Today, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand announced that she had secured full funding for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s markup of the FY24 National Defense Authorization Act. Earlier this year, Gillibrand and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) led a bipartisan push to fully fund the office after the previous year’s NDAA failed to provide adequate funding.
Gillibrand and Rubio’s groundbreaking AARO was created in the FY22 NDAA to focus the Department of Defense (DoD) on resolving UAP sightings, improving data sharing between DoD and the Intelligence Community on UAP sightings, addressing national security concerns, and reporting health effects people may experience in relation to UAP events. AARO has access to DoD and Intelligence Community UAP data and is required to provide Congress with briefings and reports on UAPs.
“With aggression from adversaries on the rise and with incidents like the Chinese spy balloon, it’s critical to our national security that we have strong air domain awareness over our homeland and around U.S. forces operating overseas,” said Senator Gillibrand. “Fully funding AARO is essential to our national security; the office provides the opportunity to integrate and resolve threats and hazards to the U.S., while also offering increased transparency to the American people and reducing the stigma around this issue of high public interest.”