DoD Announces Expanded Effort to Investigate UFOs

According to a press release published by the Department of Defense (DoD) this week:

On July 15, 2022, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, in coordination with the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), amended her original direction to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security by renaming and expanding the scope of the Airborne Object Identification and Management Group (AOIMSG) to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), due to the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2022, which included a provision to establish an office, in coordination with DNI, with responsibilities that were broader than those originally assigned to the AOIMSG.
Today, USD(I&S) Hon. Ronald S. Moultrie informed the department of the establishment of AARO within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, and named Dr. Sean M. Kirkpatrick, most recently the chief scientist at the Defense Intelligence Agency's Missile and Space Intelligence Center, as the director of AARO.
The mission of the AARO will be to synchronize efforts across the Department of Defense, and with other U.S. federal departments and agencies, to detect, identify and attribute objects of interest in, on or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace and other areas of interest, and, as necessary, to mitigate any associated threats to safety of operations and national security. This includes anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects.
The AARO Executive Council (AAROEXEC), led by Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security (USD(I&S)) Ronald Moultrie, will provide oversight and direction to the AARO along these primary lines of effort:
   1. Surveillance, Collection and Reporting
   2. System Capabilities and Design
   3. Intelligence Operations and Analysis
   4. Mitigation and Defeat
   5. Governance
   6. Science and Technology
See Deputy Secretary of Defense Hicks' AARO establishment memo here.
See USD(I&S) Moultrie's AARO establishment memo here.
Read Dr. Kirkpatrick's bio here.

This newly reported expansion of the Pentagon’s UFO investigation program comes in the wake of low congressional confidence in their investigative efforts.

Following the release last year of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s much anticipated preliminary assessment report on UFOs, many in the intelligence community were critical of what they saw as its failure to offer any concrete explanations for most of the incidents analyzed, especially in light of concerns surrounding secret Russian or Chinese technology.

The Pentagon then promised to overhaul the task force responsible for investigating UFOs, which led to the AOIMSG, which has now become the AARO.

This continues Congress’s increasing interest in UFOs, most recently displayed during a House Intelligence subcommittee hearing held last May on the subject—the first of its kind in over 50 years.

The congressional hearing gave lawmakers the opportunity to question the Pentagon regarding the issue of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP)—the current government nomenclature for UFOs—and for government officials to explain their current position and outline plans to investigate the issue further.

There were few mentions of extraterrestrials during the hearing—although the Pentagon did express a particular interest in reports which include unusual flight characteristics, such as incredible speed, transmedium capabilities, and undetectable means of propulsion.

Congressional interest in UFOs has increased dramatically since the existence of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP)—which reportedly ran from 2007 until 2012—was publicly revealed in 2017.

Interest continued to swell and, in 2019, several senators—including Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the then vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee—received briefings on encounters between Navy pilots and UFOs.

Then, in 2020, the Senate Intelligence Committee, led at the time by Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), included a directive in their Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 ordering the Director of National Intelligence (DNI)—in consultation with the Secretary of Defense—to create a report regarding “unidentified aerial phenomena.”

That bill led to the creation of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF); the group responsible for creating the preliminary assessment report mentioned above.

To report your own encounter with the impossible, reach out to us directly at the Singular Fortean Society through our contact page.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to support the Singular Fortean Society, please consider becoming an official member by signing up through our Patreon page—membership includes a ton of extra content and behind-the-scenes access to the Society’s inner workings.