AARO’s FY2025 UAP Caseload: What the Public Data Shows

AARO’s latest consolidated annual report gives a much clearer answer than the backlog claim that previously framed this page. As of May 30, 2025, the office said its holdings contained 1,870 reports. That figure is the size of the case collection, not a count of confirmed anomalous craft and not a simple queue in which every item is waiting for the same kind of work.

What AARO received and resolved

For the June 2, 2024 through May 30, 2025 reporting period, AARO received 319 reports. It resolved 114 of those new reports and another 256 reports from earlier periods, for 370 resolutions during the year. The report attributes every resolved case to ordinary categories such as balloons, satellites, birds, aircraft, unmanned aircraft systems, one commercial rocket launch, and one manned jet pack.

A new modeling capability also allowed analysts to resolve 238 reports as satellite flaring. That matters because bright, apparently moving lights can look unusual from an aircraft while still being consistent with reflected sunlight from satellites when geometry and timing are reconstructed.

What remains open

AARO identified nine reports from the year’s intake for further analysis with intelligence-community and science-and-technology partners. It moved 191 of the 319 reports into its active archive because the available data were insufficient for a conclusion. The report defines the active archive as a repository that can support trend analysis and can be revisited if better data or improved methods become available.

“Unresolved” therefore does not mean “confirmed extraordinary.” In many cases it means the report lacks enough timely sensor data to distinguish among ordinary, adversarial, natural, or genuinely anomalous explanations.

What the report does not support

The FY2025 report says none of AARO’s resolved cases indicated an advanced foreign capability or breakthrough technology. It also says that, to date, AARO has no evidence that a U.S. government or private entity has captured or exploited UAP-derived materials. Those are public institutional assessments; they do not prove that every historical claim is false, but they set a clear boundary on what the office says its evidence currently establishes.

How to read future caseload claims

Use three separate numbers whenever possible: total holdings, cases resolved in the reporting period, and cases lacking enough data. Combining them into a single “backlog” number obscures the difference between active analysis, archived low-data reports, duplicate reports, and completed resolutions. The annual report and AARO’s live trends page are the best public baselines for checking new claims.