Who runs AARO?

“Dr. Jon Kosloski, a former National Security Agency intelligence officer with a Ph.D. in physics, is the Director of AARO — appointed by the Secretary of Defense in July 2024.”

AARO — the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office — is led by Dr. Jon Kosloski, who was appointed Director by the Secretary of Defense in July 2024. Kosloski holds a Ph.D. in physics from the Catholic University of America and previously served as an intelligence officer at the National Security Agency, where he led work in quantum information science. He replaced Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO's founding Director (2022-2023), and Tim Phillips, who served as Acting Director during the transition. Kosloski has been the public voice for AARO's most-recent resolutions, including the 2026 finding on the 2017 USS Theodore Roosevelt GOFAST video: "Through a very careful geospatial intelligence analysis and using trigonometry, we assess with high confidence that the object is not actually close to the water, but is rather closer to 13,000 feet." AARO reports through the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.