The New Blue Book — 2022 to the present

This note is a reading, not a record. The dates, documents and quotes below are sourced. The claim that joins them — that AARO became a modern Project Blue Book — is an argument, and it is marked as one.

The claim

In 1952 the Air Force set up Project Blue Book as its public-facing answer to UFO reports. In January 1953 the CIA convened the Robertson Panel to review them, and its recommendations are read by Blue Book's critics as the point where the official posture turned from investigation to explanation. For seventeen years Blue Book received reports and resolved them. Then the Condon Committee produced a final report that many saw as a whitewash, and Blue Book closed in December 1969. As its critics tell it, it was an office whose public job was investigation and whose actual effect was closure.

The reading this era makes: the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office repeated that arc in under two years. Congress created it to receive reports, including from people inside classified programs, with a statutory promise that they would not be punished for coming forward [S1]. What the public got, under its first director Sean Kirkpatrick, was a report concluding there was nothing to find, a director who publicly attacked the whistleblowers, and a stream of explanations — hazing rituals, doctored photographs, secret weapons tests — that located the origin of the UFO story in the government's own pranks and cover stories rather than in anything that flew.

The comparison is not new and not mine. It was aimed at the UAP Task Force before AARO existed ("a project blue book 2.0 where they try and debunk and explain away the phenomena", Engaging The Phenomenon, August 2020 [S2]), and it stuck to AARO once Kirkpatrick was running it. UAP Gerb compared him directly to the 1954 Robertson Panel in January 2024 [S3]; Brandon Fugal calls AARO's work "Blue Book 2.0 or Condon Report 2.0" [S4]. What follows is why the label took.

How the arc ran

Founding (July 2022). Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks established AARO on 15 July 2022, and the Pentagon announced it, with Kirkpatrick as director, on 20 July [S5][S6]. Its statute directs it to build "a secure mechanism for authorized reporting" of UAP events and programs, and forbids reprisal against anyone who uses it [S1].

The turn (July 2023). David Grusch took his allegations to the Inspectors General and to Congress rather than to AARO [S7], and testified at the 26 July 2023 House hearing. Within days Kirkpatrick posted a personal letter on LinkedIn calling the testimony "insulting" and saying "the central source of those allegations has refused to speak with AARO" [S8]. The office meant to receive whistleblowers was now publicly arguing with the most prominent one. That argument continued in DoD memoranda recording that Grusch had declined AARO's invitations — while also recording his reason, that he was not "convinced that AARO is authorized to receive" classified material [S9][S10].

The departure and the report (December 2023 – March 2024). Kirkpatrick left on 1 December 2023 [S11]. In Scientific American he blamed "sensational but unsupported claims" for overwhelming the office, and said signing the historical report was "one of my last acts before retiring" [S12]. That report was published on 8 March 2024. Its finding: "AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP represented off-world technology or the existence a classified program that had not been properly reported to Congress" [S13]. Rep. Tim Burchett answered the same day: "So the people doing the cover up of #ufo #uap say they find no cover up" [S14]. This is the document the Blue Book comparison fastens on: an office concluding, about an allegation of concealment, that its own search found nothing. Researchers also charge that it misstated witness accounts, most specifically Michael Herrera's (see his note). A promised second volume had still not appeared as of August 2026 [S15].

The photograph (May 2024). On 9 May 2024 Fugal, owner of Skinwalker Ranch, posted a photograph of a confidential 2018 briefing his team gave to Senate committee staff, with Kirkpatrick "at the head of the table" [S16]. Fugal says Kirkpatrick had publicly claimed he never met him, never attended a Skinwalker Ranch briefing and had no interest in the subject before 2022, "which was simply not true" [S17]. Kirkpatrick's reply, relayed the same day by Steven Greenstreet of the New York Post, conceded that he attended a briefing, with Hal Puthoff and Kit Green present, but said he did not recall the ranch being mentioned or meeting Fugal, and placed it in 2017 [S18]. The documented fact is the change in his account: from no briefing to a briefing he does not remember the subject of. The reading is that AARO's founding director was not the newcomer to the subject he presented himself as.

