AARO Said There's No Alien Cover-Up. Here's What Its Critics Say It Missed

On Friday, March 8, 2024, the Pentagon released the document that was supposed to end the argument.

It ran about 60 pages. It covered every official U.S. government UFO investigation since 1945. And its headline conclusion was as flat as government prose gets: there are no crashed alien spacecraft, no recovered bodies, and no secret reverse-engineering program.

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, called it the "Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), Volume I."

Critics called it something else. Within weeks, a former Pentagon intelligence official said it was the most error-ridden government report he had ever read. Members of Congress complained about the secrecy of the office that wrote it. And the promised Volume II still hasn't publicly appeared.

What AARO concluded

Congress ordered the review in the 2023 defense authorization law. AARO says it reviewed classified and unclassified archives, partnered with the officials who oversee special access programs, and conducted "approximately 30 interviews."

The executive summary is unambiguous. "AARO found no evidence that any USG investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology."

On the biggest claim, it was blunter still. "AARO found no empirical evidence for claims that the USG and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology."

Then it went claim by claim, at what it called "high confidence":

• Nondisclosure agreements: No authentic UAP-related NDA "or other evidence threatening death or violence for disclosing UAP information."
• The 1961 intelligence estimate: A "leaked" Special National Intelligence Estimate suggesting UFOs are extraterrestrial is "inauthentic."
• The officer who touched a craft: The named officer denied it on the record and recalled touching an F-117 stealth fighter instead.
• The metal sample: A fragment from an alleged crashed spacecraft, provided by a private group and the U.S. Army, is "primarily composed of magnesium, zinc, and bismuth," a "manufactured, terrestrial alloy."
• Aerospace companies: Executives named by interviewees met AARO's director and "denied on the record" ever possessing extraterrestrial technology.

The two things AARO admitted were real

This is the part of the report that gets the least attention, and it's the strangest.

KONA BLUE. After the Defense Intelligence Agency canceled its UFO contract in 2012, AARO says, supporters pitched the Department of Homeland Security on a new special access program to restart UAP investigations, paranormal research, and reverse-engineer "any recovered off-world spacecraft that they hoped to acquire." It reached the point of a formal request before DHS leadership rejected it "for lacking merit."

An expanded intelligence program. AARO confirmed that in 2021, an existing intelligence community controlled access program "was unnecessarily expanded" to include "a UAP reverse-engineering mission," without any evidence or mission need. It "never recovered or reverse-engineered any technology," AARO said, and was later disestablished.

In other words, the government did create paperwork for a UFO reverse-engineering effort, at least twice. AARO's position is that nothing was ever in the box.

"Circular reporting"

The line that made believers furious is this one:

"AARO assesses that the inaccurate claim that the USG is reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology and is hiding it from Congress is, in large part, the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence."

The report says modern versions of the claim "largely stem from a consistent group of individuals" active "since at least 2009," many tied to the canceled DIA program and to KONA BLUE. It refers to them only as "Persons 1-5" and numbered interviewees, and says they "have not provided any empirical evidence of their claims to AARO."

It also says something that cuts against the whistleblowers directly: "none of the interviewees had firsthand knowledge of these programs."

The footnotes problem

Here is where the critics found their opening, and some of it you can check yourself in the PDF.

• Harry Reid's state. The report calls the late Nevada senator "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NM)."
• Kenneth Arnold's date. It puts the famous 1947 sighting on "June 23, 1947." Arnold's sighting is generally dated June 24, as The Debrief and Christopher Mellon both noted.
• A Blue Book chief's name. It lists "Lt Col Roger J. Friend." The Debrief points out the officer was Robert J. Friend.
• A fan wiki. Footnote 3 cites a page on military-history.fandom.com.

The Debrief's Micah Hanks also flagged the report's use of "Project BEAR" for what he says was formally Project STORK, the 1950s Battelle statistical study.

None of these errors changes the conclusion on reverse engineering. But they hurt the report's central claim: that it was rigorous.

The critics' case

Christopher Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence and one of the figures behind the 2017 disclosures, wrote a long rebuttal in The Debrief. His verdict became the most quoted line of the backlash: "this is the most error-ridden and unsatisfactory government report I can recall reading during or after decades of government service."

