025 Public UAP Sightings and the Environment: An Analysis of Sky View Potential Richard M. Medina CLEARED University of Utah For Open Publication Feb 17, 2023 Simon Brewer University of Utah Department of Defense OFFICE OF PREPUBLICATION AND SECURITY REVIEW Sean M. Kirkpatrick Department of Defense Proposed journal for submission: Annals of the American Association of Geographers Introduction There has been growing interest by the United States government in Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). Given the new focus on this potential security threat and the operational safety risks posed by these objects, the UAP Task Force was initiated on August 4, 2020 (U.S. Department of Defense, 2020). This task force, like all task forces, had a limited scope, authority and resources to address the issue and was temporary in its duration. The Deputy Secretary of Defense gave direction to transition the UAP task force into the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG) on November 23, 2021 (U.S. Department of Defense, 2021). Congressional legislation, however, overtook that direction and today’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was established on July 20, 2022 (U.S. Department of Defense, 2022) as the single authoritative UAP Office with the DoD and tasked with leading and synchronizing a whole of government approach to the issue. The mission of the AARO is to: “synchronize efforts across the Department of Defense, and with other U.S. federal departments and agencies, to detect, identify and attribute objects of interest in, on or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace and other areas of interest, and, as necessary, to mitigate any associated threats to safety of operations and national security. This includes anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects” (U.S. Department of Defense, 2022, np). As part of these efforts, this research team explores spatial patterns of publicly reported UAP sightings (analogous to UFO sightings in this research) from an open source online dataset. In the public 2021 DNI report, research on UAP sightings between 2004-2021 leaves most of its 144 government-based reports unexplained, due to limited data. Only one sighting was explained with high confidence, and was found to be a deflating balloon (Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2021). The public 2022 DNI report on UAP sightings indicates the number of governmental sourced reports rose to 510, with nearly half still unexplained. The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office Chief of Staff, AARO Page determined to be Unclassified Authority: FY24 NDAA, now codified at 44 U.S.C. 2107 Reviewed by Chief of Staff, AARO Date: 02/06/2025 IAW FY24 NDAA, Section 1841 (a)(1)(C) Released in Full: ____X___; Released in Part ______ Date: 02/06/2025 Case Number: 330UAP000025