2021 UAP Sighting — AARO Records (D196P9)
In 2021, the scope of an IC Controlled Access Program was expanded to protect UAP reverse-engineering without sufficient justification. The program never recovered or reverse-engineered any UAP or extraterrestrial spacecraft and was later disestablished due to a lack of merit.
Background
A UFO/UAP incident extracted from page 9 of AARO Historical Record Report Vol 1 2024, an All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) document published in 2024-2025. The incident is dated 2021 and located in Unknown location.
What the document records
In 2021, the scope of an IC Controlled Access Program was expanded to protect UAP reverse-engineering without sufficient justification. The program never recovered or reverse-engineered any UAP or extraterrestrial spacecraft and was later disestablished due to a lack of merit.
Witnesses on file: an IC Controlled Access Program.
Status of the case
The page-level assessment recorded in the document is: identified as balloon. AARO designates unresolved cases as those for which the agency has not concluded the events were anomalous, has not concluded they were conventional, and has not ruled out either possibility. Conventional candidates for sightings of recent periods include drones, classified test platforms, satellite re-entry, balloon traffic, atmospheric optical phenomena, and astronomical objects.