Civilian Scientists Say: Keep UFO Data AWAY From Pentagon
- Cristina Gomez
- 10 hours ago
- 3 min read
The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, known as AARO, quietly held a private two-day workshop in August 2025 with approximately 40 researchers from government, academia, and independent organizations. No public announcement was made before the event. Attendees covered their own travel. The only reason it became public knowledge at all is because AARO published a 17-page whitepaper last month, as first reported by DefenseScoop.
According to that whitepaper, the workshop focused on a real and well-documented problem. UAP reports currently come from too many inconsistent sources — military logs, pilot records, civilian testimony, and social media — none of it formatted in a way that allows for meaningful comparison. The workshop laid out a plan to standardize reporting templates, improve data sharing between military and civilian sources, and apply artificial intelligence to process large volumes of reports at scale.
But buried in AARO’s own document is a line that changes the stakes of the conversation. The workshop findings, the whitepaper states, may influence how and where physical sensors are deployed going forward. That means a private government meeting, held without public input or oversight, could directly determine what UAP evidence gets recorded in the first place.
At almost the same time, the UAP Detection and Tracking Summit was held in February 2026, bringing together researchers including Congressman Eric Burlison, Professor Gary Nolan, and Ryan Graves of Americans for Safe Aerospace along with others. Summit organizer Reed Summers, speaking to NewsNation’s Reality Check, issued a direct warning. According to Summers, civilian UAP data should not be handed to the Department of Defense or to AARO, which he stated is actively pursuing that data right now. He called instead for a decentralized, internationally governed, nonprofit civilian network.
Per additional reporting from DefenseScoop, AARO’s caseload has now grown to over 2,000 UAP reports, with approximately 1,000 of those lacking enough data to analyze. The office has also been building new infrastructure to manage its growing caseload and has reportedly reached out to some civilian and international research groups with funding offers.
On the civilian side, researchers presented low-cost distributed sensor networks at around $500 per unit, capable of rooftop deployment and automatic data collection. Mitch Randall’s Skywatch project estimated roughly 10,000 units could provide nationwide coverage across the United States. Researcher Bob McGwire presented an acoustic sensor concept for shallow coastal waters designed to detect underwater movement matching nothing in any known naval inventory. Some of these systems are already in limited field deployment.
Ryan Graves also brought forward an account of a commercial pilot with 16,000 hours of flight experience who observed a large black triangular object approach their aircraft at 28,000 feet, coming within 200 feet of a passenger-filled airliner in under five seconds. Graves and others at the summit confirmed that pilots still face real professional consequences for officially logging UAP sightings, meaning most encounters go unreported entirely.
Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough confirmed to DefenseScoop that AARO does not have additional workshops currently planned.
Sources
2025 UAP Workshop: Narrative Data, Infrastructures, and Analysis. (2026). In AARO.mil. Department of Defense.
https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PDFs/Information%20Papers/2025_UAP_Workshop_Paper.pdf
NewsNation. (2026, March 17). Data drives disclosure: Creating a civilian UFO reporting network | Reality Check [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPSKB6ZZQm0
Vincent, B. (2026, March 16). Pentagon’s AARO quietly held an invite-only workshop to help shape the future of UAP research. DefenseScoop. https://defensescoop.com/2026/03/16/dod-ufo-workshop-uap-research-aaro/