His argument goes beyond typos. Mellon says AARO reviewed government "investigations" when the law asked for the history of UAP more broadly. He says it skipped major cases, including the 2004 USS Nimitz encounters and the 1975 incidents at northern-tier Air Force bases. He also says it was the first AARO report submitted to Congress that the Director of National Intelligence did not approve. We could not independently confirm that last point.

Critics also note what is absent. David Grusch, whose testimony largely prompted the public fight, is never named. In July 2023, then-AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick wrote that the "central source" of the allegations had "refused to speak with AARO." Grusch, for his part, testified that he had given names and locations to the Intelligence Community Inspector General and to the congressional intelligence committees.

In Congress, frustration went bipartisan. At a November 13, 2024, House Oversight hearing, Rep. Nancy Mace said, "I'm disturbed that AARO itself lacks transparency — even its budget is kept from the public," according to DefenseScoop. Journalist Michael Shellenberger's written testimony to that hearing quoted Mellon and catalogued the report's critics.

AARO's defense

AARO has not backed off. Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder's statement on the release said AARO "has approached this project with the widest possible aperture" and "will follow the evidence where it leads, wherever it leads."

The report itself says AARO "was granted full, unrestricted access by all organizations," and that every authentic program it found "has been properly notified and reported to Congress."

AARO's fiscal 2025 annual report, released in July 2026 under Director Jon Kosloski, repeated the core finding: "To date, no evidence suggests that a USG or private entity has ever captured or exploited UAP-derived materials."

Where's Volume II?

Volume I promised a sequel covering interviews and research from November 1, 2023, through April 15, 2024. That was supposed to be the part that dealt with newer witnesses.

As of February 2026, AARO "has not published" its "second volume of reports on government involvement with UAP," DefenseScoop reported. Asked about the lack of new reports, Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough said, "We have nothing to announce at this time." We have not been able to locate a public Volume II since.

Meanwhile, the caseload keeps growing. Gough told DefenseScoop that AARO "has been examining over 2,000 UAP cases."

What we know, and what we don't

What we know

• AARO found no evidence of recovered extraterrestrial technology and called the reverse-engineering narrative largely circular reporting.
• It confirmed KONA BLUE was proposed and rejected, and that an intelligence program was improperly expanded to include UAP reverse engineering, then shut down.
• The published report contains verifiable factual and citation errors.

What we don't

• Who "Persons 1-5" are, and what the unnamed interviewees actually told AARO.
• Whether the DNI formally declined to approve the report, as Mellon says.
• When, or whether, Volume II will be made public.

A verdict with an asterisk

AARO's case is strong on one point: it says it went looking for the programs, found the real ones, and found them empty. That is a specific, testable claim from people who had the clearances.

But a report meant to settle a credibility fight can't afford sloppy footnotes, and it can't leave its most important witness unnamed and unheard in the text. That's the asterisk critics have been waving for two and a half years.

So what would it take for you to accept AARO's conclusion: a corrected report, Volume II, or something no government report could ever provide? Tell us in the comments.

Sources

• Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Volume I — All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, 2024
• Statement by Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder on the Historical Record Report, Volume 1 — U.S. Department of Defense, 2024
• AARO's Historical Report: A Tale of Factual Errors and Old Mistakes Repeated — The Debrief, 2024
• The Pentagon's New UAP Report Is Seriously Flawed — Christopher Mellon, The Debrief, 2024
• Written testimony of Michael Shellenberger, House Oversight hearing of Nov. 13, 2024 — U.S. House of Representatives, 2024
• Lawmakers urge Pentagon to be more transparent about ongoing UAP investigations — DefenseScoop, 2024
• Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena hearing transcript, July 26, 2023 (Serial No. 118-53) — U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2023
• Top Pentagon official calls UFO hearing 'insulting' to US employees — Scripps News, 2023
• Fiscal Year 2025 Consolidated Annual Report on UAP — All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, 2026
• Hegseth doubles down on Trump's UAP disclosure promise as AARO's caseload exceeds 2,000 — DefenseScoop, 2026