The Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office released a report on March 8 detailing its review of nearly 80 years of reports on government offices and special access programs related to “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAP, a new term for what was once referred to as unidentified flying objects.

“AARO has found no verifiable evidence that any UAP sighting has represented extraterrestrial activity,” AARO acting Director Tim Phillips said during a March 6 briefing at the Pentagon. “AARO has found no verifiable evidence that the U.S. government or private industry has ever had access to extraterrestrial technology. AARO has found no indications that any information was illegally or inappropriately withheld from Congress.”

The 63-page “Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena” provides conclusions after examining historical documents and conclusions drawn by U.S. government programs that did work related to UAP dating from 1945, according to a Pentagon release.

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AARO has also investigated claims that there were secret or hidden U.S. government programs related to UAP that might not have been reported to Congress, including verifying whether those programs actually existed, according to the Pentagon.

“AARO assesses that alleged, hidden UAP programs either do not exist or were misidentified, authentic national security programs unrelated to extraterrestrial technology exploitation,” Phillips said. “We assess that claims of such programs are largely the result of circular reporting in which a small group of individuals have repeated inaccurate claims they have heard from others over a period of several decades.”

The report includes assessments of claims made by about 30 individuals who AARO interviewed, including former and current U.S. government employees who were allegedly involved in such programs or heard stories about those programs and subsequently misinterpreted what they saw or heard, according to Pentagon release.

The report covered a narrative that “is that a cluster of UAP sightings that occurred in close proximity to U.S. nuclear facilities have resulted in the malfunctioning and destruction of nuclear missiles and a test reentry vehicle. AARO interviewed five former USAF members who served in and around U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile silos at Malmstrom, Ellsworth, Vandenberg, and Minot USAF bases between 1966 and 1977.98 Some of these individuals claim
UAP sightings near the silos, while others claim UAP disruptions to ICBM operations. Specifically, they said the ICBM launch control facilities went offline or experienced total power failure. Additionally, one interviewee and a USAF videographer claimed to have observed and recorded a UAP destroying an ICBM loaded with a “dummy” warhead, mid-flight. AARO is researching U.S. and adversarial activity related to these events, including any U.S. programs
that tested defensive ballistic missile capabilities.”

AARO investigated and reached conclusions on most of those claims and will report those results in the second volume of their research, according to the report.

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“I wish to emphasize that we believe most of the individuals repeating these claims did so without malice or any effort to mislead the public,” Phillips said in the briefing. “Many have sincerely misinterpreted real events or mistaken sensitive U.S. programs, for which they were not cleared, as having been related to UAP or extraterrestrial exploitation.”

“AARO, as designed by Congress, had unprecedented access to classified programs,” Phillips said. “Nobody blocked where we could go or the questions we asked. Nobody in the government influenced the findings in the report. As a career intelligence officer, I am just amazed at the access we had to some of our nation’s most sensitive programs. Nobody said, ‘No.'”

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Lawmakers directed AARO to produce the report as part of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.

The March 8 report is the first volume of AARO’s findings and covers a period from 1945 through October 2023.

A second volume, which will be released later this year, will cover findings from interviews and research completed between November 2023 and April 2024, according to the Pentagon.