THE OFFICE
The Department of Defense established AARO in 2022 to centralize UAP investigation that had previously been scattered across short-lived task forces — the UAP Task Force and its predecessors. Its mandate is broad by design: "all-domain" means air, sea, space, and transmedium objects, not just things in the sky. It sits under the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security and coordinates with the intelligence community, the military services, and other agencies to collect and resolve reports.
WHAT IT DOES
AARO receives and analyzes UAP reports, works to declassify and release sensor footage, and publishes assessments and historical reviews. Its 2024 report on the historical record of U.S. government involvement with UAP found no verifiable evidence that the government recovered non-human craft — a conclusion that sits in tension with some whistleblower testimony. Crucially for readers, AARO frames cases in measured, non-sensational language ("an area of contrast," "unresolved") rather than asserting what an object was.
AARO AND PURSUE
The PURSUE public release carries AARO's assessments with the documents and footage. Umbra preserves that neutral framing rather than editorializing it — so when you read a file, you read the office's actual wording, not a headline's interpretation. The whole record is in the app.
> Read the files with AARO's own assessments intact, on your iPhone.
