Sponsor
Timothy Burchett
Representative · R-TN
Representative · R-TN
The bill trades a standalone, specialized office and potentially greater transparency for reduced bureaucracy and greater flexibility within the Department of Defense, risking loss of dedicated expertise, weakened interagency coordination, and transitional disruption.
Department of Defense and its components: allows AARO functions to be redistributed into existing DoD mission offices, enabling closer integration with established chains of command and program offices.
Taxpayers and the Department of Defense: removes a separate statutory office, which can reduce administrative overhead and duplicate bureaucratic structures and potentially lower costs.
National Archives and the Department of Defense: replaces Office-specific custody references with responsibility assigned to the Secretary, which may streamline records management and clarify archival responsibility.
Military personnel and DoD staff: lose a dedicated office focused on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), risking erosion of specialized expertise, program continuity, and focused institutional knowledge.
Department of Defense, ODNI, and the intelligence community: the bill bars creation of a centralized, cross-agency office for UAP, which may fragment oversight and complicate interagency coordination on sensitive investigations.
Department of Defense and military personnel: a rapid 60-day termination and transfer deadline for the existing office risks operational disruption and loss of institutional knowledge during the transition.
Based on analysis of 1 section of legislative text.
Terminates the statutory All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, forbids creating a single centralized UAP office, and transfers its functions to the Secretary of Defense within 60 days.
Official title: To terminate the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office of the Department of Defense, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 6, 2026 by Timothy Burchett · Last progress April 6, 2026
Terminates the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and requires the Secretary of Defense to redistribute AARO’s functions within the Department of Defense within 60 days of enactment. It bars the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence from creating a single, centralized office inside DoD or ODNI that would exercise comprehensive centralized authority over unidentified anomalous phenomena, repeals the statutory authority that created AARO, and makes conforming changes to prior law and records-handling provisions so responsibilities and archival references point to the Secretary rather than the Office. The bill also defines key terms such as “transmedium objects or devices” and “unidentified anomalous phenomena.”