As UFO/UAP discourse finds itself at an all-time high, the government’s official body monitoring the unknown will be receiving a hefty sum from Congress to complete its tasks. Friday, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) announced she’d helped secure “full funding” for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) as a part of the Senate’s FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act.
“With aggression from adversaries on the rise and with incidents like the Chinese spy balloon, it’s critical to our national security that we have strong air domain awareness over our homeland and around U.S. forces operating overseas,” Gillibrand said in a release. “Fully funding AARO is essential to our national security; the office provides the opportunity to integrate and resolve threats and hazards to the U.S., while also offering increased transparency to the American people and reducing the stigma around this issue of high public interest.”
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AARO was formed last year within the Office of the Secretary of Defense to investigate unidentified objects in the air, sea, and on land. Previously known as UFOs, or unidentified objects, the government now calls unknown flying objects UAP, or unidentified aerial phenomena. Some officials use unidentified anomalous phenomena as a placeholder as well.
During a Congressional hearing earlier this year, AARO head Sean Kirkpatrick revealed his office is investigating at least 650 UAP sightings it doesn’t have an explanation for.
“Of those over 650, we’ve prioritized about half of them to be of anomalous interesting value, and now we have to go through those and go ‘How much of those do I have actual data for?’” Kirkpatrick said during his testimony.
“In our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics,” he added. “In the event sufficient scientific data were ever obtained that a UAP encountered can only be explained by extraterrestrial origin, we are committed to working with our interagency partners at NASA to appropriately inform the U.S. Government’s leadership of its findings.”
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