The Department of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence just released a new UFO report on the evening of October 18, 2023. The report covers UAPs identified by AARO (the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office), and what those UFOs likely are. The highly-anticipated report has been criticized by UFO advocates online for a lack of transparency. However, the report does admit that there remain UAP sightings that are concerning, and not readily connected to U.S. or foreign programs.
The report comes out several months after David Grusch testified to Congress about an alleged UAP retrieval program. The report does not, however, mention Grusch’s claims, or the specific testimonies of Ryan Graves and David Fravor, who were also part of the House hearing. It also comes a few weeks after the Department of Energy quietly released its own UFO files.
To review a comprehensive, in-depth breakdown of all of David Grusch’s claims that there’s a secret UAP reverse engineering and retrieval program, with citations, see our story here.
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Read the Full UFO Report Below
The full UFO report, as posted on AARO’s website, can be read in the embed below.
FY23 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP-Oct 2023 by Stephanie Dube Dwilson on Scribd
This is an unclassified report that was created in response to a requirement in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the report notes. It covers UAP reports from August 31, 2022 to April 30, 2023, and any UAP reports from previous time periods that weren’t in AARO’s earlier report.
The report notes that while most UAP sightings are still from restricted military airspace, the bias is less this time around, and includes more sightings across the U.S.
The Report Covers 291 UAP Sightings, with None Attributed to U.S. Programs or Foreign Activities
In total, AARO received 291 UAP reports during that time period (274 new reports and 17 that were from 2019-2022 but not previously studied.) 290 of the reports were in the “air domain,” and just one was a maritime report. None were transmedium or in space. The new 291 reports brings AARO’s total reports to 801.
AARO also received more than 100 UAP incident reports from the FAA, most concerning unidentified lights without a specific shape, and none suggesting anomalous characteristics.
The report also dips into health effects from UAPs, noting: “AARO received no reports indicating UAP sightings have been associated with any adverse health effects.” However, the report later acknowledges that it can be tough to discern health implications, as they can occur “at any time after an event.”
It does caution, however, that UAPs present “potential safety of flight concerns,” which were “de-conflicted” from potential U.S. programs. The report also notes that none of the reports suggest UAPs were in an “unsafe proximity” to civil or military aircraft, in flight paths, or a direct threat to flight safety.
The report goes on to note that none of the 291 sightings were “positively attributed to foreign activities” but “these cases continue to be investigated.”
The Report Suggests Most Cases Will Be Prosaic in Nature
The report goes on to note that insufficient radar data and other sensor data are contributing to misperceptions. AARO believes that with better data quality, most of the anomalous UAPs “will likely resolve to ordinary phenomena and significantly reduce the amount of UAP case submissions.”
The report also contains pie charts updated from AARO’s previous findings. The new pie chart notes that 25% of UAP morphologies in FY23 were round spheres, compared to 47% being round spheres in the 1996-2023 report. The other categories were smaller, with 2% being rectangular, 1% triangle-shaped, 2% disks, 1% cylinder, and 4% oval.
At the end of the report, there’s an appendix glossary that defines a number of terms related to UAPs.
A Small Percentage of Reports Are Still Anomalous
The report goes on to say (on page 8): “only a very small percentage of UAP reports display interesting signatures, such as high-speed travel and unknown morphologies. The majority…demonstrate ordinary characteristics of readily explainable sources…” Some of those cases are still listed as technically unresolved, simply due to a lack of data.
The report goes on to talk more about how AARO is collecting data and testing data, along with approaches to sensor calibration.
The report then notes (on page 9) that declassifying data is “a complicated, synchronized effort that involves various stakeholders and information owners with differing processes. AARO is working to standardize and routinize this declassification process to ensure as much transparency as possible.”
The Report Only Includes One Case Study of a Debunked UAP
Unfortunately, the report does not provide any additional examples of anomalous UAPs or specific examples of cases. Instead, starting on page 12, it devotes some space to one unclassified UAP report that was debunked. The case was resolved back in May 2023, where AARO assessed that some “oblong” objects spotted in the Western U.S. in 2021 were actually aircraft traveling on different routes up to 300 nautical miles away.
AARO notes the objects were “significantly farther from the platform than originally estimated by the observers.”
The observers were military personnel concerned about a potential incursion into military airspace, but no further details were given.
Quite a few UAP advocates expressed dissatisfaction with the report.
Ryan Graves and David Fravor, who testified about their own UAP sightings to Congress in July, run a non-profit organization called Americans for Safe Aerospace. This organization put a statement on X (formerly Twitter) about the report.
The statement notes, in part: “We are concerned that the Pentagon acknowledges again this year that there continue to be UAP incidents that remain genuinely anomalous, are not ours, and have not been confirmed to be foreign either. We share the concern of AARO’s Director that some are adversarial and may be hiding in the noise. AARO’s newest report only raises more questions. Why is it acceptable for the US government to allow objects in friendly airspace to go unidentified? Does AARO have access to the data and sensors it needs to do its job? We believe it does not.”
They go on, writing: “Why does the Pentagon resist transparency into the anomalous and concerning UAP demonstrating unusual speed and maneuverability? What can AARO say about these cases, some of which the pilots have already testified about? The need for a disclosure process is clear.”
Meanwhile, John Greenewald Jr. of Black Vault tweeted that he is concerned the report echoes Project Blue Book.
He wrote, in part: “This is exactly how Project Blue Book progressed and then ended. It all started with a “threat” and public interest; the UFO phenomenon was given more credibility by military personnel and prominent politicians as it progressed which prolonged funding and interest; the military “investigated” the cases; they concluded the majority were explainable; they convened a panel of scientists to independently look at the findings; and it all ended with the military halting interest and stopping all funding for more than 40 years.”
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