Pentagon investigating mysterious UAP event reported by the Navy near Virginia’s coast
Experts in the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office are investigating a report from the U.S. Navy involving roughly 100 mysterious airborne objects and watercraft that were recorded operating off the coast of Virginia.
AARO’s Fiscal Year 2025 Consolidated Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, released this week, briefly discloses that modern military account of UAP swarming near a U.S. installation.
“A lack of timely and actionable sensor data continues to constrain AARO’s ability to resolve cases,” officials wrote in the 14-page review.
Launched under the Biden administration in 2022 to fulfill a mandate in that year’s National Defense Authorization Act, AARO is charged with detecting mysterious objects reported across the air, land, sea, and space domains that could threaten national security or endanger military operations — and resolving the intent and origin of those recorded UAP. Congress made the directive to establish the office partly in response to mounting concerns that some UAP could be high-tech drones or other next-generation military platforms produced by U.S. adversaries.
The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 required the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense to jointly submit unclassified reports (with classified annexes) summarizing all UAP incidents and intelligence assessments for Congress annually, for four years thereafter.
All UAP-related events added into AARO’s caseload between June 2, 2024 and May 30, 2025, and incidents occurring within any past reporting period that were not recorded in previous reports, are included in the latest congressionally-mandated analysis.
Over the course of that year, AARO received 319 UAP reports in total — with 284 featuring UAP-related events from that reporting period, and 25 occurring between 2010 and 2024.
“AARO resolved 114 of the 319 UAP reports, each attributable to various prosaic objects such as balloons, birds, satellites, aircraft, UAS, and a single instance each of a rocket launch and a manned jet pack,” officials wrote.
They confirmed that the office’s case holdings contained 1,870 reports as of May 30, 2025.
Of the 319 new reports that came in over that fiscal year, officials confirmed that 274 UAP reports were observed or captured in the air domain, 44 in the space domain, and one in the maritime domain.
“The single maritime domain UAP case AARO received involved a report from U.S. Navy assets operating off the coast of Virginia. The report described approximately 100 airborne UAP and two, likely uncrewed, surface systems,” the report states. “AARO is actively investigating this event in coordination with the reporting unit.”
Though details are sparse on that investigation, it reflects how UAP-involved incidents continue to be routinely reported near U.S. military bases, testing ranges, nuclear power plants and other locations — heightening potential for a direct security breach.
A Pentagon spokesperson did not immediately respond to DefenseScoop’s request for more information on Tuesday.
“AARO received and analyzed several reports describing UAP in or near national security sites or critical infrastructure. Some narrative reports were suggestive of phenomena whose performance characteristics exceed the known state-of-the-art within a given domain. No technical data accompanied these reports,” officials wrote in the newly released documentt. “If validated, the attendant phenomena underlying these reports may represent a currently unmitigated threat vector. Part of AARO’s mission is to provide data and analysis that helps mitigate potential UAP-related national security threats or operational hazards.”
Notably, two cases in the current period “described electronic or avionic interference as attributable to UAP in proximity to an operational aircraft,” according to officials. The office has not yet determined whether — or to what extent — those reported effects were due to UAP.
In fiscal 2025, AARO kicked off several “multi-domain, multi-modal sensor and algorithmic prototyping initiatives” to find, track, characterize, and potentially attribute anomalous detections.
The hub also onboarded a new capability in the most recent reporting period. The asset enables advanced three-dimensional modeling and simulation applications and helped analysts to resolve 238 reported UAP as satellite flaring, a well-documented phenomenon where sunlight reflecting off of shiny satellite surfaces becomes visible when viewed from certain angles.
“AARO is implementing a multi-year investment strategy to improve awareness across the space, air, and maritime domains,” the report states. “These investments focus on augmenting existing [U.S. government] sensor architectures, prototyping and field-testing new technologies, and developing novel analytic techniques using proven technologies and methodologies.”
Similar to AARO’s prior annual reports, officials maintained that none of the UAP cases resolved by the office to date “indicate advanced foreign adversarial capabilities or breakthrough technologies in any domain.”
Among other new initiatives in the pipeline, AARO officials revealed that the office is currently developing a formalized process for handling UAP-derived materials by an appropriate line organization — “should such materials ever come into” the government’s possession.
