backdated cases from 2021–2022 that had not previously been reported to AARO.p.3
• 49 cases were resolved during the reporting period, all to prosaic objects (balloons, birds, UAS); an additional 174 were subsequently finalized as prosaic pending director approval.p.3
• 21 cases were determined to merit further analysis by IC and S&T partners due to reported anomalous characteristics or behaviors.p.6
• 444 cases lacked sufficient data and were placed in the Active Archive for pattern-of-life and trend analysis.p.6
• AARO received zero UAP reports collected through national GEOINT, SIGINT, or MASINT platforms during the entire reporting period.p.7
• 392 of 757 reports originated from the FAA, representing all FAA UAP logs since June 2021, a new and dominant reporting pipeline for AARO.p.6
• A commercial aircrew reported a near-miss with a 'cylindrical object' over the Atlantic off the coast of New York; the case remains under analysis.p.12
• 18 reports were filed near U.S. nuclear infrastructure; all were categorized as UAS, including a crashed drone recovered at D.C. Cook Nuclear Power Plant on August 3, 2023.p.12
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory analyzed physical material claimed to originate from a UAP; MIT-Lincoln Laboratory is building prototype radar processing to detect objects currently filtered from FAA and National Weather Service data streams.p.13

Verbatim

• It is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology.

  p.3

• AARO's ability to resolve cases remains constrained by a lack of timely and actionable sensor data.

  p.3

• Of the 757 reports 392 were from the FAA, which consisted of all of the FAA's UAP reports since 2021.

  p.6

• Objects within the "other" category include unique descriptions such as "green fire ball," "a jelly fish with [multicolored] flashing lights," and a "silver rocket approximately six feet long."

  p.8

• a commercial aircrew reported a near miss with a "cylindrical object" while over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New York.

  p.12

• On August 3, 2023, the D.C. Cook Nuclear Power Plant security recovered a crashed UAS that was given to Berrien County, Michigan, local law enforcement (LLE). AARO has no further information about the crashed UAS.

  p.12

• AARO is authorized by law to receive all UAP related information including any classified national security information involving military intelligence or intelligence related activities at all levels of classification, regardless of any restrictive access controls, special access controls, or compartmented special access programs.

  p.14

• AARO has begun collections using a prototype sensor system, GREMLIN, for detecting, tracking, and characterizing UAP. GREMLIN demonstrated functionality and successfully collected data during a test event in March of 2024.

  p.14

Most interesting

• All 49 space-domain reports were classified as such based solely on altitude estimates from pilots or ground observers, not a single space-based sensor or asset contributed a UAP detection.
• Starlink satellite trains are increasingly responsible for UAP reports; one sighting of white flashing lights by a commercial pilot was correlated directly with a Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral the same evening and its known orbital path.
• Birds trigger a disproportionate share of UAP reports because electro-optical/infrared sensors render them as amorphous orbs, and wing-flapping produces a 'flickering' signature in full-motion video consistent with patterns attributed to UAP.
• A drone crashed inside the protected area of D.C. Cook Nuclear Power Plant, was handed to local law enforcement, and AARO received no further information on its origin or ownership.
• UAS were observed flying over the BWXT nuclear fuel cycle facility in Lynchburg, Virginia, on six consecutive nights from October 10–15, 2023.
• MIT-Lincoln Laboratory is building data processing prototypes to detect objects currently filtered out of FAA and National Weather Service radar feeds, meaning a known population of untracked objects already transits civilian airspace undetected.
• AARO received zero GEOINT, SIGINT, or MASINT platform reporting for the full fiscal year, meaning the primary U.S. intelligence collection apparatus contributed no new UAP cases.
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a nuclear science and engineering institution, was tasked with analyzing physical material claimed to have originated from a UAP.