All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is the official office within the United States Department of Defense tasked with investigating Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). It was established by Congress in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and is the successor to the UAP Task Force.¹

Establishment and Mandate

The creation of AARO was a direct result of the legislative efforts of Christopher Mellon, Luis Elizondo, and a bipartisan group of senators and representatives who were concerned about the national security implications of UAP and the lack of transparency from the Pentagon. The office is mandated to synchronize efforts across the Department of Defense and other federal agencies to detect, identify, and attribute objects of interest in, on, or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace, and other areas of interest.¹

AARO is required to provide regular briefings to Congress and to produce an annual public report on its findings. The establishment of a permanent, congressionally-mandated UAP office with a direct line of reporting to lawmakers is a significant step forward in the effort to bring transparency and scientific rigor to the study of UAP.¹

Academic Workshops

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is named as sponsor of a two-day workshop held August 5 and 6, 2025 at the headquarters of Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) in Vienna, Virginia. The sponsoring office's own paper, "2025 UAP Workshop: Narrative Data, Infrastructures, and Analysis. Workshop Synthesis and Recommendations," carries the line "Workshop sponsored by: All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)" and the document number 26-P-0344. Its executive summary states that the workshop "brought together 40 participants from government, academia, and independent research organizations," and the text adds that "Outside participation was limited due to budget constraints and institutional capacity."²

The invitation letter reproduced in the paper's Appendix A, signed by Gretchen Stahlman of Florida State University and Tim Spuck of AUI on behalf of the organizing committee, states that the event "builds upon a previous NSF-funded workshop held in 2024" and that "A new collaboration between the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), and Florida State University (FSU) has convened to host the upcoming event." The 2024 workshop was held May 15 to 17, 2024 at AUI under National Science Foundation award 2301922, via a $25,000 supplement (see 2024 AUI UAP Workshop). The 2025 letter anticipated "25-30 experts," and the final count was 40. It offered lodging and most meals and stated that the organizers were "unable to compensate you for travel costs."²

The paper's recommended next steps are standardized metadata templates for UAP reports, a hybrid of qualitative expertise and AI tools with human oversight, triage of reports by credibility and corroboration, preservation and digitization of historical reports, enhancement of public reporting portals, and further convenings to build a "community of practice." Its guidelines for conduct state that the workshop would "NOT be focused on what UAP are or their origins," and name tags could list a first name with no institutional affiliation.²

The Society for UAP Studies published a report by Greg Bishop dated September 2, 2025 stating that AARO and AUI "convened a symposium at the AUI headquarters in Vienna, Virginia," and that "AARO director Kosloski emphasized that the mission of his office is to study UAP as a potential deficit in 'domain awareness.'" The report identifies the director as Acting Director Dr. Jon T. Kosloski.³

On April 29, 2026 AUI's podcast "Beyond the Breakthrough" (episode "Making Sense of the Unknown," with Spuck and Stahlman) stated in its notes: "The 2025 workshop, 'Narrative Data, Infrastructures, and Analysis' was supported by the U.S. All-domain Anomaly Office."⁴