The mythology story (June 2025). Eighteen months after leaving, Kirkpatrick was a named source for the Wall Street Journal's "The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America's UFO Mythology" [S19]. It reported that UFO stories had been seeded by the military itself: a "Yankee Blue" induction ritual in which new program commanders were told they were joining an alien reverse-engineering effort, doctored saucer photos to cover stealth-aircraft testing, and a secret EMP test as the explanation for the 1967 Malmstrom missile shutdowns [S20]. Malmstrom witness Robert Salas and researcher Robert Hastings disputed the EMP account in writing within days [S21][S22]. This is the most Blue Book-like move of the whole period, in its direction: not "the witnesses saw nothing" but "the witnesses saw us".

Congress's verdict (September 2025). At a House Oversight task-force hearing, the chair described AARO's process as potentially "ruses for pretending to investigate", and journalist George Knapp testified: "It almost looks like AARO operated as a counterintelligence operation to get people to come in, tell their stories and then discredit all of them" [S23].

Where the comparison is strongest, and where it is weakest

Strongest — the output. Like Blue Book, AARO's signature public product was explanation. Its one historical survey concluded there was nothing more to find [S13], and the most widely reported account its founding director later backed attributed the UFO story to the military's own pranks and cover stories [S19]. Like the Robertson Panel, its director treated public interest as a problem to be corrected — in his own words, by "sensational but unsupported claims" [S12].

Strong — the witnesses. Blue Book's reputation rests on how it treated the people who reported. AARO's rests on the same thing: public disputes with Grusch, disputed characterisations of witness testimony, and a founding director's shifting account of his own history with the subject.

Weakest — intent and the whistleblower channel. Critics go further and say AARO was built to catch leakers rather than protect them, pointing to its support contractor SANCorp, which advertises insider-threat work. The record does not show that. AARO's statute does include reprisal protections [S1]; its two SANCorp contracts are described as administrative, security, policy and analytic support, with no mention of insider-threat work [S24]; and at least one whistleblower used the channel and defended it [S25]. What the record does show is narrower: AARO's own reporting page quotes the part of its statute that waives non-disclosure agreements, but not the part that forbids reprisal [S26], and the best-known witnesses chose other channels. Treat the counterintelligence reading as suspicion, not finding.

Overlap

This era runs inside After the Centre and The Committee Gate, both still open. Those eras ask who commands the legacy programs and how access to them is administered. This one asks what the public-facing office did with the people trying to report on them.

What would change this reading

• A published AARO case resolution that confirmed an anomaly, or a released Volume 2 that engaged the whistleblower allegations on their merits, would weaken the Blue Book reading.
• A third attendee's account of the 2018 briefing — Puthoff, Green, or a committee staffer — would settle its date and subject either way.
• SANCorp's actual statement of work, or a referral record from AARO to a security or counterintelligence office, would settle the leak-control allegation in one direction or the other.
• The end of this era would be an AARO that witnesses go to. Nothing as of this writing marks that.

