Covering the Fiscal Year 2024-2025, up to the end of May 2026, the report notes that AARO received information on 319 UAP cases during that time period. The AARO explains that the cases received have a “collection bias” favouring the USA, especially military observations.
But then the numbers start of break down into meat and potatoes. Of the 319 reports, only 284 occurred during the reporting period, with 35 being older incidents reported long after the fact. In other words, good luck investigating historical cases.
Of the 319 cases, AARO resolved (explained) 114 reports. These turned out to be “balloons, birds, satellites, aircraft” and “UAS” (drones). You have to dig deeper into the released report to find that 191 of the 319 had “insufficient data” to arrive at a definitive explanation.
That left 14 cases unexplained, or about 4%. For comparison, the Canadian government noted 3% in its official analysis (Robertson Briefing) in 1967. And in 2026, the Canadian UFO Survey had 3%. In other words, both historical and civilian researchers had the same resolution success rate than the US military establishment.
Frankly, it’s an odd report. The breakdown of cases is not easy to tease out. And there’s no list of case data, which would help us understand the kinds of objects that had been reported. At the very least, AARO could have presented the 14 unresolved cases in a bit of detail, such as providing dates, times, and a general description.
Curiously, the AARO report describes only one case, the single “maritime” report in which a USN “asset” reported “approximately 100” UAP. That was obviously the Langley drone flap hyped by media.
A few other tidbits:
- “None of the cases AARO resolved indicate advanced foreign adversarial capabilities or breakthrough technologies in any domain.” In other words, no Chinese or Russian secret technology at work.
- “To date, no evidence suggests that a USG or private entity has ever captured or exploited UAP-derived materials.” Sorry, no crashed saucers.
- “To date, AARO has not received a UAP report in which a reporter described sustaining adverse health effects associated with their experience.” No medical injuries were caused by UAP.
- “No reports indicated a flight safety concern during this reporting period.” So airliners were not buzzed by UFOs at close range.
- And out of 262 people who reported UAP through its website, AARO “identified 7 individuals whose claims warranted a request for a follow-on interview.” The rest were “out-of-scope,” whatever that might mean. Were they easy-to-explain sightings of UAP? Unreliable sources? Cranks?
And finally, the issue of “UAS Observations Near U.S. Nuclear Infrastructure, Weapons, and Launch Sites.” It’s important to note that while there were 50 UAS (i.e. drone) sightings: “None of these incidents were reported as UAP.”
These objects reported were all considered to be drones, not UFOs or anything non-prosaic. That this was incorrect on at least some occasions is indicated by a note stating that: “Five incidents persisted for a duration of at least one hour, with the longest recorded at approximately three hours.” These were clearly not drones, and in fact, my interpretation is that these were astronomical objects that were misidentified as stationary “drones.” But without details of these cases, we will never know.
The problematic phrasing used here is: “near nuclear infrastructure.” How near? Also, there is big difference between objects seen within a few hundred feet of a nuclear site, and objects seen in the direction of a nuclear site. The fact that 21 of 50 reports did not include any estimate of the duration of the observations suggests that the reports were either incomplete or were not thoroughly investigated. Again, the spectre of “insufficient information” has reared its ugly head.
In summary, the May 2026 AARO report doesn’t give us much to go on. What we do know is that since its inception in August 2022, AARO has 1,870 cases on file, including an unspecified number of incidents which occurred before that date. (NB: Ufology Research received about twice that number during the same time period.)
AARO has not found any evidence of NHI, advanced foreign technology, or physical injuries from UAP, in contrast to the many claims and sensational stories slamming social media.
Article originally published on Chris Rutkowski Substack
(c) Chris Rutkowski
