All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was established by the Pentagon on July 20, 2022, under the Department of Defense, charged with detecting, identifying, and attributing unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) across air, space, and sea domains. In practice, UAP researchers, whistleblowers, and investigative journalists widely characterize it as a "honeypot" and "Potemkin village" — a bureaucratic façade constructed to manage the UAP narrative, suppress credible witnesses, and protect the legacy classified programs that actually house the material evidence.

Official Structure and Methodology

Former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick described the office as a "microcosm of a combatant command," with specialized groups for Science & Technology (S&T), intelligence analysis, operations, and data integration. Its stated analytical approach uses a red-team/blue-team structure: the S&T group evaluates sensor data and physics while the intelligence team cross-checks the intelligence record for matching known-platform signatures. When the two teams disagree, they enter a "cage match" peer-review process to narrow uncertainty. Kirkpatrick also claimed AARO holds legal authority to access all national, agency, and military archives — and that when a whistleblower provides a classified code name, AARO takes it to the relevant Special Access Program Central Office (SAPCO) to verify and review the program.

Built to Bury, Not Investigate

AARO was not built to discover anything. Researcher Steve Bassett calls it a "Potemkin village" — not created to learn about non-human intelligence (since key elements of the government allegedly already possess that knowledge), but to construct controlled scaffolding that would let the executive branch manage any eventual disclosure on its own terms.

Investigative journalist George Knapp and researcher Dr. Colm Kelleher draw the contrast starkly with earlier efforts like AAWSAP and AATIP: those programs pursued hands-on, boots-on-the-ground investigation of the phenomenon. AARO, by contrast, appears designed to "explain stuff away on the shakiest of grounds" — avoiding field investigation in favor of pattern-matching sensor data against known platforms and closing cases quickly.

The Historical Report Volume 1 Controversy

AARO's Historical Report Volume 1 became a flashpoint for demonstrating the office's willingness to falsify the record. The most documented example involves Marine whistleblower Michael Herrera:

• AARO's report described an account that clearly matches Herrera's 2009 Indonesia encounter, but altered it materially: AARO claimed Herrera reported "US Special Forces" loading an "extraterrestrial spacecraft." In reality, Herrera explicitly stated the paramilitary men bore no rank, unit patches, or identifiers of any kind — he could not identify them as US military.
• AARO described the craft as "extraterrestrial." Herrera characterized it as a human-engineered Alien Reproduction Vehicle (ARV) — a critical distinction with legal and classification implications.
• AARO attempted to explain the sighting by correlating it with a known US platform tested at a "military facility." Herrera's encounter occurred in a remote jungle landing zone in Indonesia — not a controlled test range.

These are not minor discrepancies. UAP researchers treat the report as deliberate disinformation designed to discredit Herrera before he could testify or seek legal protection.

Leadership

Sean Kirkpatrick served as AARO's first director (2022–2023). He is accused of actively misrepresenting whistleblower testimony, running a disinformation campaign against David Grusch through social media and friendly journalists, and feeding a fabricated narrative — "Yankee Blue," an alleged Air Force hazing ritual — to the Wall Street Journal to pre-debunk legacy program claims.

Ronald Moultrie, then-Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security (USD(I&S)), played the central role in establishing AARO and handpicking Kirkpatrick. Researchers view Moultrie as a career intelligence-community insider assigned to manage the UAP narrative at the bureaucratic level.

Tim Phillips, former AARO Deputy Director, is accused of sharing inaccurate information about AARO's contractors and operating procedures in public podcast appearances.

Whistleblower Distrust

AARO created a public disclosure portal inviting UAP whistleblowers to submit their accounts. The channel went effectively unused by anyone with genuinely sensitive information. David Grusch — the most prominent named government whistleblower on crash-retrieval programs — submitted his findings through the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG) instead, deliberately bypassing AARO. George Knapp summarized the calculus bluntly: anyone with real, classified knowledge of legacy programs would have to be "out of their mind" to risk their life and career by routing it through AARO's portal.

The pattern is consistent: AARO's track record of distorting testimony (Herrera), attacking whistleblower credibility (Grusch), and insulating known programs from oversight made it functionally useless as an honest reporting channel — and arguably actively dangerous to insiders who might consider using it.