Sources

[S1] "50 U.S.C. 3373b — Unidentified anomalous phenomena reporting procedures" / https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:50%20section:3373b%20edition:prelim) / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Secure reporting mechanism; prohibition on reprisals [S2] "Engaging The Phenomenon — Ask UFO Twitter: UAP Task Force" (2020-08-31) / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27uK5S-iJHI&t=878s / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Earliest "Blue Book 2.0" framing found [S3] "UAP Gerb — The Modern Day UFO Disinformation Agent: Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick's Lies" (2024-01-26) / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK24ZdkvwN4&t=486s / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Robertson Panel comparison [S4] "American Alchemy — Skinwalker Owner Breaks Silence" (2026-07-26) / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYyXpx7ADJQ&t=9726s / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Fugal: "Blue Book 2.0 or Condon Report 2.0" [S5] "Establishment of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office" (Hicks memo, 15 July 2022) / https://media.defense.gov/2022/Jul/20/2003039074/-1/-1/1/ESTABLISHMENT-OF-THE-ALL-DOMAIN-ANOMALY-RESOLUTION-OFFICE.PDF / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Establishment date [S6] "DoD Announces the Establishment of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office" / https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3100053/ / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Announcement, Kirkpatrick named director [S7] "The Debrief — Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin" / https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-non-human-craft / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Grusch's disclosures to DoD IG and ICIG [S8] "Congress UFO hearing 'insulting': Pentagon official" (Fortune, 2023-07-29) / https://fortune.com/2023/07/29/congress-ufos-hearing-uaps-aliens-insulting-pentagon-official/ / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Kirkpatrick LinkedIn letter [S9] "Memorandum for Record, 8 January 2024" (DoD FOIA reading room) / https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/UFOsandUAPs/ / Accessed 2026-09-26 / DoD states Grusch declined [S10] "AARO FOIA 24-F-0266 — Memorandum for Record re: David Grusch" / https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PDFs/FOIA/2024%20FOIAs/24-F-0266.pdf / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Grusch's stated reason [S11] "Sean M. Kirkpatrick" (Wikipedia) / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_M._Kirkpatrick / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Departure 1 Dec 2023; 2018 NSC role [S12] "Here's What I Learned as the U.S. Government's UFO Hunter" (Kirkpatrick, Scientific American) / https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-what-i-learned-as-the-u-s-governments-ufo-hunter/ / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Kirkpatrick's account of his tenure [S13] "AARO Historical Record Report Volume 1" / https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PDFs/AARO_Historical_Record_Report_Vol_1_2024.pdf / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Central finding [S14] "AARO report: No evidence of officials reverse-engineering UAPs" (NewsNation, 2024-03-08) / https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/uap-aaro-report-release / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Release date; Burchett reaction [S15] "AARO Vol. II: the community-tracked August 1 window passed without a release" (UAP Logbook) / https://uaplogbook.com/aaro-historical-record-vol-ii-august-window / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Volume 2 unpublished as of Aug 2026 [S16] "@brandonfugal on Instagram, 9 May 2024" / https://www.instagram.com/p/C6xBgezMU8G / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Photo and caption [S17] "Brandon Fugal on X, 20 July 2024" / https://x.com/BrandonFugal/status/1814726458545483947 / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Fugal's account of Kirkpatrick's denial [S18] "Steven Greenstreet (@MiddleOfMayhem) on X, 9 May 2024" / https://x.com/MiddleOfMayhem/status/1788716008804679918 / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Kirkpatrick's response [S19] "The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America's UFO Mythology" (WSJ, 2025-06-07) / https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/ufo-us-disinformation-45376f7e / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Article; Kirkpatrick quoted [S20] "Pentagon planted UFO myths to hide secret weapons programs, report finds" (LiveNOW FOX) / https://www.livenowfox.com/news/ufo-disinfo-cold-war-stealth-coverup / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Kirkpatrick quote; article claims [S21] "A Rebuttal from Robert Salas of Ojai to Wall Street Journal's…" (Ojai Valley News) / https://www.ojaivalleynews.com/news/opinion-a-rebuttal-from-robert-salas-of-ojai-to-wall-street-journal / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Salas rebuttal [S22] "UFOs and Nukes Researcher Robert Hastings Refutes WSJ Article" / https://www.theufochronicles.com/2025/06/ufo-and-nukes-researcher-robert.html / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Hastings rebuttal [S23] "House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets — hearing transcript" (Sept 2025) / https://www.rev.com/transcripts/house-uap-whistleblower-hearing / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Luna and Knapp quotes [S24] "USASpending: HQ003422C0094 and HQ003424C0096 to SANCORP Consulting LLC" / https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_HQ003422C0094_9700_-NONE-_-NONE- / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Contract scope [S25] "The Trump Administration Sends a New Signal to Alien Disclosure" (Wired) / https://www.wired.com/story/trump-defense-department-sends-alien-disclosure-signal / Accessed 2026-09-26 / Whistleblower who used AARO [S26] "AARO — Submit a Report" / https://www.aaro.mil/Submit-A-Report / Accessed 2026-09-26 / AARO's self-description of its reporting channel

Research basis: AARO under Kirkpatrick research report.