ODNI/AARO FY2023 Annual UAP Report

Brief

AARO received 291 new UAP reports covering 31 August 2022 through 30 April 2023, pushing the cumulative total to 801. Of the 291 new reports, 290 were airborne and one was maritime; no transmedium or space-domain reports were submitted. The report debuts AARO's first published case-resolution example, a 2021 Western U.S. infrared sighting of five equidistant lights confirmed via boresight analysis and air-traffic-control correlation to be commercial aircraft on established flight corridors. AARO's analytic division states that only a very small fraction of reports display genuinely anomalous signatures, while a large share remain unresolved due to insufficient sensor data rather than intrinsic strangeness.

Metadata

Agency

ODNI / DoD (AARO)

Release

2023-10-25

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

17 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED

Programs

AARO, NIM-MIL, NASIC, AFRL

Tags

orb, lights, airborne, infrared, Western United States, 2021, AARO, FY2023, commercial aircraft misidentification, boresight analysis

Key points

• AARO received 291 new UAP reports covering 31 August 2022 to 30 April 2023, bringing the cumulative total to 801 reports as of 30 April 2023.p.5
• Of 291 new reports, 290 were in the air domain and one was maritime; no transmedium or space-domain UAP reports were submitted to AARO.p.5
• Orb/Round/Sphere was the most-reported morphology at 25%; 53% of cases had no morphology recorded at all, indicating a fundamental observer or sensor limitation.p.6
• FAA contributed over 100 UAP incident reports, the vast majority describing unidentified lights at altitudes ranging from below 5,000 to 60,000 feet, with no anomalous characteristics detected.p.7
• No UAP encounters have been confirmed to have directly caused adverse health effects to observers; health-related implications will be tracked if and when they emerge.p.7
• AARO's analytic division states only a very small percentage of reports display interesting signatures; a large number remain technically unresolved due solely to lack of data.p.8
• AARO's S&T division established a sensor calibration campaign measuring balloons, UAS, and natural phenomena to build models for pilot training and algorithm development.p.9
• The first published case resolution (Western United States, 2021) attributed five equidistant IR-observed lights to commercial aircraft on established corridors at up to 300 nautical miles from the sensor platform.p.12
• The report identifies space and maritime domains as under-integrated into AARO's processes and flags maritime sensor calibration as a near-term priority.p.10
• AARO attributes most unresolved cases to insufficient radar and EO/IR sensor data, plus sensor artifacts such as IR flare and optical effects like parallax.p.2

Most interesting

• 53% of FY2023 UAP reports had no morphology recorded, the single largest 'category' in the morphology breakdown, dwarfing every actual shape reported.
• The FAA pipeline feeds AARO exclusively low-confidence sightings: over 100 reports, all lights, none with anomalous characteristics, implying commercial aviation reporting captures the mundane fringe rather than edge cases.
• The Western U.S. case resolution demonstrates that IR sensor misestimation of distance, not exotic phenomena, was the root failure; objects believed to be nearby were actually commercial jets 300 nautical miles away.
• AARO's glossary formally defines 'UAP Engagement' as bringing UAP under kinetic or non-kinetic fire to deny, disrupt, or destroy the phenomenon, signaling that DoD has operationalized at least the conceptual framework for physical interdiction.
• Boresight analysis, a sensor alignment correction technique, was the decisive S&T tool that resolved the Western U.S. case, pointing to platform-sensor calibration error as a systematic source of false UAP reports.
• This single report was coordinated across more than 30 separate agencies and offices, including NASA, FAA, FBI, the NRC, and the national labs, reflecting the breadth of the interagency UAP enterprise.
• AARO launched a public-facing website during this reporting period and described building a 'complicated, synchronized' declassification pipeline, the first routine mechanism for releasing UAP data and footage to the public.