On November 14, 2024, the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released their most detailed accounting yet of unidentified anomalous phenomena reported by U.S. military and intelligence personnel.
The unclassified FY2024 Consolidated Annual Report logs 757 UAP reports received between May 1, 2023, and June 1, 2024. Hundreds were resolved to ordinary objects — balloons, drones, birds, satellites. Twenty-one cases were flagged for deeper investigation. And, once again, the Pentagon said it found no evidence of anything extraterrestrial.
But those headline conclusions obscure what may be more important: the sheer volume of unresolved cases, persistent data gaps, and a growing disconnect between what the government says publicly and what members of Congress believe they’re being told behind closed doors.
The Numbers
Of the 757 reports, 485 involved incidents that occurred during the reporting period. The remaining 272 were late-filed reports from 2021–2022 that had never appeared in prior annual tallies.
The vast majority — 708 — involved objects in the air domain. Another 49 were in space.
By the time the report was published, AARO had resolved 292 cases to prosaic explanations:
| Category | Share of Resolved Cases |
|---|---|
| Balloons | 70% |
| Drones / UAS | 16% |
| Birds | 8% |
| Satellites | 4% |
| Aircraft | 2% |
That leaves 465 cases unresolved — 444 parked in an “active archive” due to insufficient data, and 21 flagged for further analysis with intelligence community and science partners.
“AARO determined 21 cases merit further analysis by its IC and S&T partners.” — AARO FY2024 Annual Report
What People Are Seeing
Where witnesses provided descriptions, the breakdown skewed heavily toward ambiguous visual phenomena:
| Shape | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Lights | 65% |
| Orb / sphere / round | 22% |
| Cylinder | 4% |
| Triangle | 3% |
| Disk | 1% |
| Square / polygon | 1% |
| Other | 4% |
Another 170 reports lacked sufficient detail to characterize shape at all.
Altitude data shows sightings clustered around 20,000 feet (17% of reports) and 50,000 feet (14%) — ranges that overlap with commercial aviation and high-altitude balloon traffic.
Geography Follows the Sensors
AARO’s report makes a point that often gets lost in coverage: the geographic distribution of UAP reports reflects where the U.S. military operates, not necessarily where anomalous things are happening.
81 reports came from U.S. military operating areas. East Asian seas produced 100 reports, of which 40 were resolved as balloons or drones. The Middle East contributed 57 reports, with 13 resolved and 42 retained in the active archive.
The report states this collection bias is a persistent limitation — areas without dense sensor coverage may have equal or greater UAP activity that simply goes undetected.
The “No Evidence” Finding
The report’s most quoted line is familiar:
“AARO has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology.” — AARO FY2024 Annual Report
AARO Director Dr. Jon T. Kosloski reinforced this at a media roundtable the same day:
“None of the cases resolved by AARO have pointed to advanced capabilities or breakthrough technologies.”
The report also states that no resolved cases substantiate advanced foreign adversary capabilities — a finding that cuts both ways. It means nothing exotic was confirmed, but it also means the 465 unresolved cases remain unexplained, not debunked.
Flight Safety and Sensitive Sites
AARO flagged limited flight-safety impacts in FAA data but noted it continues to analyze a reported near-miss incident. The office also tracks drone and UAS activity near nuclear infrastructure and other sensitive installations — a concern that has grown sharply since late 2024 as drone incursions over military bases became a recurring headline.
Congressional Reaction
The report landed during a week of intense Congressional activity on UAP.
The day before the report’s release, the House Oversight Subcommittee held a public hearing where members criticized classification barriers and argued the Pentagon was withholding meaningful access to UAP data.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) didn’t mince words:
“We’re not getting the full picture.”
Five days later, the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities held its own hearing with AARO leadership. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who has been one of the Senate’s strongest voices for UAP oversight, pressed on reporting mechanisms and the national security implications of unresolved cases.
The tension is clear: AARO says it has found nothing extraordinary, while a bipartisan group of lawmakers says the office doesn’t have the access or independence to make that determination credibly. That tension has only deepened since — as UFOUAP has reported, AARO has since missed key deadlines and drawn criticism for unfulfilled mandates.
The Skeptical View
Critics of the UAP disclosure movement point to the FY2024 report as evidence that the system is working exactly as it should. The vast majority of resolved cases turned out to be mundane objects. The dominance of “lights” and “orbs” in witness descriptions is consistent with misidentification of familiar phenomena under unusual conditions.
Skeptics also note that AARO’s unresolved backlog is primarily a data-quality problem, not evidence of exotic technology — a point the report itself makes explicitly.
On the other side, disclosure advocates argue AARO lacks the independence and access to investigate legacy special-access programs. They view the “no evidence” conclusion as a function of limited scope, not a definitive answer. This is the same argument David Grusch brought to Congress in 2023, and it hasn’t gone away.
What the Report Doesn’t Say
The FY2024 report doesn’t identify which 21 cases merit deeper analysis, beyond noting they exhibited “anomalous characteristics and/or behaviors.” It provides no case narratives, no sensor data, and no specifics that would allow independent review.
It also doesn’t address the growing backlog of more than 1,600 total UAP reports AARO has received since its inception — a number Kosloski confirmed at the media roundtable.
The question isn’t whether 757 reports can be filed in a year. They clearly can. The question is whether the office tasked with explaining them has the tools, the access, and the mandate to actually do so.
Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Aug 14, 2020 | DoD establishes the UAP Task Force (UAPTF) |
| Jul 20, 2022 | AARO formally established, replacing AOIMSG |
| Aug 31, 2023 | AARO launches public website and secure reporting channel |
| Feb 2024 | AARO completes Historical Record Report Volume I |
| Mar 8, 2024 | Volume I released publicly — finds no evidence of reverse-engineering programs |
| Nov 13, 2024 | House Oversight holds public UAP hearing |
| Nov 14, 2024 | FY2024 AARO Annual Report released (757 cases) |
| Nov 19, 2024 | Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing with AARO leadership |
Sources: AARO FY2024 Annual Report (PDF) · DoD Press Release · DoD News Story · AARO Media Roundtable Transcript · Stars and Stripes · CBS News · House Oversight Hearing Record (PDF) · AARO Historical Record Report Vol. I (PDF)